Jack Woodford
Jack Woodford (1894–1971) was a successful pulp novelist and non-fiction author of the 1930s and 1940s. He wrote unique books on writing and getting published. Most famously, Woodford authored Trial and Error which caused something of a scandal at the time of publication because of its no-holds-barred insights into the publishing industry.
Born Josiah Pitts Woolfolk, he also wrote under the name Jack Woolfolk. The pen name "Jack Woodford" was derived from the first name of a writer he admired (Jack Lait, a writer for Hearst Publications) and the county where his father was born (Woodford County, Kentucky). Other pen names include Gordon Sayre, Sappho Henderson Britt, and Howard Hogue Kennedy.
Life
Woodford grew up in Chicago when the dominant form of transportation was horse-drawn carriage. He was raised in well-to-do circumstances by his grandmother Annette (of Welsh stock) whom he called "Nettie". Nettie was a practicing member of Christian Science but was unable to bring Jack into the fold. Despite his general hatred of organized religion, Woodford joined the Freemasonry organization and remained a lifelong member.
His father was a doctor who started a private practice in Sioux City, Iowa, eventually moving it to Chicago. He later taught diagnosis at Rush Medical College, before dying at the age of forty-nine, likely from mercury poisoning. Calomel (mercurous chloride) was a popular medicine at the time and one the doctor himself used to excess. Woodford, always physically vibrant, thought of his father as a hypochondriac.
Woodford witnessed the Eastland disaster where the steamer ship rolled over in the Chicago River and killed 845 people. He gave a firsthand account to the Chicago newspaper the Herald-Examiner and described the event in Chapter 21 of his autobiography.
Among the many famous contemporaries Woodford befriended, the most notable are H. L. Mencken, writer/satirist James Branch Cabell, novelist Sherwood Anderson, composer George Antheil, and poet Ezra Pound. Woodford wrote a piece that was published in Pound’s early Exile magazine. He also accompanied Winston Churchill when the former Prime Minister visited New York City.
Woodford's only child from his marriage to Josephine Hutchings Woolfolk, Louella Woolfolk (who wrote under the pen name Louella Woodford) was also a published author who, at the age of 18, wrote a 273-page novel titled Maid Unafraid that was published in 1937 by Godwin. Woodford was married on November 20, 1916 to the 16-year-old Josephine Hutchings, and divorced 17 years later.
Woodford founded Jack Woodford Press in the 1930s and the company's work was distributed by Citadel in the 1940s. The editors of the company in the 1940s were Allan Wilson and Aaron Moses (“Moe") Shapiro.
Quotes by Woodford
- “Boy meets girl; girl gets boy into pickle; boy gets pickle into girl."
- “Characterization is an accident that flows out of action and dialogue."
- “Few human beings are proof against the implied flattery of rapt attention."
- “If you wish to write great literature you are very stupid to read my books, because I do not, cannot, and would not write great literature."
- “One of your first jobs, as you write for money, will be to get rid of your vocabulary."
- “Editors are the immemorial adversaries of writers, because most editors are editors because they wanted to be writers and failed, and they instinctively hate those who wanted to be writers and succeeded."
- “I got my favors the hard way. I found out what the dame most wanted, and either gave it to her or pretended I was going to give it to her, and that in all cases got action-always does, always will, for any man."
- “Money talks. And writes. And publishes. And reviews. But it can't read."
- “Constantly writer after writer would come to me in Hollywood to invite me into Communist activities and I would laugh at them and point out the utter inconsistency of a man making fifteen hundred dollars a week or more, doing next to nothing, going for a philosophy which would destroy just that and put them back where they were when the golden cornucopia splayed them."
See also [ Jack Woodford covers ]
Selected bibliography
Non-fiction
- [[Trial and error (book)|Trial and Error]] (1933)
- Plotting (also published as Plotting - How to Have A Brain Child) (1939)
- Why Write A Novel? (1943, also published as How To Write and Sell A Novel)
- Plotting For Every Kind of Writing
- How To Write For Money (1944)
- Writer's Cramp (1953)
- Jack Woodford On Writing (1979) Compiled, selected, and edited by Jess E. Stewart, Woodford Memorial Editions, Seattle WA, second edition 1980 isbn 0-9601574-1-7
- The Autobiography of Jack Woodford (1962, published under Jack Woolfolk)
- Home Away From Home (1962, a follow-up to the Autobiography describing the author's incarceration)
- My Years With Al Capone
- How to Make Your Friends and Murder Your Enemies (Published posthumously by Jess E. Stewart in 1981)
- The Rabelaisian Letters of Jack Woodford
- The Secret Confessions of Joseph Stalin: A 3rd-dimensional Creative Confession of Life and Destiny
Fiction
- The Abortive Hussy (1947, Avon 146)
- City Limits- the novel was adapted for the screen in 1934- http://www.archive.org/details/City_Limits_1934
- Evangelical Cockroach (an early [1929] collection of seriously sardonic short stories, including the classic title piece)- arguably Woodford's best work, comparable to a cross between O.Henry, De Maupassant, and Hemingway. (Dustjacket illustration of erudite insect by John M. Meekison.)
- Find the Motive
- Five Fatal Days
- Four Eves
- Free Lovers
- Gentleman from Parnassus
- God's Lap
- Grounds for Divorce
- The Hard-Boiled Virgin (1947)
- Here is My Body
- Illegitimate
- Illicit
- Indecent?
- Iris
- Lady Killers (1935, writing as Howard Kennedy)
- Male and Female
- Mirage of Marriage
- Person To Person Call
- Possessed
- Rented Wife
- She Liked The Man
- Sin and Such
- Strangers In Love
- Surrender
- Tale Incredible: The True Story of Harry Stephen Keeler's Literary Rise (article)
- Temptress
- Three Gorgeous Hussies
- Traded Lives
- Unmoral
- Vice Versa
- White Heat
www.VintageSleaze.com website Updated: 2001 |
Jack Woodford was born Josiah Pitts Woolfolk in Chicago in 1894 and grew to be the grandfather of Sleaze. Known equally for his entertaining and informative non-fiction books on writing, Woodford wrote dozens of popular erotica novels from the 1930s through the 1950s. He began as a journalist, also worked for Julius Haldeman's Little-Blue Books and in 1931 started writing novels for the early New York hardcover erotica publisher, William Godwin. Woodford did a stint in Hollywood where he wrote a number of romantic-comedy shorts in the late-1930s and supplied the early paperback house, AVON, with manuscripts and reprint rights to earlier work. In the late 40s Citadel approached Woodford about forming The Woodford Press to do hardcover reprints of his bestselling early novels (as well as publish a handful of writers Woodford personally selected). Woodford agreed, but after a few years, royalties were disputed and Woodford abandoned the imprint which bore his name and began publishing under his own Signature Press. He died in 1971, but is still in print via another publishing entity Jack Woodford Memorial Editions.
See also [ Early publishers ]
External links
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