Davis, Richard Harding

• Born: Apr 18, 1864 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Died: Apr 11, 1916 in Mount Kisco, New York
• Active: '20s
• Major Genres: Drama, Romance
• Career Highlights: It's a Dog's Life, The Dictator, The Miracle Man
• First Major Screen Credit: The Dictator (1922)

Biography

Richard Harding Davis is remembered today, if at all, as the source for the character of the newsboy-turned-reporter Gallegher, adapted by Walt Disney in the early '60s. In his own time, however, and for many years after, he was one of the most popular authors and journalists in America. Born in Philadelphia in 1864, he was the son of Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910), one of the most renowned female authors of the 19th century. After attending prep school, he entered Lehigh College, where he attracted attention for his crusade -- mostly in the form of letters to the local press -- to eliminate hazing and other brutalities of campus life, and he later attended Johns Hopkins University. By 1886, at age 22, he'd begun working as a journalist, first in Philadelphia and later in New York. In his early career, he was doing little more than picking up odd assignments covering news stories and, later, was responsible for reporting on various sports. Later he became known for his travel articles, and he rose to fame nationally with his reports on the Johnstown Flood of 1889. In 1890, Davis became the editor of Harper's Weekly, a position that allowed him to travel around the world, and as a roving correspondent he ended up covering most of the wars being fought around the globe over the next 25 years, from South Africa to Central Europe. In the process, he befriended such subsequently renowned figures as Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt. In 1891, Davis published Gallegher and Other Stories, a collection of stories about the adventures of a young newsboy trying to become a reporter on the streets of New York during the 1880s and 1890s. Over the next 25 years, Davis was just as renowned for his books and plays as for his articles; in those years, in which older popular writers such as Samuel Clemens went into commercial eclipse, Davis was as widely read as any author in America. In his adventure writing and reports from the battlefront of whatever war he was witnessing, he was regarded as a "man's man," an American equivalent to Rudyard Kipling; between his journalistic articles and his books, he very much reflected and defined the bold new international face of the United States during the so-called Gilded Age of the 1890s and the early years of the 20th century. Davis would be criticized in later years for his tendency to stress dramatic, colorful descriptions over purely factual observation, although journalistic standards of truth and objectivity in that day were so low that most newspapers, apart from august publications such as the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune, were at least occasionally guilty of printing what later was considered hyperbole or outright untruths. Davis was involved in covering the First World War, and almost certainly would have been a rival to the likes of Lowell Thomas in reporting on that conflagration, especially as America entered the fighting. His declining health caught up with him in early 1916, however, and he died just days before what would have been his 62nd birthday. He was eulogized by Winston Churchill, former president Theodore Roosevelt, and his slightly younger contemporary Booth Tarkington, among numerous other notables of the era. A handful of Davis' works were adapted to the screen during his lifetime, beginning in 1910 with Her First Appearance, directed by Edwin S. Porter and featuring Charles Ogle. The films Soldiers of Fortune (1914), The Man Who Could Not Lose (1914), The Lost House (1915), Captain Macklin (1915), The Dictator (1915), The Galloper (1915), Ranson's Folly (1915), Playing Dead (1915), and Somewhere in France (1916) followed, and at least a dozen more adaptations of Davis' works were made into movies during the silent era, including Let 'er Go Gallegher in 1928. His work wasn't nearly as sought after during the sound era, which saw only three major Davis-based films, The Miracle Man (1932), China's Little Devils (1945), and It's a Dog's Life (1955) (based on his play The Bar Sinister). In the early '60s, Walt Disney produced a series of made-for-television adventures built around the character of Gallegher, the newsboy and would-be reporter, starring Roger Mobley in the title role and Edmond O'Brien as his long-suffering editor Jefferson Crowley, and Harvey Korman and Richard Derr, among others, in supporting roles. Disney was perhaps Davis' last great public admirer -- he had been 14 years old when Davis died -- and one of the few men of influence who remembered him by the 1960s. The Gallegher stories, in particular, captured a sanitized (if not entirely idealized) vision of that period in American life, albeit within the confines of a seemingly wicked big city like New York (where on some mornings during the 1880s, the bodies of anywhere from a handful to a dozen homeless, parentless Gallegher-like street urchins who were a lot less fortunate than Davis' fictional creation, and had died overnight, could be found on the streets). Realities aside, this happened to be Disney's favorite era, immediately prior to the date of his own birth, and it resonated for him the way that the writings of Booth Tarkington did for Orson Welles. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

It's a Dog's Life Buy this Movie

The American journalist Richard Harding Davis (1864-1916) was also a fiction writer and dramatist whose swashbuckling adventures were popular with the American public.

Richard Harding Davis was born into a well-to-do and rather pious Episcopalian family in Philadelphia. His father, an editorial writer, and his mother, a well-known fiction writer, often entertained Philadelphia artists and visiting actors and actresses, and the boy from the start was completely at ease with celebrities. After graduating from Episcopal Academy and Lehigh University, he studied political economy during a postgraduate year at Johns Hopkins University. In 1886 Davis became a reporter for the Philadelphia Press. The editor and other reporters confidently expected the cocky young dandy to fall on his face, but he shortly proved to be a superb reporter and a talented writer. From 1888 to 1890 he was in New York writing special stories for the Sun. He also published two volumes of short stories, Gallegher and Other Stories (1891) and Van Bibber and Others (1892). At the age of 26 he became the managing editor of Harper's Weekly and soon was writing accounts of his worldwide travels, which were collected in books such as Rulers of the Mediterranean (1894), About Paris (1895), and Three Gringos in Venezuela and Central America (1896).

As a picturesque and alert correspondent for New York and London newspapers, always appropriately attired for each adventure, Davis covered the Spanish War and the Spanish-American War in Cuba, the Greco-Turkish War, the Boer War, and - toward the end of his life (he died in 1916) - World War I. He based a number of books upon his experiences. More short stories filled 10 volumes, including The Lion and the Unicorn (1899), Ranson's Folly (1902), and The Scarlet Car (1907). A number of Davis's novels covered the international scene; notable were Soldiers of Fortune (1897), The King's Jackal (1898), Captain Macklin (1902), and The White Mice (1909). In addition, Davis wrote about two dozen plays, of which dramatizations of Ranson's Folly (1904), The Dictator (1904), and Miss Civilization (1906) were the most successful.

The critic Larzer Ziff in The American 1890's admirably summarized Davis's significance: "He demonstrated to those … who would listen that their capacity for excitement was matched by the doings in the wide world. But he also demonstrated to an uneasy plutocracy … that their gospel of wealth coming to the virtuous and their public dedication to genteel manners and gentlemanly Christian behavior were indeed justified."

Further Reading

For a complete list of Davis's writings consult Henry Cole Quinby, Richard Harding Davis: A Bibliography (1924). Two studies relate the author to his background admirably: Fairfax D. Downey, Richard Harding Davis: His Day (1933), and Gerald Langford, The Richard Harding Davis Years: A Biography of a Mother and Son (1961).

Additional Sources

Lubow, Arthur, The reporter who would be king: a biography of Richard Harding Davis, New York: Scribner; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada; New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1992.

Davis, Richard Harding, 1864–1916, American author and journalist, b. Philadelphia; son of Rebecca Harding Davis. After attending Lehigh and Johns Hopkins universities, he became a reporter in Philadelphia and later was on the New York Evening Sun. His stories and articles were soon attracting attention, and with the publication of Gallegher and Other Stories (1891), a collection of tales about a newsboy-detective, his reputation as a fiction writer was established. In 1890 he became managing editor of Harper's Weekly and began making trips in its behalf to various parts of the world. As a foreign correspondent he covered all the wars of his day and published several books recording his experiences; his war dispatches were colorful and dramatic, frequently at the expense of accuracy. Besides collections of short stories, his other writings include the novels Soldiers of Fortune (1897) and The Bar Sinister (1903) and the plays The Dictator (1904) and Miss Civilization (1906).

Bibliography

See his Adventures and Letters (ed. by his brother, C. B. Davis, 1917); biography by A. Lubow (1992).

(1864-1916)

1891	Gallegher and Other Stories. The leading reporter for the New York Sun publishes this collection of stories about an intrepid newspaper copyboy with a talent for crime detection, which helps make Davis one of the most popular authors in America during the decade. Davis was the son of writer Rebecca H. Davis.
1892	Van Bibber and Others. The volume collects stories concerning Davis's most popular creation, the wealthy man-about-town Courtlandt Van Bibber, who provides a lens on the often ridiculous antics of the rich and famous in Newport and along New York's Park Avenue. Cinderella and Other Stories (1896) continues Van Bibber's adventures.
1897	Soldiers of Fortune. The most famous of the writer's many popular adventure romances celebrates the imperialist spirit. It is derived from his travels and experiences as a foreign reporter and war correspondent.
1902	Captain Macklin. Davis adapts his soldier-of-fortune themes in an ambitious attempt to show the psychological development of the novel's protagonists. The book's failure causes Davis to vow to abandon fiction. He also publishes Ranson's Folly, a collection of novellas dramatized by Davis in 1904.
1904	The Dictator. Davis achieves his first theatrical success with this farce set in an imaginary Central American country beset by continual revolutions. He also produces a dramatic adaptation of his 1902 novel Ransom's Folly. Two other plays by Davis--The Galloper and Miss Civilization--would follow in 1905.

Quotes:

"The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way."