Frank Merriwell

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Frank Merriwell was the fictional creation of Burt L. Standish (real name: Gilbert Patten).

Called the model for all later American juvenile sports fiction, he plays football, baseball, crew, and track at Yale while solving mysteries and righting wrongs[1]. He plays with superhuman strength and receives traumatic blows without injury.[2] He is indeed, frank, merry, and full of vitality ("well"). His classmates are aware that:

He never drinks. That's how he keeps himself in such fine condition all the time. He will not smoke, either, and he takes his exercise regularly. He is really a remarkable freshie. [3].

A biographical entry on Patten noted dryly that Frank Merriwell "had little in common with his creator or his readers."

Merriwell originally appeared in a series of magazine stories starting April 18, 1896 ("Frank Merriwell: or, First Days at Fardale") in Tip Top Weekly, continuing through 1912, and later in dime novels and comic books.

[edit] Radio

He was also featured in the radio program The Adventures of Frank Merriwell, which ran on NBC radio from 1946 through 1949, starring Lawson Zerbe as Frank Merriwell, Jean Gillespie and Elaine Rostas as Inza Burrage, Harold Studer as Bart Hodge and Patricia Hosley as Elsie Belwood. The announcer was Harlow Wilcox, and the Paul Taubman Orchestra supplied the background music. ^[1]

There are at least three generations of Merriwells: Frank, his half-brother Dick, and Frank's son, Frank Jr. There is a marked difference between Frank and Dick. Frank usually handled challenges on his own. Dick has mysterious friends and skills that help him, especially an old Indian friend without whom the stories would not have been quite as interesting.

Burt L. Standish would confine himself to a hotel room for a week to write an entire story.