Biltmore Oswald: The Diary of a Hapless Recruit. The Maryland humorist achieves a popular success with this fictionalized treatment of his experiences in the navy during World War I.
Career Highlights: Topper, Topper Takes a Trip, I Married a Witch
First Major Screen Credit: Night Life of the Gods (1935)
Biography
Thorne Smith is an author whose ideas and stories have shown little sign of waning in popularity, even 70 years after his death. Known in his time as one of the finest humor writers of his era, he created three of the most enduringly popular figures in fantasy literature, in the form of Cosmo Topper and the ghosts George and Marion Kerby, in the 1926 novel Topper; additionally, his posthumously published novel I Married a Witch was part of the basis for the perennially popular television series Bewitched. Born James Thorne Smith, Jr. in 1891 at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, MD, he was the son of Commodore James Thorne Smith, a career navy officer. He attended school in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and studied for two years at Dartmouth College. Rather than continuing on to graduation, however, he joined a New York advertising agency after finishing his sophomore year and began spending time in the literary and artistic community that was coalescing in Greenwich Village in the opening decades of the 20th century.
Smith served in World War I as an enlisted man, rising to boatswain's mate. He also edited the navy newspaper Broadside, for which he created the humorous character Biltmore Oswald, an accident-prone would-be sailor whose misfortunes proved so popular, that Smith was compelled to assemble them into a book-length work, Biltmore Oswald: The Diary of a Hapless Recruit (1918). This was so successful that the following year Smith published Out 'o Luck: Biltmore Oswald Very Much at Sea. In 1919, his war service behind him, Smith returned to civilian life and the advertising business; he published Haunts and By-Paths (credited as J. Thorne Smith), a collection of poetry, that same year. Smith married in 1921, and by the mid-'20s he had two daughters.
In 1926, he published Topper: An Improbable Adventure, which told the story of staid middle-aged banker Cosmo Topper and his encounter with two fun-loving ghosts, George and Marion Kerby. Killed in a car accident while on a reckless jaunt, the Kerbys have never done anything terrible in their lives, except for never having done anything for anyone else. Before they can leave the earth, their task is to do something good for someone -- in this case, mousy, browbeaten banker and husband Cosmo Topper, whom they teach how to stand up for himself and also how to get some fun out of life. The book was an instant bestseller and eventually saw millions of copies in print, establishing Smith as both the leading fantasist and humorous novelist of the 1920s. Topper, in particular, was a counteractive to the dominant mood of repression abroad in the politics of the land. This was the era of Prohibition, and of an administration in Washington that saw no need to restrain business activities or prominent, even grotesque, displays of wealth. Topper hinted (though Smith should have flatly denied any purpose so serious as this) that there was more to life than making money, that fun had a place in life, and that, in the midst of having fun in life, people had some responsibility to each other to see that everyone had a chance to enjoy life.
Smith's next few novels were eagerly taken up by the public, who were delighted by the humor of his work as well as the wild imagination that he displayed, which occasionally carried Smith over into areas of remarkable ribaldry (for the time). The most notable of these books was Night Life of the Gods (1931), which depicted the chaos that results when the Olympian gods of Greek mythology are brought to life in early '30s Manhattan, free to indulge their considerable lusts at will. The book was brought to the screen in 1935 at Universal under its own title by director Lowell Sherman. He went into seemingly even more outrageous territory later in 1931 with Turnabout, a fantasy novel about a married couple who exchange bodies and see life from the other side, culminating with the husband's pregnancy. He brought Cosmo Topper back for another adventure in 1932, in Topper Takes a Trip, and in 1933 he went to Hollywood to join the script department at MGM.
Smith seemed to have nothing but an extraordinary future ahead of him, with Hollywood open to him, publishers eager to publish anything with his name on it, and readers eager to buy any book he wrote. And then, in mid-1934, he went on a vacation to Sarasota, FL, with his family and suffered a fatal heart attack. At the time of his death, Smith left behind a pair of unfinished manuscripts, which were later completed by Norman Matson. The more famous of the two, I Married a Witch, was published in 1941 and brought to the screen a year later, starring Fredric March and Veronica Lake. Interestingly, that book's somewhat libidinous nature paralleled the work on-stage during the same period of playwright Noël Coward, who was enjoying one of the biggest hits of his career with Blithe Spirit, a comedy that essentially asked the rather Thorne Smith-like question, "Is there sex after death?" In 1943 came Bats in the Belfry, the sequel to I Married a Witch. Smith was still so well known, that the publication of these two books was treated as a major popular literary event.
In the years immediately following Smith's death, film adaptations of his work began showing up. Night Life of the Gods (1935) at Universal was the first, but the real coup was scored by producer Hal Roach, who brought Topper and two sequels (Topper Takes a Trip and a third story, Topper Returns, which was adapted from Smith's characters by Gordon Douglas and Jonathan Latimer) to the big screen. Topper (1937) was one of the most enduring comedies and popular fantasies of the 1930s, featuring three delightful central performances by Cary Grant, Constance Bennett, and Roland Young; it remains one of the most beloved comedies of the decade. Subsequent film adaptations of Smith's work, including a film of Turnabout, were less well-received critically, but were very popular. The 1950s saw the production of the television series Topper, starring Leo G. Carroll, Anne Jeffreys, and Robert Sterling (real-life husband and wife), which has been among the most popular and oft-rerun series of that decade, right into the 21st century. There was also an attempt to revive the property in the 1970s as a made-for-television movie starring Kate Jackson and Andrew Stevens.
The most successful manifestation of Smith's work after the 1950s, however, was an unofficial one. In 1964, producer Sol Saks created the series Bewitched, one of a group of "gimmick" comedies of the period, which also included female androids (My Living Doll), and genies (I Dream of Jeannie), and unsold series involving spirits trying to do good deeds for people (shades of Topper!), not to mention the genetically dubious notion of "twin cousins" (The Patty Duke Show). Bewitched concerned a modern-day businessman who marries a woman who turns out to be a witch. Even Saks later admitted that part of the inspiration came from I Married a Witch, and the similarities eventually led to yet a further reprint of the original novel. Smith's work was still getting reprinted periodically in paperback into the 1970s, and Topper has continued to add significantly to its sales totals over the decades. For his part, the author described himself wryly as "one of America's greatest realists," calling his books "as blindly unreasonable as nature" on the original dust-jacket for Night Life of the Gods. "Like life itself my stories have no point and get absolutely nowhere. And like life they are a little mad and purposeless. Quite casually I wander into my plot, poke around with my characters for a while, then amble off, leaving no moral proved and no reader improved." ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
James Thorne Smith Jr. (March 27, 1892–June 21, 1934), was an American writer of humorous supernaturnal fantasy fiction.
Best known today for his creation of Topper, Smith's comic fantasy fiction (most of it involving sex, lots of drinking, and supernatural transformations, and aided by racy illustrations) sold millions of copies in the early 1930s. Smith drank as steadily as his characters; his appearance in James Thurber's The Years With Ross involves an unexplained week-long disappearance. Smith was born in Annapolis, Maryland the son of a Navy commodore, attended Dartmouth College, and after hungry years in Greenwich Village working part-time as an advertising agent, Smith achieved meteoric success with the publication of Topper in 1926. He died of a heart attack in 1934 while vacationing in Florida.
Biltmore Oswald: The Diary of a Hapless Recruit (1918) A series of comic stories written for the Naval Reservist journal The Broadside while Smith was in the Navy.
Out O' Luck: Biltmore Oswald Very Much at Sea (1919)
Haunts and Bypaths (1919) A book of poetry.
Topper (1926). (Copyright renewed, 1953) This and its 1932 sequel, Topper Takes a Trip were probably Smith's most famous work, about a respectable banker called Cosmo Topper and his misadventures with a couple of ghosts, Marion and George Kerby. It was made into a film, Topper, for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by Hal Roach in 1937 starring Roland Young and Billie Burke; the cast included Cary Grant as George Kerby and Constance Bennett as Marion Kerby. Two filmed sequels followed: Topper Takes a Trip in 1939 and Topper Returns in 1941. The books were adapted into an American television series, Topper, beginning in 1953, with Leo G. Carroll as Cosmo Topper, Robert Sterling and Anne Jeffreys as the ghosts. Seventy-eight episodes were made: the pilot episode and a few of the early episodes were written by Stephen Sondheim.
Dream's End (1927) (Copyright renewed 1955) A serious novel that was not a success.
The Stray Lamb (1929) Mild-mannered investment banker, cuckold, and dipsomaniac T. Lawrence Lamb gains perspective on the human condition during a series of mysterious transformations into various animal forms. Lamb, his daughter Hebe, her boyfriend Melville Long, and Hebe's friend Sandra Rush (a twentyish lingerie model who becomes Lamb's love interest) pursue many adventures, most of which fall well outside the perimeter of law and order. As in many Thorne Smith novels, a courtroom scene involving the protagonists and an exasperated judge provides a climax to the characteristically tipsy action. This novel is included with Turnabout and Rain in the Doorway in The Thorne Smith 3-Decker (Sun Dial Press, 1933).
Did She Fall? (1930) A mystery novel admired by Dashiell Hammett.
The Night Life of the Gods (1931). Quirky inventor Hunter Hawk strikes gold when he invents a device that will enable him to turn living matter into stone and to reverse the process at will. After a chaotic field test he meets stunning 900 year old Megaera who teaches him to turn stone into flesh. The two and a bunch of friends set their sights on New York City to bring the Greek gods of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to life.
Turnabout (1931) Thorne Smith pits two thoroughly modern married people in a classic battle of the sexes. After listening to the nearly endless bickering and childish jealousy of a young man and wife (Tim and Sally Willows), an ancient Egyptian idol decides to play a trick on the two by causing them to switch bodies. After the wife impregnates her husband, things take a decided turn for the worse as they separately try to deal with the object of the former wife's affections — a deplorably predictable square jawed philanderer by the name of Carl Bently. The scene in which Tim, trapped in his wife's body, exacts an icy revenge on the unfortunate interloper is one of the unforgettable moments of Thorne Smith's peculiar humor.
Both a film (1940) and a short lived 1979 television sitcom starring Sharon Gless and John Schuck (cancelled after six episodes) were based on Turnabout[1]. So was the last broadcast episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, 'Turnabout Intruder'.[2] This novel is included with The Stray Lamb and Rain in the Doorway in The Thorne Smith 3-Decker.
The Bishop's Jaegers (1932). Depressed and indifferent heir of a vast coffee import fortune, Peter Van Dyke finds his life and high society engagement turn upside down when his secretary, Josephine Duval determines that she will rescue him from his horrible fate by ruining him morally. After an amusing scandal involving a nude Peter Van Dyke, Miss Duval and an ill starred burglar in a coat closet, he finds himself cast adrift in a fog with a motley crew that includes a Bishop Waller of the Episcopal Church and a former nude model named Aspirin Liz. The enterprising party lands unceremoniously on the shores of one of New York's sauciest nudist colonies, and thus is the liberation of the coffee importer set in motion. One of Smith's few comic novels in which no element of the supernatural is featured.
Rain in the Doorway (1933) Yet another cuckold husband, Hector Owen, inadvertently becomes a partner in a big-city department store. The bulk of the action involves the highly inebriated adventures of Owen, his three partners (Mr. Horace Larkin, a man called Dinner, and Major Barney Britt-Britt), and a salesgirl from the pornographic books department, Miss Honor "Satin" Knightly. Of the three novels included in The Thorne Smith 3-Decker (see The Stray Lamb and Turnabout above) this is the most openly erotic, with many direct suggestions of sexual encounters and cartoons of nude young women cavorting with the protagonists, drawn by artist Herbert Roese. The Thorne Smith signature courtroom scene provides a climax, but the novel's biggest surprise isn't sprung until the final pages.
Skin and Bones (1933) A photographer's freak accident in the dark room produces a chemical concoction causing him (and his dog) to randomly switch back and forth between normal and X-ray (skeleton) versions of themselves. Predictably, much drinking and cavorting ensues, as he finds people able to see beyond his appearance and appreciate him for who he is, while inadvertently terrifying those who can not.
The Glorious Pool (1934) Perhaps the best example of Thorne Smith's acutely sharp social humor played out against a backdrop of the Volstead Act (Prohibition). Two unrepentant old reprobates are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the seduction which made the stylish old man named Rex Pebble into an adulterer and his companion, Spray Summers into his hard boiled mistress. While their exasperating and highly alcoholic Japanese houseboy, Nokashima, plays ju jitsu with the English language, the two slip into a swimming pool whose waters have been changed into a fountain of youth. Abandoning their clothes and modesty with their advanced years, the newfound youthfulness of their bodies puts into motion an evening of hijinks that only a seasoned and well practiced old couple of sinners could manage to imagine.
The Passionate Witch (1941) (published posthumously and largely the work of Norman H. Matson), produced in 1942 as the movie I Married a Witch, one of the inspirations along with Bell, Book and Candle for the long-running TV series Bewitched. A sequel to the novel, Bats In The Belfry (1942), is entirely by Matson though sometimes attributed to Smith.
Joseph Leo Blotner, Thorne Smith: A Study in Popular Fiction (1951 dissertation, 197 pages with bibliography and appendices)
Howard Steven Jitomer, Forgotten Excellence: A Study of Thorne Smith's Humor (1983 dissertation, 224 pages with bibliography)
Peter Zilahy Ingerman, The World in Thorne Smith (1991 dissertation, 323 pages including appendices)
These dissertations are all available from ProQuest (formerly University Microfilms) at 1-800-521-0600 Ext 7044.
Bibliographies and checklists
Haas, Irvin, comp. "[James] Thorne Smith [Jr.] 1893-1934." (American First Editions. Edited by Jacob Blanck.) The Publishers’ Weekly, 130 (28 November 1936): 2134.
Valone, Philip J., Jr. A Thorne Smith Source Book. N.p.: The author, 1982.
Bleiler, E. F. The Guide to Supernatural Fiction. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, [1983], pp. 464-66.
Scheetz, George H., and Rodney N. Henshaw. "Thorne Smith." Bulletin of Bibliography, 41, no. 1 (March 1984): 25-37. Illustrated.
[Ahearn, Patricia, and Allen Ahearn.] "Thorne Smith." Author Price Guide, No. [069], June 1986. 3 pp. Published by Quill & Brush; P. O. Box 5365; Rockville, Md. [Based on Scheetz, q.v.; credited.]
[Smiley, Kathryn]. "A Thorne Smith Checklist." Firsts: Collecting Modern First Editions, 3, no. 4 (April 1993): 19. Illustrated.
