In a message dated 4/2/03 4:06:55 AM Eastern Standard Time,
owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca writes:
<<
I remember doing some research in the Warner Bros.
files a number of years
ago and running across an original typed letter from
Traven to John Huston,
the director of TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, and
signed in Traven's hand.
Having heard many of the legends, I found it rather
thrilling to hold in my
hand a paper typed and signed by the legend himself.
Rumor has it that
Traven showed up on the SIERRA MADRE set, "disguised"
as an emissary from
Traven. As I recall, Huston was pretty sure it was
Traven himself.
Jim Beaver
>>
Wow! Thanks for sharing that memory! Warner Brothers bought
the rights to TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE before the war and
selected Huston to direct it.
The war intervened as Huston went off to service.
During the 1940s, Traven was living in Acapulco pounding out
letters on an old typewriter in a mud hut. At times to
outsiders he claimed to be a Norwegian sailor named Traven
Torsvan but he was always called "el gringo" by his neighbors
as to them he always claimed American citizenship. In fact,
from the time he fled Germany after his sentence of death
following WW I, he had no citizenship until he accepted
Mexican naturalization in 1951. He may have been aided in
this by his connection to Esperanza Lopez Mateos, his friend
and sometime agent. Her brother was prominent in Mexican
political circles and, in fact, later in the 1950s was
elected president.
Huston may have been the first person to whom Traven
pretended to be Hal Croves, agent for B. Traven. Off and on
he was Croves when he needed to be for the rest of his life
speaking of Traven in the third person. In his autobiography
(OPEN BOOK I think was the title) Huston has some vivid
memories of Croves. Croves was hired as a consultant at $100
or $150 a week.
Huston said on the location set there was a running gag
where all the guys would gang up on one person, his clothes
would be stripped and (IIRC) his balls painted red or some
such nonsense. Huston took his turn as did Bogart and the
others. But when it came time for Croves he fought so
violently that eventually they stopped as it had ceased to be
fun. I have some vague memory that in that book Huston
expressed some doubts as to whether Croves was actually
Traven. I will check the next time I see a copy. Huston's
wife Evelyn Keyes remembered they went fishing with
Croves/Traven but the writer wore a coat and tie the entire
fishing trip.
The most curious thing to me was the fact that Traven did
very little writing in his last quarter century of life. He
rewrote old books as they appeared in new editions and more
than anything, devoted time to film adaptations often in
collaboration with the great Mexican cameraman Gabriel
Figueroa. The German biographer Karl Guthke gave me a
believable explanation. Traven's German declined through the
many years of nonuse in Mexico. His English was also somewhat
awkward or clumsy as witness Harlan Ellison's (how did he get
in this story!) reaction to the manuscripts for STORIES BY
THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS which Regency Books published in 1961
with several "new" stories. In fact the new stories were
mostly translations of stories that had been written in
German years before, translated into Spanish by Ms. Mateos,
and finally published by Regency (perhaps IIRC after some
touching up by the editor Mr. Ellison). This paperback, by
the way, also has Traven's stories from "Manhunt" and is
worth looking for. I also recommend the later collection THE
NIGHT VISITOR and other stories, which includes several
superb stories of interest to readers of this list.
But to return (and end) to the question of language, it may
be that in the last period of his life, he simply did not
have a language in which he had sufficient mastery to tell
his stories at the same level as his early years.
Richard Moore
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