dual personalities

Today we celebrate the birthday of Louis L’Amour (1908-88) who was an extremely prolific and successful writer of “frontier stories.” Born Louis Dearborn LaMoore in Jamestown, North Dakota, he left school at 15 and never went to college. A voracious reader, however, he credited the 19th century British author G.A. Henty with teaching him most of what he knew and for giving him the foundation on which to build his subsequent lifelong education.

I was surprised that only around 15 movies were ever made based on his novels, and most of them are not worth viewing. Hondo (1953), of course, stands out as the exception. It is well worth watching, if for no other reason than to see John Wayne throw a variety of objects around, including a small boy into the river. “That’s the way I learned.”

It is also the birthday of James Brown (1920-92) whose handsome face you will remember from such films as Air Force (1943), Objective, Burma! (1945), Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), and the television series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin (1954-59). And, oh my goodness, he appeared in Murder She Wrote in 1988!

And fun fact: Lee Aaker, who played the boy in Hondo, also played the boy in Rin Tin Tin.

Well, I think I will read one of G.A. Henty’s books for boys. He is still very much in print, although I have no doubt he is considered a racist, sexist imperialist by many.

“Among the Huguenots he learned to be gentle and courteous; to bear himself among his elders respectfully, but without fear or shyness; to consider that, while all things were of minor consequence in comparison to the right to worship God in freedom and purity, yet that a man should be fearless of death, ready to defend his rights, but with moderation and without pushing them to the injury of others; that he should be grave and decorous of speech, and yet of a gay and cheerful spirit.”

G.A. Henty, Saint Bartholomew’s Eve: A Tale of the Huguenot Wars

Anyway, this is how my mind works…such as it is still working.