Thanks to Hugh Lessig for alerting me to the Jim Tully
material on the Dennis McMillan website. I have not searched
it out yet but have to wonder if McMillan was alerted to
Tully by Charles Willeford who contemplated writing a book on
Tully. There is a forward, circa 1970, in Willeford's WRITING
AND OTHER BLOODSPORTS.
Tully's BEGGARS OF LIFE is non-fiction. It is the best hobo
memoir I have ever read and considering the stiff competition
from Willeford, Jack London, William H. Davies and others
that is not minor praise.
Tully (1891-1947) was a good friend of H.L. Mencken. So good
that Mencken asked Tully to look after his wife to be (Sara
Haardt) when she went to Hollywood to do a screenwriting gig
in 1927. Tully made a fortune in Hollywood as a writer for
the movie magazines. Willeford said he was a forerunner of
the "new journalism" school of the 1960s. He was also a
friend of and employed by Charlie Chaplin and later wrote one
of the first biographies of Chaplin.
Tully's fiction is worth searching out and has much in common
with the hardboiled fiction of Hammett and others. Books
include SHANTY IRISH, CIRCUS PARADE and LAUGHTER IN HELL. His
novel THE BRUISER probably drew on his own experience as a
boxer. A short stocky guy, Tully gave up boxing after being
knocked out in the ring and staying out for 24 hours.
Mencken wrote of him: "If Jim Tully was a Russian, read in
translation, all the professors would be hymning him. He has
all of Gorki's capacity for making vivid the miseries of poor
and helpless men, and in addition, he has a humor that no
Russian could conceivably have."
He was in bad health his last few years and beyond BEGGARS OF
LIFE has been pretty much forgotten. BEGGARS was made into a
film in 1928 starring Louise Brooks and directed by William
Wellman. I seem to recall reading that Brooks and Tully did
not hit it off during the making of the movie.
Richard A. Moore
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