Fiction House’s John W. Glenister

Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: fiction home, golden age

The Fiction House story cannot be informed with out distribution pioneer, anti-Prohibition activist, and champion swimmer John W. Glenister.

Fiction House founder John W. Glenister was a person who embodied the notion of residing life to the fullest.  During a 1922 journey to the UK, he was filmed for a newsreel quick titled Man Who Vows to Kill the ‘Kill-Joys’ wherein he forcefully went off towards the unwanted side effects of what he termed “crime-breeding prohibition”, which had been enacted within the United States two years prior. “Fanatics in America are manufacturing Bolshevism, smuggling, and druggism wholesale,” Glenister declared. “The working man’s beer has gone! And they are trying to stop his tobacco!  Now they want to kill the movies –and every other joy.”

Glenister would develop into a noteworthy anti-Prohibition activist throughout this era, whereas additionally taking significantly the specter of movie trade censorship that was creating right now as effectively.  And this was after he had develop into a significant pressure within the improvement of the Independent Distribution system within the United States, a revered journal govt, and a nationally well-known athlete.  While John W. Glenister died on the age of 63 on October 14, 1937 — lower than a yr earlier than the fiction journal publishing firm he based with John B. Kelly entered the comedian e-book enterprise — his larger-than-life sensibilities would stay completely embedded in Fiction House for that firm’s lifespan.  The Fiction House story cannot be informed with out discussing the early profession of John W. Glenister.  Heritage Auctions just lately opened a brand new Fiction House Showcase Auction, and we’ll be taking a deep dive into the comics of Fiction House and the individuals who made them over the following few weeks till the public sale closes on October 19.

Born January 11, 1874, in New York City, John W. Glenister emerged as a public determine in America lengthy earlier than turning into an outspoken publishing trade govt.  In the late Nineties, he started to participate in swimming exhibitions and competitions within the Northeastern U.S. that garnered him media recognition. In 1899 got here an early glimpse at his entrepreneurial leanings, as he lent his more and more well-known identify in direction of organising an exhibition for one more swimmer in Rhode Island.  He then turned briefly to vaudeville in 1899-1900, seemingly with little success.  He sought monetary backers for a play in Chicago, and apparently additionally tried to make use of his identify to type a vaudeville expertise company there, earlier than returning to New York City in October 1900 to be a part of the warm-up act for the play Reaping the Whirlwind.

With his vaudeville profession gaining little traction, Glenister quickly returned to swimming exhibitions with an exceedingly harmful stunt which he used to extend his profile.  On August 18, 1903, he grew to become the one man to ever swim the whirlpool rapids under Niagara Falls.  This extremely treacherous feat had claimed the lifetime of one other man in a earlier try, Captain Matthew Webb, in 1883.  When Glenister was requested about his causes for risking his life at Niagara Falls, his reply was easy and direct, “You ask why I do this? I will be truthful. I will do it for money. I expect to go on the stage and on exhibition, telling of my experiences while going through the rapids.”

The Niagara Falls stunt appears to have garnered Glenister the notoriety that he needed.  Within a yr, he was on the middle of an infinite movie star endorsement marketing campaign for a “healthful” spring tonic.  Bernarr MacFadden‘s pioneering well being and health journal Physical Culture named Glenister as being within the operating for the highest prize of their Great Physical Culture Exhibition competitors being placed on to search out “the most perfectly developed man and the most perfectly developed woman” that yr.  In 1905, Glenister was even name-checked by that different pillar of sporting notoriety, the Police Gazette, for difficult a rival swimmer to a contest.

Glenister’s swimming exploits and the Niagara Falls whirlpool rapids swim specifically would certainly be a memorable a part of his bio blurb each time he was written about (which was typically) for the remainder of his life, however it might be one other improvement round this time that may carry him by way of to the following stage of his profession.  As identified in a number of accounts of the Niagara Falls occasion, Glenister was additionally a newspaper author on the New York Telegraph at the moment and would work for various newspapers in varied capacities over the next few years.

By 1908, John W. Glenister had moved onto the journal area, penning what’s in sports activities circles thought-about a traditionally necessary article for Baseball Magazine Volume 1 #2 that yr titled Who Wrote Casey on the Bat?  That yr was the twentieth anniversary of the preliminary publication of  Casey on the Bat, and a few controversy had arisen concerning the authorship of that legendary poem.  Glenister’s article is referenced in books as regards to the poem to this present day, and the precise creator of Casey on the Bat, Ernest Lawrence Thayer, informed Glenister, “Some years ago the supporters of a man named Valentine had a long and very circumstantial account about when and where he wrote the verses, in a Los Angeles paper. Valentine was dead at the time, but the story of his career interested me so much that I employed a Pinkerton detective to look at the matter. It is simply impossible to stop this kind of thievery, but I would cheerfully give up a little money for the pleasure of scorching one of the thieves. I started on the trail of two other claimants, only to find that they had found refuge in the grave. If I can get hold of a live one, who is a person of any consideration, I should like to make the beggar ashamed of himself.”

But it was his transfer to Good Housekeeping Magazine later that yr that was to place his identify on the map in publishing and distribution circles.  Glenister shortly made noteworthy strikes as circulation supervisor of the publication, and by the top of 1909, trade commerce journal Editor and Publisher famous, “Three stars are twinkling merrily somewhere in the West. They are John W. Glenister, circulation manager of Good Housekeeping Magazine; J.B. Kelly of American Magazine, and Tom Martin, circulation manager of McClure’s Magazine. They are all busy for their respective publications.”

Of course, J.B. Kelly of American Magazine can be John B. Kelly, the person who would develop into Glenister’s editor and associate at Fiction House some twelve years later.  In the meantime, after stints at Good Housekeeping Magazine, Pictorial Review, and Every Week, Glenister had develop into such {a magazine} trade circulation star that when he joined E.F. Warner‘s The Warner Publications in 1916 (no relation to Warner Bros), the corporate took out a full web page advert in trade commerce journal Printer’s Ink touting his arrival.  The firm was the writer of magazines together with The Smart Set, Saucy Stories, and The Parisienne.

Warner Publications wasted no time in making dramatic adjustments to its distribution practices beneath Glenister’s steering.  According to Fourth Estate: A Weekly Newspaper for Publishers, in early 1918, “The Warner Company has made all its publications non-returnable through the American News Company, its former exclusive distributor, and is now supplying 600 wholesale dealers and 2000 retailers direct. This new system of distribution requires a much larger force, and it will be under the personal direction of Mr. Glenister, who for the past year has been the circulation manager.”

While the non-returnable side of this transfer was quickly triggered by inefficiency within the altering American distribution panorama, this “new system of distribution” can be a prelude to Glenister’s position in serving to form the way forward for newsstand distribution within the United States.  According to an S-M New Company inside historical past, to deal with shortcomings of the Independent Distribution system exterior the American News Company monolith, “In May 1919, John W. Glenister of Warner Publications, Guy Harrington of Brewster Publications, and Bert Mackinnon of Pictorial Review arranged a meeting of all prominent independent distributors and all independent publishers. This meeting was held at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. Almost 300 wholesalers as well as the publishers’ executives and representatives attended. Definite recommendations for the improvement of the structure of the industry were made by the then “shining lights” in Independent Distribution.  This meeting was extremely important, because it marked the beginning of the close cooperation within the industry that is so evident today.”

The construction, requirements, and cooperation among the many firms of the periodical publishing, distribution, and newsstand industries that Glenister helped to spark in early conferences reminiscent of this from 1919-1921 would encourage the next improvement of Independent Distribution firms like Eastern Distribution Corporation and Kable News Company. Such impartial distributors would show necessary to the pulp and comics trade and the individuals concerned.  Glenister himself helped set up the British News Company which had a deal with publishing British editions of U.S. publications, and in 1921 launched The Glenister Service, an apparently short-lived distribution-related firm about which little is thought.

Finally, on April 15, 1921, Glenister included Fiction House together with two different males, E. Adams and Maxwell L. Crames. Crames was an legal professional and a financier in all kinds of industries and related to the legislation agency Lind & Pfeiffer, which later grew to become Lind, Pfeiffer & Crames. It seems that Crames was concerned within the founding and financing of firms in a spread of enterprise classes reminiscent of heavy manufacturing, constructing supplies, film theaters, and style within the early Nineteen Twenties.

While John B. Kelly’s identify is notably absent from that authentic incorporation, he was out in entrance as editor of the corporate when Fiction House introduced the launch of their first publication, Action Stories, which had targetted an August 1, 1921 launch.  While varied readings of the Fiction House historical past have Glenister retiring someplace between 1927 and 1930, it’s doubtless that he had extra of a big-picture focus from the start, leaving a lot of the day-to-day operations of the corporate to Kelly.  Weeks after incorporating the corporate and with its debut publication set to launch 4 months later, Glenister was concerned in an effort to defend the movie trade towards censorship in New York state, because the Lusk-Clayton Motion Picture Censorship Bill would set up the New York State Department of Motion Picture Censorship that yr, and different states had been trying to enact related legal guidelines.  With his fledgling publishing firm simply months outdated in early 1922, he would spend 5 months within the UK, weighing in on the difficulty of Prohibition whereas additionally advising Sidney Cohen, president of the Motion Picture Theater Owners of America within the continued battle towards state-level movie censorship points.  Based on public notices he spent appreciable effort organizing and publicizing “The People’s Voice League” towards Prohibition all through the remainder of 1922 and into early 1923.

John F. Byrne was elevated from the workers to managing editor of Fiction House in 1929.  Byrne would in the end play a key position within the writer’s comics period starting a decade later.  Glenister’s son-in-law, Thurman T. Scott, started to be listed in Fiction House publications as company secretary in 1932 and spoke on behalf of the corporate across the time of John B. Kelly’s demise that yr.  Glenister himself would go in 1937.

While Thurman T. Scott amongst others would usher Fiction House into the comedian e-book period starting with Jumbo Comics in 1938, it is clear that John W. Glenister’s life and background set the trajectory for the publishing firm he based from the start.  Examples of the comedian e-book legacy of the corporate that Glenister based are up for public sale within the 2023 October 19 The Fiction House Comics & Comic Art Showcase Auction #40235 at Heritage Auctions. New to accumulating Fiction House or need to study extra?  Bleeding Cool is doing an ongoing deep dive into the historical past behind Fiction House within the run-up to this public sale. If you have by no means bid at Heritage Auctions earlier than, you will get additional data, you’ll be able to try their FAQ on the bidding course of and associated issues.

Affiliates of Bleeding Cool purchase from and/or consign to Heritage Auctions.

Stay up-to-date and assist the positioning by following Bleeding Cool on Google News right now!