John Bell Clayton and Martha Clayton
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John Bell Clayton (c. 1907-1955) was an American writer who won an O. Henry Short Story Award in 1947. His wife, Martha Carmichael Clayton (c. 1915-1961), oversaw the posthumous publication of her husband's works; she was a sister of songwriter Hoagy Carmichael.
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[edit] John Bell Clayton
John Clayton was brought up in Virginia. In 1938, he had a film credit as the writer on a comedy, The Old Raid Mule. [1]
In the 1940s he ran a lending library in San Francisco and was employed from time to time as a temporary editor on the San Francisco Examiner.
In 1947 he won the O. Henry Short Story Award for The White Circle, originally in Harpers magazine. Ten years later, the story was made into a teleplay for the television series Rendezvous. [2]
His novels, published by Macmillan, were Six Angels at My Back (1952), Wait, Son, October Is Near and Walk Toward the Rainbow (1954).
The reviews were mixed. Of Rainbow, Caroline Tunstall of the New York Herald Tribune Book Review wrote, "John Bell Clayton has a gift for description that recaptures the Virginia countryside of his youth . . . It is a pity that the substance of his novel is so hackneyed."
According to his good friend, Charles Harris (Brick) Garrigues, quoted in He Usually Lived With a Female, below, the Claytons moved from San Francisco to Laguna Beach, where, on Feb. 10, 1955, John Clayton died of a viral infection. John had told his wife when he went into the hospital, "Marthie, if the next ten years are going to be like the last one, I don't think I want to come back." (Pages 428–430.)
[edit] Martha Carmichael Clayton
Martha Clayton was born as Martha Carmichael in Indiana. Her father was Howard, nicknamed "Cyclone," who owned a livery and was an electrician. Her mother, Lida Mary, was a pianist in local movie and vaudeville houses. Besides her brother, Hoagland, Martha had two other siblings — Joanne, who died in childhood, and Georgia. (Dick Bishop, in the September/October 1999 issue of Indiana Alumni Magazine.)
In 1957, she oversaw the publication of her husband's posthumous book of short stories, Strangers Were There. The deal was placed with Macmillan by the Claytons' agent, Toni Strassman.
Of the book, Richard Sullivan wrote in the Chicago Sunday Tribune that John Clayton was "a writer of high, bright excellence."
Martha's body was found on August 6, 1961, by her sister, Georgia, in the Beverly Hills house that their brother had bought for them. Alcohol and a sleeping pill were blamed for her death. Hoagy recalled in his autobiography, Sometimes I Wonder (Farrar, Straus, 1965), that after John Clayton's death Martha "gathered up his papers and manuscript and made another book for him, and then one night while still young and healthy, she quietly let go."
[edit] Their son
The Claytons had one son, also named John Bell Clayton, who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1955.
[edit] References
- He Usually Lived With a Female: The Life of a California Newspaperman (2006) by George Garrigues. Quail Creek Press. ISBN 0-9634830-1-3
- Sometimes I Wonder by Hoagy Carmichael, with Steven Longstreet (Farrar, Straus, 1965)
