Paul Mooney (writer)

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Paul Mooney (1904-1939) was a freelance journalist and photo-journalist today best known for his collaborative work with famed traveler and travel writer Richard Halliburton. Born in Washington, D. C., on November 4, 1904, Mooney was the son of Ione Lee Gaut Mooney (died 1955), an important figure in the Daughters of the American Revolution, and James Mooney, an ethnologist for the Smithsonian Institute and a renowned expert on American Indian lore.

[edit] Biography

Mooney, a natural writer, set forth on a life of adventure by boarding a freighter bound for Salonika and Constantinople in 1923 or 1924 where it is likely he witnessed the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman sultanate and emergence of Kemal Mustafa Ataturk as the leader of the new Turkish Republic. Returning to the United States, he considered school at Catholic University before seeking his fortune in New York City where he wrote advertising copy for a travel agency. In 1927, perhaps as a freelance news reporter, and, following Charles Lindbergh's historic flight across the Atlantic, he settled briefly in Paris, and then in a community in Brittany.

Attractive, fun-loving and personally engaging, Mooney, though aloof by nature and often temperamental, made friends easily; these included, besides the artists Leslie Powell and Don Forbes, writer and raconteur Eugene MacCown (who, besides a famous portrait of shipping heiress Nancy Cunard, painted a portrait of Paul), once the pianist at the Boeuf sur la Toit, and possibly writer Rene Crevel. Like his father an ardent Irish patriot, he sought out writer James Joyce and others of the ex-patriot Irish community living in Paris. Returning to the United States, and New York, he published in 1927 Seven Poems, verses which, according to his biographer Gerry Max, "speak of adventure, unrequited love, triumphant love, carnal love, death and burial."

About 1929, Mooney established himself in the Los Angeles area. Soon to become a fixture among the new wave of aviation promoters and fliers, he mingled with oilman Erle Halliburton, actor Ramon Novarro, aviator Moye W. Stephens, and aviatrix Florence "Pancho" Barnes. Also befriending him was later gay activist Harry Hay with whom he argued politics and human rights issues.

About 1930, Mooney met famed travel writer Richard Halliburton (1900-1939), author of the best-selling The Royal Road to Romance (1925), The Glorious Adventure (1927) and New Worlds To Conquer (1929). The two developed a partnership, and Mooney, as Halliburton's secretary (the last in a line of several) assisted Halliburton, often away on travel or on the lucrative lecture circuit, in the preparation of such later books as The Flying Carpet (1932) and Seven League Boots (1935) - these among the last great travel books (or road narratives) of the classic travel book era. He also assisted in the two Books of Marvels which were aimed at young adult audiences. Independently Mooney assisted ex-Nazi Kurt Ludecke in writing the 833-page I Knew Hitler (1937), an early study of the Fuehrer and "a masterpiece of political self-vindication."

In 1937, Mooney, who would manage the construction of Halliburton's house in Laguna Beach, California, suggested to him that for the job he contract William Alexander (then Alexander Levy), a recent graduate of the NYU School of Architecture. The result was Hangover House, built of concrete and steel, and including such features as a dumb waiter, heatilator, and bastion-like retaining wall. Today architectural historians consider it among the early masterpieces of modern residential housing design in Southern California. In 1938 Mooney, as his journalist and mimeograph operator, accompanied Halliburton to China on Halliburton's final expedition, which was to tell the story of how to sail a junk, the Sea Dragon, across the Pacific from Hong Kong to the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. Written with Halliburton (who alone signed them) and sent to subscribers who helped finance the Sea Dragon Expedition, the Bell Syndicate Letters, of which four of a projected seven exist, offer eye-witness reports of the expanding Japanese presence in the Pacific.

The Sea Dragon sailed eastward in early 1939. Nine hundred miles southeast of Yokohama, on March 23, 1939, the ship headed into a typhoon. Neither the ship nor its crew was ever seen again.

[edit] Further reading

• Cortese, James. Richard Halliburton's Royal Road. Memphis: White Rose Press, 1989.
• Max, Gerry. Horizon Chasers: The Lives and Adventures of Richard Halliburton and Paul Mooney. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., April 2007
• Mooney, Paul, Seven Poems (Ramapo River Printers), 1927, in Appendix A, in Gerry Max, Horizon Chasers (above)
• Root, Jonathan. Richard Halliburton--The Magnificent Myth. New York: Coward-McCann, 1965
• Wikipedia, under William Alexander Levy (1909-1997)