Richard Halliburton - Commissioned Travel and Writing

Commissioned Travel and Writing

Early in 1934 the Bell Syndicate Newspapers contracted with newspapers throughout the United States, beginning with the Boston Globe, to publish weekly feature stories prepared by Halliburton. Of about one thousand words each with pictures, ultimately fifty stories resulted. Among these were stories on the Seri Indians of Southern California; Fort Jefferson, where Dr. Samuel Mudd, convicted of conspiracy in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, was imprisoned; Admiral Richmond Pearson Hobson, who deliberately sunk his own ship during the Spanish-American War, and the Battle of Santiago de Cuba a month later; Henri Christophe and the Citadelle Laferrière in Haiti; Christopher Columbus, Lord Byron, "The Girl from Martinique Who Wrecked Napoleon". Paid well, Halliburton traveled extensively to fulfill his end of the deal: to Cuba, Haiti, Martinique, to Miami, Washington, D. C. (to do research at the Library of Congress), to New York, to Europe, and ultimately to Russia. At the height of his popularity and self-fulfillment, he appeared on radio, attended celebrity parties (including one at the home of novelist Kathleen Norris who, like Halliburton, had stories regularly featured in the newspapers), and, after the purchase of a used Ford roadster, explored the heartland of California and the beauties of the Lake Tahoe area. Other commissions followed: United Artists, producing a movie about Benvenuto Cellini, asked him to do a story on the Renaissance artist's love life. The lectures continued. Halliburton even turned down "job" offers, one of which was for the considerable sum of $500 a week, for 26 weeks, from a radio company "to speak on a beer program". Meanwhile, besides the Memphis Commercial Appeal, newspapers in Milwaukee, Kansas City, Columbus, and Toronto published his syndicated stories. At the end of the year, he was again in Europe to commence his dream of emulating Hannibal and crossing the Alps on an elephant, one chosen for the task from a Paris zoo and given the name "Miss Dalrymple." The following year Bobbs-Merrill published Halliburton's Seven League Boots, filled with his latest adventures and arguably the last of the great travel works of the classic period.