Edna Ferber
La Cimarrona Verdad

Anything can have happened in Oklahoma. Practically everything has.

- Edna Ferber, Preface to Cimarron, Grosset and Dunlap, 1930.

Oklahoma read the book, stood up on its hind legs and howled. By now I had realized that an American regional novel always is resented by the people of its locale, unless, of course, all descriptions and background are sweetness and light. Oklahoma had all the self-consciousness and inferiority feeling of the new and unsure.

Edna Ferber, A Peculiar Treasure, Doubleday, 1939.

This last quote, we must point out, refers to the initial response to Edna's novel Cimarron from reviewers from the State So Named. However, Edna also mentioned when the book became a best seller and was made into a not entirely faithful but highly popular Hollywood movie, those in the Sooner State praised her writing and invited her to attend numerous banquets, parties, and conventions. She turned them all down.

By the time Cimarron hit the bookstores Edna was not only a best selling author but also a winner of the Pulitzer Prize (1925). She was fortunate enough to live in the time of the phenomenon that, although not unheard of today, is increasingly rare. That's the time of the celebrity author. That is, she was an author whose writings propelled her to celebrity. True celebrity authors today are largely found in the genre of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Writers of "serious" literature who achieve worldwide fame are becoming few and far between.

Celebrity authors, though, are not to be confused with the celebrity-turned-into-an-author. Many of these are actors, politicians, or people who have attained their celebrity by ...

Well, never mind. But these celebrities-turned-authors have become of interest since some people have been shocked! shocked! when they learned that the famous series of books they were buying written by Celebrity X might not have been written by Celebrity X at all. Instead, the said Celebrity X - or the publisher - had hired a ghostwriter.

Ghostwriters have been around for decades if not centuries. But part of the controversy is that it's not clear today where the celebrity's actual authorship ends and the ghostwriter's talent begins. Some celebrities say they have considerable "input" into the book and get quite huffy if anyone suggests otherwise.

There was even a rare case where a celebrity himself threw out what a ghostwriter had wrought. Charles Lindbergh's first book about his famous flight to Paris, We, was originally written by a ghostwriter, New York Times correspondent, Carlisle MacDonald. But Charles didn't like the text. To his publisher's dismay, Charles rejected the entire manuscript. It was too fabricated to make his feat look terrifying, he said. Instead, people should be reassured of the safety of flight. So Charles sat down and hammered out 10,000 words a week (in longhand) at Harry Guggenheim's Long Island mansion. Although some parts were still ghosted by Fitzhugh Green, a former navy commander and then a writer on aviation, in We at least we have a book that can legitimately be said was substantially crafted by its labeled author.

The other extreme is where the ghostwriters do everything from inventing the plot, devising the characters, to the final writing of the story, and the celebrities just slap their name on the cover. It's much more difficult to pinpoint which books these are. There's the story of one celebrity who was asked about his new book. "I hear it's selling well," he said. "I may even read it myself some day."

But Edna wrote her own novels. Born in 1885 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin when she was 12. She showed no interest in the typical career paths for young unmarried women such as a teacher or nurse. Instead she got a job as a newspaper reporter which with rare exceptions was not considered proper women's work.

But it was a good choice. There was no television or radio in those days, and a good chunk of popular passive home entertainment was reading books and short stories. This was also the time when publishers would routinely accept contributions from unsolicited and unagented authors. So Edna began writing short stories and novels.

Edna was only 26 when her first novel, Dawn O'Hara, was published. For the next few years more books followed. With her increasing success, she relocated to New York City and became part of the rising literary scene.

So Big was published in 1924 and was Edna's eleventh book. It was about a young woman who becomes a single mother on a farm after her husband dies. It was So Big that won her the Pulitzer. Her next novel Show Boat was also a best seller. By 1930 when she published Cimarron, Edna was one of the most popular writers in the English speaking world.

Strong willed women having to live independent lives is a recurrent theme in Edna's books. In Cimarron the protagonist is Sabra Cravat, yes, an independent and strong minded woman whose husband, Yancey, was a flamboyant frontier lawyer. Yancey, who earlier had picked up the nickname "Cimarron" (Spanish: "wild, untamed"), has just returned from the Land Rush in the Unassigned Lands of what was then called Indian Territory. Being cheated out of his claimed section, Yancey decides to set up a law practice in the fictional town of Osage. Since lawyering on the frontier didn't seem to be a full-time occupation, he and Sabra decided to take over the running of the town's newspaper, the Osage Wigwam, whose previous editor had been murdered.

Cimarron - capitalizing on both Edna's success and the popularity of the Western - also became a best seller. Unusually for a novel, the book had a preface where Edna gave some background on the research she had undertaken. Regarding the character of Sabra, Edna wrote:

There is no Sabra Cravat, but she exists in a score of bright-eyed, white-haired, intensely interesting women of sixty-five or thereabouts who told me many strange things as we talked and rocked on an Oklahoma front porch (tree-shaded now).

Actually no author admits they model a character on any living person and they always stick in the standard disclaimer, "This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental." That some disclaimers are as much fiction as the rest of the book is not to be doubted as some - quote - "fictional characters" - are clearly based on real people.

The principle model for Sabra was Elva Ferguson (1869 - 1947). Elva and her husband, Thompson, participated in not one, but three of the land runs in what became Oklahoma. Settling in Watonga, about 50 miles west-northwest of Oklahoma City, Elva and Thompson, established the newspaper, the Watonga Republican.

Thompson was not a perpetually footloose pioneer like Yancey. Instead in 1901, Teddy Roosevelt appointed him governor of the new Oklahoma Territory which had been carved from the western half of the original Indian Territory. So Thompson and Elva moved to the new capital of Guthrie which is about 30 miles north of Oklahoma City. In 1906 and on the eve of statehood, Thompson and Elva returned to Watonga. After Thompson died in 1921, Elva became the sole editor of the Republican, and she retired in 1930.

Interviewing a score of women plus carrying out other research must have been a hefty assignment given Enda's allotted time. Edna spent all of ten days in Oklahoma - the same amount of time that Lowell Thomas spent with T. E. Lawrence in Arabia. But on the other hand, we shouldn't be too nit-picky. When researching The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck spent absolutely no time in Oklahoma - that's nada, keins, nichts.

We also have to admit in many ways that Yancey was a bum. Although he harbors no prejudice against Native Americans - "Indians" as they were then called - he has considerable faults. Sure, he can quote Shakespeare, Latin authors, and passages of Peer Gynt, but he also has no hesitation in abandoning his wife and children to fend for themselves for years on end. When Yancy returned from one of his feckless absences, he told Sabra that he was still the editor of the paper. She disputed this. She's been doing the work while he was out playing pioneer. She was the boss, she insisted. She was the editor.

Yancey led her outside. He pointed to the sign outside the Wigwam office that still read, "YANCEY CRAVAT, PROP. AND EDITOR". He said that if Sabra took the sign down and replaced it with one with her name, she would be the editor. Until then, he was. Sabra never took the sign down.

She should have, of course. In fact, she should have taken the sign down, painted her name on it, and then taken it to Yancey and shov ...

Well, as least she should have had it repainted.

For all of Sabra's independence and strength, she is far from perfect. For one thing she exhibits extreme racial prejudice. She not only refers to America's citizens of African heritage by a most objectionable word, she also insists that they "know their place." She also harbors strong anti-Indian feelings (calling them "filthy savages"). She is outraged when her son, Cimarron ("Cim" for short) likens Ruby Big Elk, the daughter of an Osage chief, to Alice Roosevelt, daughter of the then US President. Eventually Cim marries Ruby, but you never feel that Sabra really shook off her prejudice. She is, though, a good friend to a Jewish merchant, Sol Levy, who later becomes one of the state's major retailers.

A particularly prescient episode dealt with what became a hot topic 30 years after Cimarron's publication. This was how Sabra had to deal with her son, well, "expanding his consciousness" with what are misnamed as "mind-enhancing" drugs. As the young Cim goes more and more native, he begins to participate in the rituals of the Native American Church. Among other things, the congregation would take peyote which would later become one of the more exotic imbibements of the 1960's counter culture.

Sabra goes into a fit and immediately tells Yancey about their son's latest misdemeanor. Yancey, though, tells Sabra she is trying to force their son into the life she wants him to live and not the one he wants. He then gives a defense of the Indian's incorporation of the drug into their rituals. Besides, he shrugs, he himself had taken peyote many times.

Edna's portrayal of Sabra as a courageous woman and yet flawed by her deeply held prejudices can only have been deliberate. Edna herself grew up where she experienced steady anti-Semitism against her and her family. In many of her other books - So Big, Show Boat, and Giant - the plots highlight the harm against minority groups caused by bigotry of the majority.

The model for Yancey, at least regarding his educated speech, penchant for quoting the classics, and his elegant apparel, was Temple Houston, the youngest son of Sam Houston. Temple was born in 1860 and after practicing law in Texas (he was actually a graduate of Baylor) he took part in the land run of the Cherokee Strip in 1893. Although the town of Botsford eventually renamed itself in his honor, Temple, his wife Laura (née Cross), and their kids moved to Woodward in the northwestern part of the state. Unlike Yancey, Temple was particularly thoughtful and considerate to Laura (and that was according to Laura herself). Sadly, Temple died young - aged 45 - of a cerebral hemorrhage.

It was inevitable, we suppose, but there are a number of Western stereotypes in Cimarron. After Yancey killed the bandit Lon Yountis, who Yancey had outed as the outlaw who had murdered the Wigwam's previous editor, Yancey carved a notch - the sixth - in the handle of his pistol. However, carving notches on a gun to keep tally of a gunman's victims is something without any reliable documentation. Certainly no surviving weapons of any known gunfighter has a notched handle. The manner in which Yancy dispatched Lon is also one of the most unrealistic depictions of a western gunfight ever put in fiction.

And of course there is the [lady] with the heart of gold, Dixie Lee (it was Dixie who cheated Yancey out of his claim). But once Yancey skinned out, Sabra and the other respectable women of Osage decided to drive Dixie out of town. They get Dixie charged with "disorderly conduct" but then Yancey - long absent - suddenly returns and defends her. Naturally Sabra goes into spittle-flinging diatribes how Yancey is undermining all of her efforts to bring decency to the town With an elegant pleas, Yancey gets Dixie off.

We read that Dixie later struck oil and gave up her avocation. She moved to Kansas City and adopted a child. However, the city authorities, once Sabra and the other proper women of Osage informed them of Dixie's sordid past, revoked custody.

Dixie died six months later, a broken woman. Yancey penned her obituary in the Wigwam.

Dixie Lee, for years one of the most prominent citizens of Osage and a pioneer in the early days of Oklahoma, having made the Run in '89, one of the few women who had the courage to enter that historic and terrible race, is dead.

She was murdered by the good women of Osage...

Naturally Sabra had yet another fit. She was pretty fed up with Yancey by now and that the two were at odds was well known in town.

"Some day," a citizen commented, "somebody is going to come along and shoot old Cimarron.

"I should think his wife would save them the trouble," someone added.

This episode is based upon a real case. Temple Houston famously did indeed defend one of Woodward's soiled doves, a lady named Minnie Stacey. In doing so he delivered one of the more eloquent pleas for mercy of which the following is a tiny excerpt:

The Master, while on Earth, while He spake in wrath and rebuke to the kings and rulers, never reproached one of these. One he forgave. Another he acquitted. You remember both - and now looking upon this friendless outcast, if any of you can say to her, "I am holier than thou" in the respect which she is charged with sinning, who is he?

A man who will yield to the reproaches of his conscience as they did has the element of good in him, but the modern hypocrite has no such compunctions. If the prosecutors of the woman whom you are trying had brought her before the Savior, they would have accepted His challenge and each one gathered a rock and stoned her, in the twinkling of an eye.

No, Gentlemen, do as your Master did twice under the same circumstances that surround you. Tell her to go in peace.

Minnie was acquitted.

There was also the episode when Edna also wrote of the "Indians" - the Osages - taking revenge by torturing two infringers of tribal law to death. Part of the plot was that Isaiah, a young freedman who worked for the Cravats, had gotten the Indian house servant, Arita Red Feather "with child" (as it was put in those days). But we are told that marriage between the Osage and blacks was forbidden under pain of death. Isaiah and Arita soon disappeared and everyone assumed they had run off.

But the couple had actually been captured by the Osages and their actual fate was something Edna insinuated was based on a true event. Arita and the child were suffocated in an animal skin. But Isaiah was executed by a tethered rattlesnake. That is, he was staked down just out of reach of the snake's fangs and with the onset of the dew of nightfall the leather line gradually stretched enough so the snake could reach its victim.

A little reflection indicates that the whole scenario is absurd. The basic set-up would just be too uncertain. You'd need to make sure the leather was tanned just enough for proper flexibility. You'd also have to check that the humidity of the air and the night time temperature would be correct for the dew to form on the leather so the force of a striking rattlesnake would strech the line just the precise amount. Besides, tying a rattlesnake out in the Oklahoma sun would most likely end up doing the snake in long before it could dispatch Isaiah.

True, Edna may have heard the story but its provenance is most suspect. Or maybe her informants were pulling her leg. And besides, we're talking about the late 1890's. By the end of the century a number of tribes had functioning court systems based on the European model. Although it is true that some tribes forbade intermarriage with freed slaves, this wasn't universal nor was it a capital crime. Expulsion from the tribe was the usual punishment.

On the other hand it is true that before the advent of statehood in 1907, the tribes could legally carry out executions for capital crimes (although the court's jurisdiction was limited to the members of the tribe). Even by the mid-19th century executions were by shooting, usually by a single rifleman. The Cherokees also had a gallows at their capital city of Talequah (pronounced tal-uh-QWAH). The last executions mandated by tribal courts seem to have ended in 1899. After statehood in 1907, crimes were handled by the state and federal courts.

Edna was not just a popular author but also hugely successful in a monetary sense. Part of her good fortune is that she became a successful writer during both the Golden Age of American Literature and the Golden Age of Motion Pictures. Movie rights alone could produce six-figure paychecks to the authors - and that's when six figures was a lot of money.

There were two movies made from Cimarron - one released in 1931 and the other in 1960 (starring Glenn Ford as Yancey, Maria Schell as Sabra, and Anne Baxter as Dixie). The first movie more or less stuck with the plot but the second picture really took liberties. For instance, in the book and the first movie Yancey is killed in an oil-field accident where he prevents an explosive from detonating. But at the end of the second movie, Sabra learns Yancey has been killed in action in World War I.

Edna also has the distinction in that she was one of the few friends of Alexander Woollcott (1887 - 1943), at the time one of the most famous book and drama critics in the nation. Known for his acerbic and sharp tongue and pen, he and Edna were members of the group of celebrities called the Algonquin Round Table. The Round Table met for lunch each day at the still-extant Algonquin Hotel. In addition to Edna and Alec, among the group was playwright Marc Connelly, writer Robert Benchley, playwright George Kaufman and his editorial and critic wife Beatrice, poet Alice Duer Miller, playwright Noel Coward, New Yorker editor Harold Ross, author, poet, and critic Dorothy Parker, and comedic actor Harpo Marx.

Now some writers have said Edna and Alec were enemies but others who knew them both affirm they were friends. Alec liked to dish it out and so he ended up having to take it. A famous story is that Edna was going on a cruise, and Alec was going to be on board. "I don't expect to speak to man or woman," she told her friends. "Just Alec Woollcott."

Naturally, we wonder if the quote is authentic since so few people say - to paraphrase Yogi Berra - all the things they said. An equally famous quote is from the time Edna walked into the Algonquin Hotel and saw playwright Noel Coward. Edna was dressed in a suit - something that women were beginning to sport after the First World War. Noel looked up in surprise.

"Edna," he said, "You look almost like a man."

"So do you," Edna replied.

From that time on Edna and Noel were good friends.

Is this quote authentic?

You can, of course, find similar comments and quips from various sources. However, Graham Payn, who was Noel's lifetime partner, mentions the quote in his memoirs. So it's likely that Edna did indeed make the bon mot.

A number of Edna's books besides Cimarron were made into movies. Show Boat was also adapted into a musical by none other than Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein. The musical was then turned into the motion picture not once, but twice. Both the most famous staging of the musical and the 1936 movie featured Paul Robeson singing his signature song "Old Man River".

Edna and George Kaufman teamed up and produced a number of plays, the most successful being Dinner At Eight. The play was later turned into a motion picture starring (among many others) Marie Dressler, Lionel Barrymore, John Barrymore, Wallace Berry, and Jean Harlow.

Edna's last big hit was Giant. This novel was set in Texas in the 1950's (and was published in 1952). The plot involves rich oilmen and ranchers and how they interact. As you might expect, racial tensions and divisions between the rich and poor are also part of the plot.

Giant was made into a blockbuster film starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean - about the three biggest box office draws of the time. It drew them, all right, and Giant was one of the most successful movies of the decade and when adjusted for inflation of all time. Although this might sound somewhat ghoulish, the movie's box office may have been enhanced by James being killed in the famous car wreck in 1955 before the film was released.

Edna wrote three more books after Giant. Her penultimate novel, Ice Palace was also made into a movie. To say it was not a success is like saying Yancey Cravat was an inattentive husband. Perhaps the movie's main point of interest is it features a young George Takei before he became Helmsman Hikaru Sulu on the Starship Enterprise.

Edna wrote only one more book, A Kind of Magic in 1963. This was an autobiography, not a novel, and she died five years later in New York City.

References

Ferber, A Biography of Edna Ferber and Her Circle, Julie Goldsmith Gilbert, Doubleday, 1978

"Edna Ferber", Encyclopedia Britannica.

Famous Women of Oklahoma, Linda Williams, University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

"Ferguson, Elva Shartel (1869-1947)",Linda Reese, Encyclopedia of Oklahoma.

"Oklahoma", George Milburn, An Oklahoma I Had Never Seen Before: Alternative Views of Oklahoma History, Davis Joyce (Editor), University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.

My Life with Noel Coward, Graham Payn with Barry Day, Applause Books, 1994.

Edna Ferber's America, Eliza McGraw, Louisiana State University Press, 2013.

Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South, Barbara Krauthamer, The University of North Carolina Press, 2013.

Temple Houston, Glenn Shirley, University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.

"Houston, Temple Lea (1860-1905)", Beth Anne Doughty, Encyclopedia of Oklahoma.

"The Woollcott Myth: A Minority Report", Bennett Cerf, Try and Stop Me, Simon and Schuster, 1944.