Thurman Thomas Scott was born August 28, 1903 in Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina. His father, John Hauser Scott was born in 1859 in NC. His mother, Delia Estelle Hinkle, was born in 1872 in NC. His parents were married in 1898 and had six children, Hortus (b.1899), Geno (b.1901), Thurman (b.1903), Elizabeth (b.1908), Oliver (b.1909), and John Jr. (b.1914). The family lived at 614 Highland Avenue in Winston-Salem, NC. The father was a Grocery Merchant.
According to Thurman T. Scott, "I was born and raised in Winston-Salem, back when children weren't seen or heard much in the house and schooling was a comparatively simple process done mostly during school hours. There was room for one-o-cat, Cowboys and Indians, free-for-all football. Hunting was a popular pastime and people in town kept bird dogs and hounds. I loved meandering through the nearby fields."
In 1918 during the Great War Thurman T. Scott was a fourteen-year-old student, who was too young for military service.
According to Thurman T. Scott, "I worked off and on at just about every kind of job, but my preference was the morning newspaper. There, I could work before school and have the afternoons and Saturdays free. I got up at three-thirty every morning for so many of those busy wonderful years that I still can't sleep till daylight to save me."
In 1921 at the age of seventeen he graduated high school in Winston-Salem and entered the work force as a clerk at the Atlanta & West Point Railroad in Georgia.
By 1922 he was Chief Clerk at the A.S. Kennickell Company, a manufacturer of steam engines and oil burners.
In 1924 he went into partnership to form the Scott-Newman Oil Burner Company of Winston-Salem.
In 1926 the Scott-Newman Oil Burner Company was purchased by a larger rival, the Automatic Appliance Corporation, of which Thurman T. Scott became Vice-President as well as Corporate Secretary. He was assigned to their New York office, so he moved to 4 Maple Street in North Hempstead, NY, a suburb just beyond Queens on Long Island.
On December 16, 1928 Thurman T. Scott married Jacqueline Emila Glenister. She was born October 18, 1907 in Winthrop, Massachusetts, and lived on Long Island as a débutante socialite. Her famous father, John W. "Jack" Glenister, had founded Fiction House six years earlier with partner John B. "Jack" Kelly. During the roaring twenties they produced pulp magazines, such as Action Stories, Air Stories, Lariat Stories, Detective Classics, The Frontier, True Adventures, Wings, and Fight Stories. A newspaper article from that time period claimed Action Stories sold 150,000 copies every month.
In 1929 the father of Thurman T. Scott, John Hauser Scott, died at the age of seventy in North Carolina.
On December 03, 1929 local Long Island Newspapers reported an award was given to Thurman T. Scott for excellence in salesmanship of oil burners.
Six months later, in June of 1930 John W. Glenister began to suffer from ill health, so he handed over the management of Fiction House to his Son-In-Law, Thurman T. Scott, and then retired from publishing and moved to Santa Monica, California, to live near the family of his oldest daughter, Alice Rosheen Glenister, who married to become Mrs. B. L. Lavender.
On April 26, 1930 The New York Evening Post reported that Jack Glenister and his publishing partner Jack Kelly were traveling on an expedition to Ireland to discover the next great heavy-weight championship boxer. The article was written by Jack Kofoed (1894-1979), a celebrated sports journalist, whose pulp fiction stories were regularly published in Fiction House magazines, such as Fight Stories, of which his twin brother, William Kofoed (1894-1976), was editor.
In January of 1932 J. B. "Jack" Kelly traveled to Santa Monica, CA, to visit John W. Glenister and several local authors that were published by Fiction House. On February 9, 1932 The Los Angeles Times published an article on him.
Two months later on April 4, 1932 J. B. "Jack" Kelly died at the age of forty-five, while still on his visit to Santa Monica.
On December 28, 1932, at the lowest point in the Great Depression, Fiction House abruptly stopped production on all publications. Newspaper articles quoted assurances from Thurman T. Scott that production would resume when conditions improved. He objected to writers' agents demanding higher rates, as well as cheaper publishers flooding the magazine market.
Despite these petty grievances, the actual reason for the stoppage was a lawsuit by Jack Kelly's widow, Laura A. Kelly, who preferred to withdraw her inherited fortune from partnership with Fiction House. Her attorney demanded the liquidation of the company in order to pay her one half of its market value. While the court decided the matter, Fiction House was ordered to stop spending her money on production. After a lengthy appeal the court permitted the company to resume printing in order to retain their titles and mailing privileges, but they were only permitted to produce magazines on a quarterly schedule, in order to keep costs to a minimum until a settlement was finally reached two years later.
After a one-year hiatus, publication of Fiction House magazines gradually resumed after January of 1934.
By 1935 Thurman T. Scott and his wife lived on Long Island at 55 Abbey Road in Munsey Park, Manhasset, NY.
Fiction House went on to revive their best sellers as well as to introduce new pulp magazines, such as North West Romances, Detective Book, Jungle Stories, Two Complete Science Adventure Books, and Planet Stories. They later published a successful line of comic books, some of which were based on their pulp magazines, such as Planet Comics, Wings Comics and Jungle Comics. In several instances their comic book covers used cartoon versions of previously published pulp magazines.
On October 14, 1937 John W. Glenister died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, CA, at the age of sixty-three.
In 1938 Fiction House started a line of comic books, which soon grew to include Jumbo Comics, Fight Comics, Jungle Comics, Planet Comics, Rangers Comics, and Wings Comics.
In 1940 Thurman T. Scott suffered a collapse. His doctors prescribed semi-retirement, so he and his wife left NYC and moved to their vacation home, a plantation in Thomasville, Georgia.
According to Thurman T. Scott, "I landed in the magazine publishing business, which I found so fascinating and stimulating that in time my heart started kicking up. I was lucky, for I had to get completely away. South Georgia is another world where pine trees thrive and wild game abounds. I farm too, and do my writing nights and in the pre-dawn mornings. Here there is a whole lot of country life to be lived."
After his departure, Jack Byrne and Malcolm Reiss shared the duties of General Manager and Editor of Fiction House. However, Thurman T. Scott remained "publisher," and monitored financial and editorial decisions by reliance on daily rail freight service that permitted NYC editors to send material for approval and receive his revisions on the following day. This complicated long-distance situation was unique among publishers.
In 1941 Thurman T. Scott's son, Kerrigan Scott, was born, and four years later his youngest child, Pamela Anne Scott.
By 1953 the publishing industry of pulps and comic books was rocked by political scandal, self-censorship, lost readership, and the growing popularity of television. For the second and final time in his life, Thurman T. Scott ordered Fiction House to cease all publishing.
In 1960 Thurman T. Scott wrote a novel for young readers, The Mark of a Champion, which was published by Longmans, Green & Company of NYC.
In 1965 the mother of Thurman T. Scott, Delia H. Scott, died at the age of ninety-three in North Carolina.
On December 12, 1974 his wife Jacqueline Emila Glenister Scott died at the age of sixty-seven in Thomasville, Georgia.
On January 3, 1988 Thurman T. Scott died at the age of eighty-four in Thomasville, GA.
© David Saunders 2015 |
