 
Choose another writer in this calendar:
by name: by birthday from the calendar.
TimeSearch |
|
Frank G(ill) Slaughter (1908-2001) - pseudonym "C.V. Terry" |
|
American bestseller novelist and physician, whose books sold more than 60 million copies. Frank G. Slaughter's novels drew on his own experience as a physician and reflected his interest in history and the Biblical world. He often introduced readers to exciting findings in medical research and new inventions in medical technology. "It was the moment of truth every surgeon faced, a time when rigid control on his part was the patient's sole chance of survival. Knowing he had only seconds to free the pressure on the trachea, Ben continued the relentless lifting motion. For an instant of panic, he was sure the tumor would not emerge. Then, when he was on the edge of surrender, it popped into view, like an orange squeezed from a child's Christmas stocking. At the same moment the patient took a long, gasping swallow of air, then began to breathe evenly again." (Tomorrow's Miracle by Frank G. Slaughter, Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1962, p. 15) Frank G. Slaughter was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Stephen
Lucious Slaughter and Sallie Nicholson Gill, a schoolteacher. When he was about five
years old, his family moved to Berea, North Carolina, onto a 225-acre tobacco farm. His father worked as a farmer, rural mail
carrier, and sawmill operator. On the farm the family grew tobacco and corn, too. After graduating
from the Oxford High School, Slaughter studied at Duke University, Durham,
North Carolina, being a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Slaughter received
his medical degree from John Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore, in
1930. He spent four years in surgical training at the Jefferson
Hospital, Roanoke, Virginia. Decades later Slaughter said in an
interview, that "Stored away deep in my mind even after forty years are
still more seeds medical lore, gained during those student days in
Baltimore, and from these seeds will come other novels of medicine's
heritage from history and the arts." ('Fernandina Beach to Picolata and Olustee' by Gary L. Harmon, in The Book Lover's Guide to Florida, edited by Kevin M. McCarthy, Sarasota, Florida: Pineappe Press, Inc., 1992, p. 43) In 1933, he married Jane Mundy, a former operating room nurse; they had two sons. Slaughter moved in 1934 with his wife to Florida, where he worked as a staff surgeon at Herman Kiefer Hospital, Jacksonville, from 1934 to 1943. Later Florida became the scene of many of his novels. Slaughter became in 1938 a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Two years later he was certified as a Specialist in Surgery by the American Board of Surgery. During World War II, Slaughter served as Chief of the Surgical Service in the United States Medical Corps at the station hospital at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. In 1944, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. When Slaughter sailed for Manila as chief surgeon aboard the hospital ship Emily H. M. Weder, he shipped two bookbags of reference works to write his sixth book, the Civil War novel In a Dark Garden (1946). Slaughter had been an omnivorous reader already at an early age. From 1935,
he started to try his own hand at writing. He purchased
a $60 typewriter and produced a number of short stories, but sold only
one during a five-year period. From this sale
to the Chicago Daily News he
received $12.00. Moreover, the Pulitzer Prize winning
novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, whom he met while she was a hospital
patient, gave him the advice: "Stick to operating." That None Should
Die (1941), Slaughter's first
book, was a semi-autobiographical tale of a young idealistic doctor, perhaps the most typical medical hero. He
begins his practice in a small southern community, where his new ideas
come in conflict with the medical care system. Before Doubleday
accepted the manuscript, Slaughter rewrote it five times. The final
version was made with the help of Thomas B. Costain, a novelist, who
worked for Doubleday Books as an editor. In Denmark, occupied by Nazi
Germany, the book was a huge bestseller. By the 1970s, That None Should
Die
had been translated into 15 languages. "No book in recent seasons has
offered anything like so much straight and informative writing about
medicine," said one reviewer. "If it fails to arouse, exciting and
vigorous controversy, then the average reader cares much less than we
have been led to suppose about what may happen to him when he goes to
the hospital." (Review: 'Doctors and the State; That None Should Die by Frank G. Slaughter' by Margaret Wallace, The New York Times, March 23, 1941) Although the novel was a moderate success in the United States, it was a bestseller in the Scandinavian countries, beginning from Denmark, where the it went into print just before the Nazis occupied the country. The Danish translation, Ingen må dø, published by Povl Branners forlag, sold 120,000 copies. During the war, Slaughter's royalty statements were scrupulously kept by the underground. In France, Slaughter's bestsellers were published in the "Livre de poche" series, founded in 1953. After completing four other books, Slaughter devoted himself
entirely to writing, usually producing one novel a year. "I am
primarily a storyteller who writes to entertain and also inform," he
said. "Critics have dubbed me "the undisputed master of medical
fiction," an accolade I prize very much." ('Slaughter, Frank G(ill)' by Marion Hanscom, in Twentieth-century Romance and Gothir Writers, edited by James Vinson, Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research, 1982, p. 630) Writing usually at the speed of 1000 words a day and
roughly 100,000 words a year, he continued to publish in fast
tempo to
the late 1980s. Mostly his heroes are male surgeons, but Doctors' Wives (1967)
tells about women behind the scenes. Della Rogan is an X-ray
technician, who plays golf, and feels sorry for Dr. Joe McCloskey,
"somewhat prematurely bald man, with courtly manners and a degree of
kindness and tolerance somewhat unusual in a urologist, whose work
brought him in contact with some of the seamiest aspects of human
behavior." (Doctors' Wives
by Frank G. Slaughter, Thorndike, Maine: Thorndike Press, 1984, p. 63;
originally published: Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967) Frank G. Slaughter died at his home on May 17, 2001, in Jacksonville, where he had lived for nearly five decades, mostly in the Riverside area on Garibaldi and St. Johns Avenues, and then in Ortega area. He had been bedridden in later years, but dictated passages for a new novel into a tape recorder. His wife, Jane Mundy, a former operating room nurse, died in 1990. William DuBois (d. 1997), a playwright, novelist and editor, worked with the author on 27 of his books. Slaughter's highly adulatory Immortal Magyar (1950) was about
Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865). He was one of the heroes in solving
the mystery of the terrible childbed fever, which killed young mothers.
The last half of the book tells of the bitterness of Semmelweis, who
eventually suffered a mental breakdown, after his new ideas were
rejected. Slaughter did not only publish medical novels but biblical
and historical as well, taking all the liberties that a fiction writer
can take in imagining what the real historical characters might have
actually said, thought, and felt. The Road to Bithynia
(1951) was about Saint Luke, who is thought to have been a physician, and
The
Crown and the Cross (1959) told the story of Christ. The Thorn of Arimathea (1959) was about Joseph of Arimathea and Veronica (of the Veil) and the founding of the first Christian church in Britain. Also other writer doctors, such as Lloyd C. Douglas and A. J. Cronin, have showed an interest in religious themes. Douglas depicted the Crucifixion and its aftermath in The Robe (1942), which was filmed in 1953. Slaughter's portrayal of Jesus is conventional, but he manages to bring color and life into the most famous biblical tale. However, Slaughter never visited Palestine, but he was meticulous in his research. In historical novels, such as Storm Haven (1953), set in Florida
in the 1860s, Slaughter focused on adventure. The protagonist of the story
is a young doctor, Christopher Clark. He is torn between two women, Valerie,
the proud owner of a large estate, and the dark and passionate Elena. This
pattern, a hero and two different women, Slaughter often repeated. Marion
Hanscom criticized Slaughter's portrayal of women: "His empathy
with people, however, fails to keep pace, especially his women who do not
even begin to reflect the very real changes that women have undergone in
the last half of the 20th century." (Slaughter, Frank G(ill)' by Marion Hanscom, in Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical
Writers, edited by Lesley Henderson, Chicago and London: St. James Press, 1990, p. 601) Between 1941 and 1987, Slaughter published 65 books. Some of his later novels feature
strong female characters. Women in White (1974) introduced
Helga Sundberg, a beautiful nurse, who is highly skillful in her profession
and who knows what she wants from a man. The book was filmed in 1979 and
inspired a TV series. Another independent and strong-willed character is Dr. Elizabeth MacGowan in No Greater Love (1985),
who keeps alive a pregnant, brain-dead woman to save the fetus.
For the sake of storytelling, Slaughter's side characters express
opinions that the protgonist don't necessary share. Thus one doctor says:
"When I see a child with Down's Syndrome plus ...
spina
bifida and hydrocephalus I can't help feeling that both patient and
family would have been a lot better off if someone had done [an]
amniocentesis ... A syringe full of concentrated saline injected into
the uterus can make it empty itself in a harmless abortion with no more
danger than having a wisdom tooth pulled." (quoted in The Doctor in Literature. Volume 3. Career Choices by Solomon Posen, Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing, 2010, p. 240) Slaughter's final novel,
The Transplant, came out in 1987. The doctor heroes have strenghts and weaknesses, and the domestic problems of the middle class. One of the most interesting examples is Dr. Mark Harrison in Doctors at Risk (1983), who becomes addicted to alcohol, amphetamines, and finally to Demerol. "A siren mistress, Demerol not only proved capable of quieting his nerves by day, allowing him to perform surgery, but brought nirvana at night." (Doctors at Risk by Frank G. Slaughter, Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1983, p. 155) Slaughter's sympathies are on Mark's side. Some of Slaughter's books have been made into films. The Warner Brothers "Florida Western" Distant Drums (1951), directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Gary Cooper, contained some 20 scenes drawn from Slaughter's historical novel Fort Everglades (1951), but the movie rights were purchased only after the filming was completed. Sangaree (1953), a 3-D color drama directed by Edward Ludwig, has been dismissed as "1950s kitch . . . overheated period soaper". (Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide, edited by Leonard Maltin, 2005, New York: Plume p. 481) Warrior (1956), about the Second Seminola War (1835-1842), was adapted into the 1957 film Naked in the Sun,
directed by R. John Hugh and starring James Craig as the Seminole
warrior chief Osceola, a real-life historial figure. Lita Milan was
cast as the female lead. "BITING BULLWHIP FURY! HIS WIFE TAKEN BY SLAVE
TRADERS . . HE RAVAGED THE ENTIRE TERRITORITY OF FLORIDA" declared the
poster for the film. Gene Hackman played a psychiatrist named David Randolph in Doctos' Wives (1971), directed by George Schaefer. When his wife (Rachel Roberts) confessess to him her lesbian affair, Dave suddenly hits her on the face with a newspaper and says: "You can't hit people with newpapers. I'll have to see someone about it. It's bad habit." (Gene Hackman: The Life and Work by Peter Shelley, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2019, p. 34) This film was unsuccessful at the box office. For further reading: 'Slaughter, Frank G(ill)' by Marion Hanscom, in Twentieth-Century Romance and Gothic Writers, edited by James Vinson (1982); 'Fernandina Beach to Picolata and Olustee' by Gary L. Harmon,' in The Book Lover's Guide to Florida, edited by Kevin M. McCarthy (1992); 'Slaughter, Frank G(ill)' by Marion Hanscom, in Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers, edited by Lesley Henderson (1990); 'Slaughter, Frank (Gill),' in World Authors 1900-1950, Volume Four, edited by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens (1996); The Doctor in Literature, Volume 2: Private Life by Solomon Posen (2006); 'Frank G. Slaughter, M.D., FACS: Medical Novelist and Surgeon Writer' by Michael Trotter, The American Surgeon, Volume 84, Issue 12 (2018) Selected works:
|
