Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney Read online

  Stealing Through Time

  On the Writings of Jack Finney

  JACK SEABROOK

  McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

  Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

  All material quoted in Chapter Sixteen has been provided courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Knox College Library, Galesburg, Illinois, and is reproduced with permission.

  ©2006 Jack Seabrook. All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying

  or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Cover image ©2006 PhotoDisc

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

  Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640

  www.mcfarlandpub.com

  To Lorrie, as always

  Acknowledgments

  Writing this book was a labor of love. I first discovered Jack Finney's work when I bought a paperback copy of The Night People in the late 1970s and thoroughly enjoyed it. I read Forgotten News: The Crime of the Century and Other Lost Stories when it was published in 1983, devoured Three By Finney and About Time a few years later, and fell in love with Time and Again somewhere in between. From Time to Time was my Valentine's Day present to my wife in 1995.

  I wanted to learn more about Jack Finney, but my search for a biography or a critical work came up empty, so I decided that I would write one myself.

  Tracking down the novels was not difficult now that the Internet has made book collecting much easier. Tracking down the short stories was a bit tougher, but fortunately I had help from the reference staffs of several libraries. The Trenton Public Library in Trenton, New Jersey, still has bound copies of the slick magazines of the 1950s, and it is there that I found most of what I needed. The New York Public Library Express was able to provide the elusive "The House of Numbers." The Lawrence, New Jersey, branch of the Mercer County Library System was very helpful, as was Rutgers University's Alexander Library and the Moore Library at Rider University. Matt Norman at the Knox College Archives provided the letters and other documents that are found in Chapter Sixteen.

  Jack Finney fan extraordinaire Leah Sparks provided support, as did my children. My wife, Lorrie, proofread the manuscript and put up with all of the research and writing with grace and enthusiasm. Without her encouragement, this book would not exist.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments vii

  Preface 1

  ONE. A Life Kept Hidden 3

  TWO. Early Short Stories (1947-1952) 9

  THREE. 5 Against the House 22

  FOUR. The Body Snatchers 29

  FIVE. More Short Stories and The Third Level 41

  SIX. The House of Numbers 50

  SEVEN. "The U-19's Last Kill" and Assault on a Queen 58

  EIGHT. Later Short Fiction and a Play (1958-1966) 66

  NINE. Good Neighbor Sam 78

  TEN. "The Other Wife" and The Woodrow Wilson Dime 84

  ELEVEN. Time and Again 91

  TWELVE. Marion's Wall 103

  THIRTEEN. The Night People 110

  FOURTEEN. Forgotten News: The Crime of the Century and Other Lost Stories 118

  FIFTEEN. From Time to Time 123

  SIXTEEN. The Galesburg Letters 132

  SEVENTEEN. Jack Finney on Stage 146

  EIGHTEEN. Jack Finney on Television 159

  NINETEEN. Jack Finney on Film 169

  Appendix I. Writings by Jack Finney 185

  Appendix II. Credits for Adaptations of Jack Finney's Work 191

  Works Cited 203

  Preface

  Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney covers the career of the author who lived from 1911 to 1995 and wrote ten novels, more than fifty short stories, two plays, and a nonfiction book. Jack Finney kept details of his personal affairs closely guarded, but careful research has revealed aspects of his life that are reflected in his writing. Each of the novels is examined in detail, and all of his short stories have been located and studied to present a complete picture of the author's work.

  Research has also led to the discovery of details of his long-forgotten play, This Winter's Hobby, as well as to some reasons why it did not succeed. From his alma mater, Knox College, comes a series of letters exchanged between Finney and various persons associated with the college. These letters show a side of the author that has rarely been seen, and they also demonstrate his personal interest in some of the themes that recur in his fiction.

  Stealing Through Time begins with an overview of Finney's life and career. A discussion of his early short stories is then followed by in-depth analyses of his first two novels. More short stories are analyzed, culminating in his first short story collection.

  His third and fourth novels are discussed, and the rest of his short stories are covered in a chapter that also begins to discuss his last play. Finney's next five novels are featured in subsequent chapters, after which his lone nonfiction book is examined. Following a discussion of his last novel, the letters from Knox College are reproduced in full and analyzed. Finally, separate chapters discuss the ways that Finney's work has been adapted for the stage, television, and film.

  The book concludes with the first comprehensive list of Jack Finney's writing ever published, credits for adaptations of his work, a list of works cited, and an index.

  ONE

  A Life Kept Hidden

  Throughout much of his career as a writer, Jack Finney guarded his privacy carefully. Biographers were able to find little beyond the most rudimentary details of his life, and he made few public appearances (Ickes 36).

  Yet a close analysis of his published work over the course of fifty years reveals some details of his private life, details that may shed some light on themes that recur in his writing.

  Finney was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 2, 1911 ("Finney, Walter Braden." Contemporary Authors 150: 138), as John Finney, and he was given the nickname Jack as a baby. His father died when Jack was just two years old (Ickes 37), and Jack was renamed Walter Braden Finney, in honor of his late parent. However, the nickname Jack remained with him for the rest of his life (Sparks).

  His mother then took him to the Chicago suburb of Forest Park, Illinois, to live with her parents. She married again, to a man named Frank D. Berry, who worked for the railroads and the Illinois telephone company. Finney's mother (now Mrs. Berry) was described as an accomplished seamstress and woodworker who never worked outside the home (Sparks). As an adult, Jack Finney fondly recalled visiting Gales-burg, Illinois, every summer when he was a child in the 1920s (Finney, Jack. Letter to Douglas L. Wilson).

  Finney appears to have had a half-sister, Elaine Mitchell, who was said to be living in Alaska as of 2002. He grew up in Forest Park (Sparks), and attended Proviso Township High School in Maywood, Illinois ("Finney, Jack"); this high school served several Chicago suburbs including Forest Park ("Proviso").

  He presumably was graduated from high school around 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression. He then attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he took writing courses, enrolled in a fraternity, and participated in the ROTC. He was also on the swim team and the staff of the Student, presumably a journal or newspaper (The 1935 Gale). He completed his studies in 1934 (Breen 27). He spent the next twelve years working as a copywriter for one or more advertising agencies in Chicago and New York ("Walter B. Finney, '34"), and by 1946 he was li
ving in New York City and working for the Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample agency. At some point he is said to have tried writing for the radio, but no details of this have survived (Breen 24-25).

  Details also have not survived about his first marriage, which most likely ended sometime in the late 1940s.

  Jack Finney's career as a fiction writer is much easier to document than his private life, simply because publications exist as a record. In 1946, when he was 35 years old and had been working as an ad copywriter for twelve years, he sold his first story to the relatively new digest, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Entitled "The Widow's Walk," the story won a special prize in the magazine's second annual contest and was published in July 1947 (Breen 25).

  Finney's first story to reach publication was "Manhattan Idyl," which appeared in the popular weekly magazine Collier's on April 5, 1947. His lack of interest in self-promotion was evident from the first. The editor's page in Collier's included a photograph of Finney on a fake postage stamp, and noted that:

  ... he's from Forest Park, Illinois, 35, Knox College-bred, and wedded to a gal he'd like us to meet: She likes everything he writes, including the singing commercials he once ground out for the radio.

  Right now this exhibitionistic philatelist writes advertising copy directly across the street from the Collier's office. "I can look into your windows," he confides. "Frequently I do — and sometimes I wave" [Shane].

  Finney immediately set his sights on selling stories to the popular magazines of the day, and by the end of the 1940s he had published eight more stories in Collier's, Ladies' Home Journal, and Good Housekeeping. His wife was mentioned again in the August 28, 1948 issue of Collier's, when he won "the first of our new Star Story $1,000 Awards with his hilarious whodunit rib, 'It Wouldn't Be Fair'..." (Shane).

  He won a second Star Story $1,000 Award for "Long-Distance Call," a story published in the November 6, 1948 issue of Collier's (Shane). He is said to have divorced his wife in Reno, Nevada, and met his second wife there (Ickes 34). She was also divorcing, and her name was G. Marguerite Guest. She was Canadian ("Walter B. Finney, '34"), possibly from Toronto (Finney, Jack. Letter to M.M. Goodsill. 27 Apr. 1960). At some point, probably in the late 1940s, Finney moved with Marguerite to Mill Valley, California, where he would settle and remain for the rest of his life. In 1966, he wrote that he had lived in New York, Reno, San Francisco, and Mill Valley (Playbill. This Winter's Hobby 34).

  Mill Valley is mentioned in "My Cigarette Loves Your Cigarette," which appeared in the September 30, 1950 issue of Collier's, and again in "Husband at Home," in the April 1951 Ladies Home Journal. The main characters in "Stopover at Reno" travel by bus from New York to San Francisco and have an adventure in the title town; this story appeared in the January 5, 1952 Collier's. Mill Valley is located in Marin County, north of San Francisco.

  Finney's daughter Margie was born around 1951 (Ickes 34), and in the early 1950s the writer was a prolific contributor of short stories to popular magazines — nineteen stories were published between 1950 and 1952. In the summer of 1953, his first extended work, "5 Against the House," was serialized in three issues of Good Housekeeping. This became his first novel when it was published the following year.

  "The Body Snatchers" was his second novel-length work, and it was serialized in three issues of Collier's at the end of 1954. Finney's son Kenneth was born around this time (Ickes 34-35), and the novel version of this serial was published in 1955. In this time period Finney appears to have begun using agent Don Congdon, who would represent him for the rest of his life (Ickes 37).

  With the 1955 release of the film 5 Against the House, Jack Finney's work began to reach a new audience, which grew with the 1956 release of the popular science fiction film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. According to J. Sydney Jones, this film "changed everything for the forty-three-year-old writer and ... allowed him to support his family solely on his writing" (74).

  The rest of the 1950s found Finney dividing his time between short stories and novels. He published seven more stories in 1955-1956 and even had a play entitled Telephone Roulette published in 1956 (Fidell 103). The story "Such Interesting Neighbors" was adapted for television as "Time Is Just a Place," first airing on April 16, 1955, as part of the series, Science Fiction Theatre. The long story "The House of Numbers" appeared in the July 1956 issue of Cosmopolitan, then was published in novel form in 1957 to coincide with the release of House of Numbers, the third film to be based on Jack Finney's work.

  Nine more short stories appeared in magazines between 1957 and 1959, and The Third Level was published in 1957. This short story collection focused on Finney's science fiction and fantasy, and it won an award for best short story collection in 1958 from the magazine, Infinity Science Fiction (Jones 73).

  In August and September of 1959, the Saturday Evening Post serialized "The U-19's Last Kill" in six consecutive issues. This was revised and published as the novel Assault on a Queen that same year.

  Jack Finney turned 49 in 1960 and was by then established as a popular author of short stories with four novels under his belt and three motion pictures based on his work. The market for short stories was changing, as old standbys like Collier's fell by the wayside and were replaced by new magazines like Playboy. Finney published ten short stories between 1960 and 1962, and another collection, I Love Galesburg in the Springtime, appeared in 1962. Like The Third Level, this group of short stories focused on those with themes of science fiction and fantasy. As a result, Finney's other short stories have, with few exceptions, not been reprinted since their initial appearances in magazine form. Also in 1962, the story, "All My Clients Are Innocent," was adapted for television and broadcast as part of the Alcoa Premiere series on April 17, 1962.

  Finney's fifth novel, Good Neighbor Sam, was published in 1963, and marked the first time that one of his novels did not also appear as a serial. The author admitted having written this book with popular actor Jack Lemmon in mind, and the film starring Mr. Lemmon was released in 1964 (Wilson).

  Jack Finney's last published short story, "Double Take," appeared in Playboy magazine's April 1965 issue. He then wrote a play entitled This Winter's Hobby, which closed in Philadelphia during a pre-Broadway tryout in 1966 (Zolotow). At this point, Finney was 54 years old, and his writing output dwindled. He would not publish any more short stories or have any more plays performed. He continued writing for another thirty years, but only five novels and one non-fiction book appeared during that time.

  The first of these novels was The Woodrow Wilson Dime, published in 1968. It was a reworking of his short story, "The Other Wife." Time and Again followed in 1970 and, along with The Body Snatchers, it would become the author's most famous work.

  Finney turned 62 in 1973, the year that Marion's Wall was published; he followed this with The Night People in 1977. In 1983, he published a non-fiction book, Forgotten News: The Crime of the Century and Other Lost Stories, and a short story collection entitled About Time was released in 1986, but it only included selections from his two earlier short story collections.

  The film Maxie was released in 1985; this was an adaptation of his novel Marion's Wall. The short story "Such Interesting Neighbors" was adapted for television in 1987, the same year that Finney was presented with the World Fantasy life achievement award (Jones 74).

  Jack Finney turned 83 in 1994, the year that the French translation of Time and Again was awarded the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire ("The Locus Index to SF Awards"), and he made a splash in the publishing world in 1995 when From Time to Time was published. This sequel to Time and Again was his last novel. He had lived in the same home with his wife Marguerite for about 40 years (Ickes 36), and died of pneumonia on November 14, 1995 ("Finney, Walter Braden." Contemporary Authors 150: 138).

  Jack Finney's writing has continued to intrigue television and movie producers even after his death. The Love Letter premiered as a made-for-TV movie in 1998, and a musical adaptation of Time and Again opened Off Broadway in New Y
ork City in January 2001 (Brantley). Walking tours of New York City locations in that novel were popular in the city for years,1 and several of the author's books remain in print as of this writing.

  Jack Finney wanted his private life kept private, and he was successful at shielding many details of his background from the press and the public. He wanted his work to speak for itself, and this book will concentrate on his writing, starting with his earliest short stories in the 1940s.

  TWO

  Early Short Stories (1947-1952)

  "The Widow's Walk" is credited with being Jack Finney's first short story, sold to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and winner of that publication's second annual short story contest. It was published in the July 1947 issue, and thus missed being his first story to see publication by about three months.

  In this story, Finney appears to have been writing for his intended market, and the themes are not those to which he would later return. Narrated in the first person by Annie, an unhappy 32-year-old wife, it tells of the calculating mother-in-law whom she dreams of killing. Life was good with husband Al until Mother moved in; now, she won't leave the young couple alone.

  Annie reads about widow's walks in a magazine, and convinces her husband to build one at the top of their house. Mother eventually develops a habit of sitting up on the high perch and listening to the radio. Annie's plans to push Mother to her death are foiled when Mother obliges by having a heart attack and falling off on her own, but in the twist ending Al also falls to his death while trying to save her. At the story's end, Annie paces the widow's walk alone.