The Press: Hero Business

High in a Manhattan office building last week a tall, white-haired man proudly thumbed three dummy paperbacked books. Vivid covers proclaimed them Vol. I, No. 1 of Swift Story Magazine (It Fits Your Pocket), The Pocket Magazine and The Dime Novel. First of the three was ready for publication this week. But it was The Dime Novel, scheduled to appear next month, which brought a reflective smile to the white-haired man—William Gilbert Patten ("Burt L. Standish"), author of the famed old time Frank Merriwell series, now venturing for the first time as his own publisher.

Like the Tip-Top Library, which for two decades purveyed a weekly heroism of the peerless Merriwell, The Dime Novel will concern itself with the adventures of one character. Aware that juvenile readers of today demand something more salty than prep school pranks and last-minute football victories, Author Patten cast about for a 1930 setting for his hero. The result: "Bob Hunter, or The Boss of the Rum Runners." Because, like Merriwell, Bob Hunter must be of eminently sterling worth, he will be enmeshed in illegal activities against his will, his conscience and his judgment. Many of the episodes will deal with the persistent efforts of this Robin Hood to go straight. Crime must not pay.

Author Patten will not tell his age. He was 17 sometime in the 1880's when, at his home in Corinna, Maine, he wrote his first stories, "A Bad Man" and "The Pride of Sandy Flat." A check for $6 for both, from Editor Orville J. Victor of Banner Weekly, put an end to Patten's father's determination, to make Willie a carpenter, and his mother's hope that he would become a minister. In the next ten years Author Gilbert Flatten (he had dropped his first name because people called him Willie) achieved no little success as a prolific writer of western thrillers for the Beadle & Adams publications. He was nearing the end of his rope of ideas when in 1895 Street & Smith, publishers, proposed the juvenile series about a single character who "should have a name like Dick Lightheart, Jack Harkaway, Gay Dashleigh." Author Patten, aspiring to be a playwright, seized upon the plan as a "potboiler." He conceived his hero: "His face was frank, open and winning but the merry light that . . . dwelt in his eyes. . . ." Frank Merriwell was born April 18, 1896.

As a potboiler the Merriwell series soon got out of hand. At the age of three months its weekly circulation was 75,000. Merriwell was to become what the author hoped—the hero of practically every youngster in the U. S, At the peak of his career Author Patten believes, a half-million schoolboys read him every week (many out of sight of parental eyes). Every week for 18 years Author Patten (under the name of "Burt L. Standish" so that others might carry on after him, or in case of illness) ground out 20,000 words. At first he was paid $50 a week, never more than $150, despite a legend that Merriwell made him rich. He is probably the most prolific writer in the U. S. He estimates he has so far written about 40 million words.