Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Alabama Authors Babs & Borden Deal

Babs and Borden Deal were a rare couple among writers--two very successful novelists from the 1950's through the 1970's. And since then they have both slipped into obscurity. Let's investigate their Alabama connections.

Babs Hodges was born in Scottsboro on June 23, 1929. After high school graduation she worked in Washington, D.C. as clerk/typist and as typist at Anderson Brass Company in Birmingham. She received a B.A. from the University of Alabama in 1952. Both she and Borden studied under legendary author and professor of creative writing Hudson Strode, although not at the same time. Strode taught at UA for more than 25 years and his students went on to publish over 50 novels and hundreds of short stories. 

 She and Borden married in 1952 while both were in Tuscaloosa; Babs was his second wife. They divorced in 1975. The couple had three children, son Brett and daughters Ashley and Shane.

 During much of their marriage they lived in Sarasota, Florida, where they circulated in the company of other writers including well-known crime and suspense novelist John D. MacDonald. Rumors of an affair between MacDonald and Babs resulted in MacDonald writing a letter to Borden denying it. [See Hugh Merrill's biography of MacDonald, The Red Hot Typewriter, 2000]

 Borden was born in Pontotoc, Mississippi, on October 12, 1922. After graduation from high school he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, where he worked on firefighting crews in the Pacific Northwest. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 until 1945, and then entered the University of Alabama and studied under Strode. He graduated with a B.A. in 1949. He moved to Mexico City College for graduate work; there he met his first wife. They had one child, but soon divorced.

 The Deals remained in Tuscaloosa for a couple of years after the marriage and spent their time writing. Future author Wayne Greenhaw often watched the children so the pair could work. By 1954 the Deals were living in Scottsboro. While there Borden received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1957 and a residency at the MacDowell Colony for artists in New Hampshire in 1964. That same year the family moved to Sarasota. By that time Borden had published eight novels and Babs her first two. 

Deal published over 20 novels and around 100 stories during his life. Some were published under pseudonyms. After 1970 he also wrote a series of erotic novels published anonymously, a practice many authors have used to supply quick funds. Two of his novels appeared posthumously, They Are All Strangers (1985) and The Platinum Man (1989). Babs published twelve novels.

 Borden died of a heart attack in Sarasota on January 22, 1985. Babs, who lived at the time in Gulf Shores, died in a Montgomery hospital on February 20, 2004.

 I never met Borden or any of the children, but I did meet Babs in the late 1970's. She was living in Auburn while her daughters were in school there. She and Dianne were friends when I met my future wife, who hadd met Babs through daughter Ashley. I remember Babs as a funny, earthy lady. 

 Borden has entries in Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia of Alabama; Babs has neither. In his 2001 book Vanishing Florida, David T. Warner includes a memoir of Borden whom he knew in Sarasota. Babs does have an entry in the Alabama Literary Map and like Borden appears in various reference books covering Southern and/or American authors. Borden's papers are in the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. That collection includes sculptures of Babs and Borden by Sara Mayfield, a fellow Alabama writer. 

 Alabama has had at least two other couples who were both widely published authors, C. Terry Cline and Judith Richards and the Covingtons, Dennis and Vicki. 

 Further comments follow many of the images below. 





This novel, Babs' fifth, first appeared in 1968. The following year she received the Alabama Author Award from the state library association for the book. Dianne has told me Babs once informed her that the book was loosely based on real Tuscaloosa events.



On December 3, 1979, NBC broadcast a TV movie adaptation of that novel under a new title. The film featured an all-female cast that included Paula Prentiss, Tina Louise, Loretta Swit, Stella Stevens, Shelley Fabares and Sondra Locke. 




A TV-movie tie-in reprint of the novel appeared in 1979.




Her first novel appeared in 1959.




Babs' second novel, originally published in 1961, was reprinted by the University of Alabama Press in 1990. That is the most recent reprint of any of her works. In its review of the reprint, Library Journal declared, "This is a southern writer who can be appreciated by all." (15 September 1990, p. 105)



This thriller was published in 1973.




She is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Scottsboro.

Source: Find-A-Grave

Her 1969 country music novel is dedicated to friend, fellow writer and onetime baby sitter Wayne Greenhaw, who has left a remembrance of the Deals in his essay in The Remembered Gate: Memoirs by Alabama Writers. The book was "really about Hank Williams" she told Clarke Stallworth in the article discussed below. 



In this 1962 novel, Deal's characters all work at night. 




This novel appeared in 1975.


Other novels include The Grail (1964), Fancy's Knell (1966), Summer Games (1972), The Reason for Roses (1974) and Goodnight Ladies (1978). The Grail was a football novel in which the star quarterback falls in love with the coach's wife. The book is based on the legends of King Arthur; for background on football she consulted Bear Bryant and Gene Stallings. 



This article by Clarke Stallworth appeared in the Birmingham News 26 March 1982. In it she laments the "bestseller" mentality of publishers and notes that after 25 years her publisher Doubleday doesn't "want me any more." She mentions the completed manuscript for a thirteenth novel. Perhaps it is among her papers, also at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.  

Her published short fiction includes:

Source: FictionMags Index

On June 27, 1961, an adaptation of her story "Make My Death Bed" appeared on the Alfred Hitchcock series. The thirty-minute program was broadcast in the show's sixth season. As of this writing a video of the episode is available here. 












This 1976 novel was adapted as a two-part movie for television and broadcast in 1988. 








Borden's second novel was published in 1957 and explores the coming of the Tennessee Valley Authority to north Alabama. This book and one by fellow Alabama author William Bradford Huie served as the basis for the 1960 film Wild River  starring Lee Remick and Montgomery Clift. 




This anthology published in 1976 contains Deal's story "A Try for the Big Prize" that first appeared in Hitchcock's magazine in May 1961.





This 1959 novel about southern hill country music served as the basis of the Broadway musical A Joyful Noise in 1966.




This novel appeared in 1965.



This novel was published in 1974. 



The Advocate (1968) is the middle novel of a "political trilogy" that also included The Loser (1964) and The Winner (1973). 



As he had done with the early novel Dunbar's Cove and the TVA, this 1970 book explored the effects of massive change on the South. In addition to that theme in his novels, Deal also wrote about basic human characteristics such as ambition, lust, greed, infidelity and a young man's coming of age.




This photograph on the back cover of Interstate was taken by fellow author John D. MacDonald. 



The first part of this Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color episode was  broadcast on March 8, 1964, and the second part a week later. The film was based on a story by Borden, probably "Watermelon Moon" first published in Argosy (UK) in February 1963.



Borden's published short stories include:


DEAL, BORDEN; [born Loysé Youth Deal] (1922-1985); (about) (chron.)

Source: FictionMags Index








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Thursday, July 13, 2017

Sunday Afternoon on Cloverdale Drive in 1959

I was born in Gadsden in 1952, but we only lived there a couple of years before dad got a job at Redstone Arsenal, and we moved to Huntsville. The house on Cloverdale Drive in these photos is the first one I remember from childhood. We lived in Redstone Park after first moving to Huntsville.

 We lived at the Cloverdale house from about 1956 until 1962. I've previously written about the 1958 snowfall we experienced at Cloverdale. You can read that post and see better photos of the front of the house here. This time there's no snow, and it's apparently a sunny Sunday afternoon. We've probably just returned from church, and mom or dad decided pictures were in order before everyone changed clothes. 

 Comments are below some of the photos. 







In these photos the parents take turns with the kids. Isn't there an eerie sense of unfamiliarity to old photographs of people you know, even yourself?








Here's the obligatory cheesy smile photo of younger brother Richard.





The alien ship landed over there, Daddy!





Just two brothers chillin' in their fashionable duds. 



I'm trying for an angelic look, I guess.



These final two photographs feature mom and I in relaxed and formal poses. 



I'm thinking, "Where are my sunglasses?"



Here's a recent view from Google Earth. I think our house may have been the one in the upper left on the corner of Cloverdale and Franz Avenue. I remember a big lot and the driveway on the right side of the house. 










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Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Birmingham Photo of the Day (58): Relay House Hotel

The article below identifies the Relay House as the city of Birmingham's first hotel. The BhamWiki article on the hotel says it "was actually the new city's second hotel" without naming the first one. I presume one of the sources cited there might give that information.

 At any rate, the Elyton Land Company built the Relay House in 1871 next to the Railroad Reservation at the corner of Morris Avenue and 19th Street North. The two-story wood frame building had 37 rooms and cost almost $14,000. 

 The hotel opened on December 15th that year under the management of William Ketchum. Wife Jane, daughter Margaret and her husband George R. Ward assisted Ketchum. Margaret and George became the parents of future city mayor George B. Ward.

 The facility served as a train station and general social gathering place for the new city in addition to providing overnight accommodations. The Relay House had many special features for the day as discussed in the BhamWiki article linked above. That article also has an engraving of the hotel showing it from a slightly different angle than the photo here. 
n In 1886 the hotel was torn down and replaced with Union Station, the city's first significant railroad station for passengers.
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Article from the Birmingham News 25 October 1959

Source: Birmingham Public Library 

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Thursday, July 6, 2017

Holidays Past in Alabama: A List





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Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Alabama Author: Michelle Richmond

A couple of yeas ago, probably at a library book sale, I picked up a copy of Michelle Richmond's 2007 novel, The Year of Fog. The cover and story description intrigued me, as did the note in the author blurb that Richmond is "a native of Mobile, Alabama." I recently read the book and figured a blog post is in order.

 The Year of Fog was Richmond's second novel, after Dream of the Blue Room (2003). Her first book, published in 2001, was the story collection The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress. Three more novels have followed: No One You Know, Golden State and The Marriage Pact. She's also published another collection of stories, Hum. 

 That second novel was a New York Times bestseller and listed as one of the best books of the year by Library Journal. The book received other accolades as well. I can understand why; the characters and story are compelling and the writing is intense and keeps the narrative moving.

 The novel opens with Abby and her fiance's six year-old daughter Emma walking along a foggy beach in San Francisco. Within minutes Emma disappears, and the remainder of the book chronicles the efforts of Abby and fiance Jake to find her. Along the way the reader is introduced to the city and its surfing and other cultures, and the growing estrangement between Abby and Jake. 

 We also learn a great deal about Abby's family and youth in Alabama. Like the author she grew up in Mobile, and along with her efforts to remember what happened that fateful day, Abby is also pulled into memories of family trips, Murphy High School, Airport Boulevard and Gulf Shores beaches. She even brings Jake and Emma on a trip to Gulf Shores during happier times.

 I won't say any more about the narrative, since it has several surprising twists and turns. I just recommend you read it, and I'll be reading more Richmond in the future.





















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