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Lost in the Horse Latitudes
The horse latitudes are certain zones in the ocean which used to be the despair of sailing vessels. They are characterized by dead calms, light, baffling winds and hot, dry weather. If a ship came along and got stuck in one of those dead calms, drinking water might soon run out and then everyone would go berserk, including the horses (if they were onboard). In fact as passengers and crew clambered around in their berserkness, the horses might get thrown overboard. At least that's H. Allen Smith's story -- and he's sticking to it.
Always quick to see the zany side of even the most serious of situations and known as a prankster, Smith descended on the Paramount lot like a plague of locusts and then proceeded to offer such vital contributions as mowing the lawn and asking for the men's room. He rubbed elbows daily with such great names as Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen, W. C. Fields, and James Cagney as well as leading agents, directors and producers.
Since Smith and non-conformity have always been a devastatingly funny combination, his misadventures in movieland, as well as his views about whoever or whatever captured his attention, rate top billing in the annals of the human comedy.
Always quick to see the zany side of even the most serious of situations and known as a prankster, Smith descended on the Paramount lot like a plague of locusts and then proceeded to offer such vital contributions as mowing the lawn and asking for the men's room. He rubbed elbows daily with such great names as Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen, W. C. Fields, and James Cagney as well as leading agents, directors and producers.
Since Smith and non-conformity have always been a devastatingly funny combination, his misadventures in movieland, as well as his views about whoever or whatever captured his attention, rate top billing in the annals of the human comedy.
- GenresHumor
223 pages
First published January 1, 1941
8 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
About the author
H. Allen Smith
80 books19 followersHarry Allen Wolfgang Smith was an American journalist and humorist whose books were popular in the 1940s and 1950s, selling millions of copies.
Smith was born in McLeansboro, Illinois, where he lived until the age of six. His family moved to Decatur in 1913 and then to Defiance, Ohio, finally arriving in Huntington, Indiana. It was at this point Smith dropped out of high school and began working odd jobs, eventually finding work as a journalist.
He began in 1922 at the Huntington Press, relocating to Jeffersonville, Indiana, and Louisville, Kentucky. In Florida, editing the Sebring American in 1925, he met society editor Nelle Mae Simpson, and they married in 1927. The couple lived in Oklahoma, where Smith worked at the Tulsa Tribune, followed by a position at the Denver Post. In 1929, he became a United Press rewrite man, also handling feature stories and celebrity interviews. He continued as a feature writer with the New York World-Telegram from 1934 to 1939.
He found fame when his humor book Low Man on a Totem Pole (1941) became a bestseller during WWII, popular not only on the homefront but also read on troop trains and at military camps. Featuring an introduction by his friend Fred Allen, it eventually sold over a million copies. Damon Runyon called it, "Rich funny stuff, loaded with laughs." As noted by Eric Partridge in A Dictionary of Catch Phrases, the book's title became a catchphrase for the least successful individual in a group.
With his newfound financial freedom, he left the daily newspaper grind for life as a freelance author, scripting for radio while also writing (for six months) The Totem Pole, a daily column for United Features Syndicate, making personal appearances and working on his next book, Life in a Putty Knife Factory (1943), which became another bestseller. He spent eight months in Hollywood as a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures, and wrote about the experience in Lost in the Horse Latitudes (1944). His first three books were widely circulated around the world in Armed Services Editions. The popularity of these titles kept Smith on the New York Herald Tribune's Best Seller List for 100 weeks and prompted a collection of all three in 3 Smiths in the Wind (1946). By the end of World War II, Smith's fame as a humorist was such that he edited Desert Island Decameron (1945), a collection of essays and stories by such leading humorists as Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and James Thurber. Histories of the Manhattan Project mention Desert Island Decameron because it's the book Donald Hornig was reading when he was sitting in the Trinity Test tower babysitting the atomic bomb on July 15, 1945, the stormy night prior to the first nuclear explosion.
His novel, Rhubarb (1946), about a cat that inherits a professional baseball team, led to two sequels and a 1951 film adaptation. Larks in the Popcorn (1948, reprinted in 1974) and Let The Crabgrass Grow (1960) described "rural" life in Westchester County, New York. People Named Smith (1950) offers anecdotes and histories of people named Smith, such as Presidential candidate Al Smith, religious leader Joseph Smith and a man named 5/8 Smith. He collaborated with Ira L. Smith on the baseball anecdotes in Low and Inside (1949) and Three Men on Third (1951). The Compleat Practical Joker (1953, reprinted in 1980) detailed the practical jokes pulled by his friends Hugh Troy, publicist Jim Moran and other pranksters, such as the artist Waldo Peirce. His futuristic fantasy novel, The Age of the Tail (1955), describes a time when people are born with tails. One of his last books was Rude Jokes (1970).
Smith also wrote hundreds of magazine articles for Esquire, Holiday, McCall's, Playboy, Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, The Saturday Review of Literature, True, Venture, Golf and other publications. Smith made a number of appearances on radio and television. Fred Allen was one of his friends, and he was a guest on The Fred Allen Show on December 7, 1947
Smith was born in McLeansboro, Illinois, where he lived until the age of six. His family moved to Decatur in 1913 and then to Defiance, Ohio, finally arriving in Huntington, Indiana. It was at this point Smith dropped out of high school and began working odd jobs, eventually finding work as a journalist.
He began in 1922 at the Huntington Press, relocating to Jeffersonville, Indiana, and Louisville, Kentucky. In Florida, editing the Sebring American in 1925, he met society editor Nelle Mae Simpson, and they married in 1927. The couple lived in Oklahoma, where Smith worked at the Tulsa Tribune, followed by a position at the Denver Post. In 1929, he became a United Press rewrite man, also handling feature stories and celebrity interviews. He continued as a feature writer with the New York World-Telegram from 1934 to 1939.
He found fame when his humor book Low Man on a Totem Pole (1941) became a bestseller during WWII, popular not only on the homefront but also read on troop trains and at military camps. Featuring an introduction by his friend Fred Allen, it eventually sold over a million copies. Damon Runyon called it, "Rich funny stuff, loaded with laughs." As noted by Eric Partridge in A Dictionary of Catch Phrases, the book's title became a catchphrase for the least successful individual in a group.
With his newfound financial freedom, he left the daily newspaper grind for life as a freelance author, scripting for radio while also writing (for six months) The Totem Pole, a daily column for United Features Syndicate, making personal appearances and working on his next book, Life in a Putty Knife Factory (1943), which became another bestseller. He spent eight months in Hollywood as a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures, and wrote about the experience in Lost in the Horse Latitudes (1944). His first three books were widely circulated around the world in Armed Services Editions. The popularity of these titles kept Smith on the New York Herald Tribune's Best Seller List for 100 weeks and prompted a collection of all three in 3 Smiths in the Wind (1946). By the end of World War II, Smith's fame as a humorist was such that he edited Desert Island Decameron (1945), a collection of essays and stories by such leading humorists as Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and James Thurber. Histories of the Manhattan Project mention Desert Island Decameron because it's the book Donald Hornig was reading when he was sitting in the Trinity Test tower babysitting the atomic bomb on July 15, 1945, the stormy night prior to the first nuclear explosion.
His novel, Rhubarb (1946), about a cat that inherits a professional baseball team, led to two sequels and a 1951 film adaptation. Larks in the Popcorn (1948, reprinted in 1974) and Let The Crabgrass Grow (1960) described "rural" life in Westchester County, New York. People Named Smith (1950) offers anecdotes and histories of people named Smith, such as Presidential candidate Al Smith, religious leader Joseph Smith and a man named 5/8 Smith. He collaborated with Ira L. Smith on the baseball anecdotes in Low and Inside (1949) and Three Men on Third (1951). The Compleat Practical Joker (1953, reprinted in 1980) detailed the practical jokes pulled by his friends Hugh Troy, publicist Jim Moran and other pranksters, such as the artist Waldo Peirce. His futuristic fantasy novel, The Age of the Tail (1955), describes a time when people are born with tails. One of his last books was Rude Jokes (1970).
Smith also wrote hundreds of magazine articles for Esquire, Holiday, McCall's, Playboy, Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, The Saturday Review of Literature, True, Venture, Golf and other publications. Smith made a number of appearances on radio and television. Fred Allen was one of his friends, and he was a guest on The Fred Allen Show on December 7, 1947
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 6, 2014
Why my view of life wasn't permenently skewed by reading these in my early teen years, I don't know (but then again, maybe it WAS). Why didn't I become a chain smoking, hard-drinking features writer and humorist. It SOUNDS like a lot of fun, and certainly reads like a lot of fun in the trio of H. Allen Smith.
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May 21, 2023H. Allen Smith was a bestselling humorist of the 1940s and 50s. He was originally a newspaper man, then he began writing magazine articles and then books, often patched together from his articles and stories.
This one was published in 1944. It has the special WW2 stamp certifying that "the publishers have, in accordance with Government regulations, reduced the bulk by the use of lightweight paper throughout and have used smaller margins to allow for more words on each page." It is still a nice bright readable hardback.
Most of the pieces are about Smith's work as a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures. He was very well paid for several years. According to him, he did little work but the experience left him with a bunch of good Hollywood stories. It sounds like the only real work he did was as a gag writer for a couple on the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby "On the Road" movies.
This is a collection of funny stories and interesting pieces. The Paramount writers had a table in the cafeteria. They played "The Word Game" every day. It was a competitive Wordle type game played for money. He gets a whole chapter out of the extremes the players went to.
He tells stories about New York parties, his adventures and misadventures in public speaking, his war with an editor over commas, and the confusion cause by actors dressed in full Nazi uniforms in the Paramount commissary during the filming of "the Hitler Gang". Bobby Watson, who played Hitler, "was so realistic that he often scared people."
This clearly would have been a relief from war news in 1944. The war is in the background of many of the stories, but Allan is trying to write light comedy, so it is never front and center.
This type of light comedy writing was fairly common in those days. Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Damon Runyon, P. G. Wodehouse, and Christopher Morley for example, all regularly released humorous light novels or collections that were designed primarily to amuse. It does not seem like we have as much of that clever light humor for its own sake these days.
This one was published in 1944. It has the special WW2 stamp certifying that "the publishers have, in accordance with Government regulations, reduced the bulk by the use of lightweight paper throughout and have used smaller margins to allow for more words on each page." It is still a nice bright readable hardback.
Most of the pieces are about Smith's work as a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures. He was very well paid for several years. According to him, he did little work but the experience left him with a bunch of good Hollywood stories. It sounds like the only real work he did was as a gag writer for a couple on the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby "On the Road" movies.
This is a collection of funny stories and interesting pieces. The Paramount writers had a table in the cafeteria. They played "The Word Game" every day. It was a competitive Wordle type game played for money. He gets a whole chapter out of the extremes the players went to.
He tells stories about New York parties, his adventures and misadventures in public speaking, his war with an editor over commas, and the confusion cause by actors dressed in full Nazi uniforms in the Paramount commissary during the filming of "the Hitler Gang". Bobby Watson, who played Hitler, "was so realistic that he often scared people."
This clearly would have been a relief from war news in 1944. The war is in the background of many of the stories, but Allan is trying to write light comedy, so it is never front and center.
This type of light comedy writing was fairly common in those days. Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Damon Runyon, P. G. Wodehouse, and Christopher Morley for example, all regularly released humorous light novels or collections that were designed primarily to amuse. It does not seem like we have as much of that clever light humor for its own sake these days.
March 2, 2021
Jolly tales of the Round Table variety, early 1940's
Want to read
May 27, 2009Just got this from an ebay seller. The image above is the picture he posted of the book. It's fairly rare to get this book with the cover jacket at all, much less in this decent a condition. I'm happy to say that it looks as good as the picture. I enjoyed Smith's "Life in a Putty Knife Factory" earlier this year, and this book is shorter than that one, so ... let's see ... soon...
In the mood for some old-style dry wit and read the first two pieces in this. I might be more in the mood now for Smith than I was when I read the aforementioned book some months back.
So I'll be nibbling on this one; good light summer reading material.
As I mentioned in the review of the previously read book, Smith was very well known in the 1940s; GIs overseas in WWII read his books; he was hired by Paramount for a short time where he wrote jokes for scripts. A widely published and read columnist and book author. I love this stuff and it's a shame that the likes of he and Robert Benchley are so obscure now.
In the mood for some old-style dry wit and read the first two pieces in this. I might be more in the mood now for Smith than I was when I read the aforementioned book some months back.
So I'll be nibbling on this one; good light summer reading material.
As I mentioned in the review of the previously read book, Smith was very well known in the 1940s; GIs overseas in WWII read his books; he was hired by Paramount for a short time where he wrote jokes for scripts. A widely published and read columnist and book author. I love this stuff and it's a shame that the likes of he and Robert Benchley are so obscure now.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews