Pullman Porter Octavus Roy Cohen

Clemson University TigerPrints Regional & Local Clemson University Digital Press 2012 Epic Peters: Pullman Porter Octavus Roy Cohen Follow this and additional works at: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cudp_regional Recommended Citation Epic Peters: Pullman Porter, by Octavus Roy Cohen, with Introduction by Alan Grubb and H. Roger Grant (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Digital Press, 2013), xiv+136 pp. Paper. ISBN 978-0-9835339-4-8 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Clemson University Digital Press at TigerPrints. It has been accepted for inclusion in Regional & Local by an authorized administrator of TigerPrints. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Epic Peters: Pullman Porter by Octavus Roy Cohen Epic Peters: Pullman Porter by Octavus Roy Cohen Introduction by Alan Grubb and H. Roger Grant CLEMSON UNIVERSITY DIGITAL PRESS Works produced at Clemson University by the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, including The South Carolina Review and its themed series “Virginia Woolf International,” “Ireland in the Arts and Humanities,” and “James Dickey Revisited” may be found at our Web site: http://www.clemson.edu/cedp. Contact the director at 864-656-5399 for information. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright-holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. Copyright 2012 by Clemson University ISBN: 978-0-9835339-4-8 CLEMSON UNIVERSITY DIGITAL PRESS Published by Clemson University Digital Press at the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. Produced with the Adobe Creative Suite CS5.5 and Microsoft Word. This book is set in Adobe Garamond Pro and was printed by Standard Register. Editorial Assistants: Whitney Rauenhorst, David Rodatz and Dustin Pearson. To order copies, contact the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, Strode Tower, Box 340522, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0522. An order form is available at the digital press Web site. iv Contents Introduction I. Octavus Roy Cohen by Alan Grubb ................................................ vi II. The Pullman Porterby H. Roger Grant .......................................viii III. A Note on the Text and Acknowledgments .................................. x IV. For Further Reading .................................................................... x The Berth of Hope .....................................................................................1 Ride ’Em and Weep. ................................................................................ 20 Traveling Suspenses ................................................................................. 35 The Epic Cure ......................................................................................... 53 The Porter Missing Men .......................................................................... 65 The Trained Flee ..................................................................................... 79 A Toot for a Toot ..................................................................................... 95 Bearly Possible .......................................................................................107 v Introduction I. Octavus Roy Cohen by Alan Grubb hen Octavus Roy Cohen died in Los Angeles in January 1959, the New York Times noted that he had been an immensely popular and successful writer, a kind of “writer’s writer,” producing works in sev- Weral genres from the early 1920s to the time of his death. While best known for his humorous stories about blacks in Birmingham, Alabama, the so-called “Darktown Stories” that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in the 1920s and early 1930s, Cohen wrote 56 books, ranging from murder mysteries to detective stories to “race” or dialect stories, several novels set in the South, and, finally, “pulp” murder mysteries (more famous perhaps, and certainly more valuable to collectors today, for their sexy, provocative covers than his clever plots and hard- boiled prose). Along the way, he also wrote scripts for the Amos and Andy radio series, two plays, 30 movie scripts for Paramount Pictures, Columbia, Universal, and RKO-Pathe, including screen adaptations of some of his Birmingham stories, the latter noteworthy as some of the earliest films starring and about blacks and directed by blacks. Some of his stories were also adapted for television. In the early 1930s, Cohen reportedly made over $100,000 a year, largely from the stories he sold to popular magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and Lib- erty. Yet, despite his popularity as a writer, after his death Cohen was largely and quickly forgotten. The reason is not hard to fathom. For, since much (but not all) of his fame stemmed from his “humorous” dialect stories about Southern blacks, with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, his literary reputation became in- supportable, a kind of embarrassment. Even his alma mater, Clemson University, has neglected him, along with his native state, although Alabama inducted him in 1925 into its Hall of Fame, along with Helen Keller, and he has often been cited, and praised, by groups interested in detective fiction and popular culture. Octavus Roy Cohen (June 26, 1891–January 6, 1959) was born in Charles- ton, South Carolina, the son of Octavus Cohen, a lawyer and newspaper editor, and Rebecca Ottolengui. The Cohens were an old and distinguished Jewish fam- ily, very much a part of Charleston’s literary society. Octavus graduated from Por- ter Military Academy in Charleston in 1908 and, so it is recorded in most of the standard biographies, from Clemson College in 1911. The latter claim may have been one of his early fictions or simply a mistake, for, in fact, he left college with- out a degree, which he only received in a special ceremony in 1937, after he had vi established his literary reputation. Kicked out of college, he worked as a civil engi- neer for the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company in Birmingham (1909- 1910), but his real interests were not in engineering, as he had already shown in his brief days as a student, but in writing. He soon turned to journalism, working during the next two years for the Birmingham (AL) Ledger, the Charleston (SC) News and Courier, the Bayonne (NJ) Times, and the Newark (NJ) Morning Star. In 1913, he returned to Charleston and read law in his father’s office and was ad- mitted to the South Carolina bar and briefly practiced law. On October 6, 1914, he married Inez Lopez of Bessemer, Alabama. She shared his literary interests, and he published a novel and a compilation of “humorous” malapropisms, compiled from black newspapers. Cohen’s real calling was obviously writing, not engineering or the law, and suc- cess came quickly. He sold his first story to the Blue Book for $25 in 1913, and soon his short story sales, as he later recalled, came with greater frequency than clients, and he was regularly publishing in the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, Argosy, Tell- ing Stories, The All Stories Magazine, Black Cat, McCalls, and Munsey’s. His earliest efforts focused on mystery writing, with stories appearing in Mystery Magazine, Il- lustrated Detective Magazine and similar short story pulp magazines. Much of his book-length fiction grew out of these short stories, and one of his most interesting books is Cameos (1931), a collection of short, short stories. His first mystery novel was The Other Woman (1917), which he co-authored with another successful magazine writer, John Ulrich Giesey. Thereupon followed mystery novels each featuring, as was typical of the genre, a distinctive detective—the boyish David Carroll in The Crimson Alibi (1919), Gray Dusk (1920), Six Seconds of Darkness (1921), and Mid- night (1922); the outrageously obese Jim Hanvey, whose size and self-deprecatory manner, along with his trademark gold toothpick, served as a foil for his detection skill and humanity in Jim Hanvey, Detective (1923), The May Day Mystery (1929), The Backstage Mystery (1932), The Townsend Murder Mystery (1933), and Scrambled Yeggs (1934); and later, in novels that capture well the period during and after World War II, down-to-earth police detectives Max Gold and Marty Walsh. These stories collectively show how adept Cohen was at incorporating into his plots exotic locales and activities, like nightclubs, gambling, sports and the world of popular entertain- ment of Broadway, radio, and motion pictures; they also reflect his Southern back- ground, his travels, and the various places he lived. Cohen’s most successful literary creations and the cause of his celebrity and enormous popularity—Will Rogers himself praised his comic characters—were his “Darktown” or Birmingham stories, his series of “race” stories of the comical lives of Florian Slappey (the “Beau Brummel of Bummin’ham”), Lawyer Evans Chew, Sis Callie Flukers, and Epic Peters, the philosophical Pullman porter and Slappey’s friend, and the denizens of the social club, “The Sons and Daughters of ‘I Will Arise.’” These stories, besides being entertaining and detailing Cohen’s vii perception of Birmingham’s black community, were famous for their punning titles (“All’s Well that Ends Swell,” “The Survival of the Fattest,” “Here Comes the Bribe,” and “Hoodoo and Who Don’t”). In writing these stories Cohen drew upon his Southern childhood and familiarity with Birmingham. Though early on some criticized him for his heavily dialect

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