Arnold Hano Explained

Arnold Hano
Birth Name:Arnold Philip Hano
Pseudonym:Gil Dodge,[1] Matthew Gant,[2] Ad Gordon,[3] Mike Heller
Birth Date:March 2, 1922
Birth Place:New York City, New York
Death Place:Laguna Beach, California
Period:1941–1942, 1946–2021
Genre:Crime fiction, Westerns, film novelizations, travel literature, advocacy journalism
Alma Mater:Long Island University (1941)[4]
Relatives: (parents)
Module:
Embed:yes
Serviceyears:1942–1946

Arnold Philip Hano (March 2, 1922 – October 24, 2021) was an American editor, novelist, biographer and journalist, best known for his non-fiction work A Day in the Bleachers, a critically acclaimed eyewitness account of Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, centered on its pivotal play, Willie Mays' famous catch and throw.[5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] The author of several sports biographies, and frequent contributor to such publications as The New York Times, Sport, Sports Illustrated, and TV Guide,[12] Hano was, in 1963, both a Hillman Prize winner[13] and NSSA's Magazine Sportswriter of the Year.[14] He was also Baseball Reliquary's 2012 Hilda Award recipient and a 2016 inductee into its Shrine of the Eternals.[11] [15]

Early life and education

Hano was born in Manhattan on March 2, 1922.[16] His father, Alfred Barnard Hano, worked as a lawyer and was employed as a salesman during the Great Depression; his mother, Clara (Millhauser), was a housewife.[16] [17] [18] [19] Hano spent his pre-school years in northern Manhattan's Washington Heights, in close proximity to both the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium.[20] A Yankee fan at four, Hano responded to New York's loss in the 1926 World Series by switching his allegiance from the Yankees to the Giants, where it remained lifelong.[21] That same year, his family moved from Manhattan to the Bronx for more than a decade comprising his formative years.[20]

By age three, Hano had learned to read under the tutelage of his six-and-a-half-year-old brother, Alfred Jr.[22] By the time he was eight, Hano was writing news stories for his brother's mimeographed weekly, The Montgomery Avenue News, albeit stories paraphrased from published newspaper articles. Before long, he grew tired of recycling other people's ideas; once again, his brother encouraged him:

So I invented a cop who would always fall to his knees when he shot the bad guy and I called it Sitting Bull. It was my first pun. [...] I did about six or seven of these episodic things. I was eight years old, writing the equivalent of a novel for a street newspaper that we sold for a nickel a copy, door-to-door.[20]

Hano attended DeWitt Clinton High School, graduating in 1937, and started that fall at Long Island University's Brooklyn campus. However, his initial plan to pursue a career in medicine was diverted:[23]

One day I wandered into the newspaper office, and they were laughing. I didn’t know you were allowed to have fun. They were enjoying themselves, so I changed from a science major to an English journalism major in my sophomore year. I became the sports editor of the college weekly in my junior year, and senior year I was editor-in-chief with another guy.[20]

LIU's basketball team won the recently established National Invitational Tournament (NIT) in two of those three years.[24] Hano wrote later "I didn't know how or what – would it be a newspaper, or freelance, or a novelist, but I knew I'd write."[20] Hano went on to earn his Bachelor's degree in 1941.[25]

Career

That summer, Hano was employed as a copy boy by the New York Daily News:[26] Accompanying the News photographer to sporting events, he provided captions for those shots chosen to be published. Hano wrote almost 70 years later:

I'm the luckiest fan in the history of the world. When I was a copy boy at the Daily News, I was sitting in the Ebbetts Field press box when that ball got away from Mickey Owen.[20]

After the US entered World War II, Hano followed his brother into the armed forces in 1942, Alfred to the Air Force[27] and Arnold to the Army.[28] He served in an artillery battalion of the Seventh Infantry Division, participating in the Aleutian Islands Campaign and later landing in the first wave on Kwajalein Atoll. Informed that his brother was missing in action on a mission over Germany, Hano successfully applied to be commissioned as an infantry officer at Fort Benning, allowing him to be deployed to the European Theater where he hoped to find his brother. Before this plan could be realized, the war ended and Alfred's remains were recovered.[29]

After his discharge, Hano returned to New York to a career in book publishing, first as managing editor with Bantam (1947–49),[20] then as editor-in-chief with Lion Books (1949–54),[30] working with novelists C. M. Kornbluth, David Goodis, David Karp and particularly Jim Thompson,[31] whose productivity thrived under Hano's guidance.[32] [33]

In 1951, Hano debuted as an author with the baseball-themed young adult novel, The Big Out, described by The New York Times reviewer Ralph Adams Brown as "one of the most thrilling sports novels this reviewer has ever read."[34]

In 1954, Hano left Lion Books after a company-wide 10% pay cut imposed by Martin Goodman.[20] At Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, Hano's handwritten record of the event would form the basis for 1955's A Day in the Bleachers. Despite poor marketing and disappointing sales,[35] the book was critically acclaimed.[5] and eventually regarded as a classic of sports literature,[10] [11] with new editions published in 1982,[36] 2004, and 2006.[37] The book's signature passage—its description of Willie Mays' famous catch—is frequently cited,[38] quoted,[39] or reprinted in full.[8] [40] [41]

Buoyed by the book's reception, Hano began to establish himself as a freelance writer, his work appearing in publications such as The Saturday Evening Post,[42] Esquire, The New York Times,[4] the Los Angeles Times, TV Guide, Sport, Sports Illustrated, Seventeen, Good Housekeeping,[43] Boys' Life, Argosy,[43] Saga Magazine,[13] and True's Baseball Yearbook.[44] [45] He also authored several sports biographies in the 1960s and '70s, including those of Mays, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Muhammad Ali.[5] Hano was a frequent contributor to Lion Books' (later Pyramid Books') annual paperback series, Baseball Stars of 19__, providing forty of its chapter-long player profiles between 1958 and 1975,[46] some of which were collected in Greatest Giants of Them All in 1967.[47] In addition, he wrote film novelizations of Marriage Italian Style (1966), Bandolero! (1969) and Running Wild (1973), published by Popular Library.

On April 7, 1964, Hano was named 1963's Magazine Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.[14] He also received the 1963 Sidney Hillman Memorial Award for magazine journalism[48] for "Burned Out Americans",[13] a muckraking study of conditions facing migratory farm workers in California's Central Valley.[49]

Hano taught writing at the University of Southern California, Pitzer College, and the University of California, Irvine.[12] and a contributing editor at Orange Coast Magazine (1989–92).[50]

In 2012, Hano became the 12th recipient of Baseball Reliquary's annual Hilda Award,[11] established in 2001 "to recognize distinguished service to the game by a fan."[51] Four years later, with his induction into the Shrine of the Eternals, Hano became the first person to be honored twice by the Baseball Reliquary.[15]

In 2015, The Huffington Post announced the release of Hano! A Century in the Bleachers, a documentary of Arnold Hano's life and work, produced and directed by Jon Leonoudakis. Among its interviewees are Hano and fellow sportswriters Ron Rapoport, Ray Robinson, John Schulian, Al Silverman and George Vecsey, plus artist Mark Ulriksen, and former Major League players (and subjects of Hano's articles) Orlando Cepeda and Felipe Alou.[12] [52] [53] [54]

Personal life

Hano had two children (Stephen A. and Susan C. Hano) by his first marriage, and a daughter, Laurel, by his second, the former Bonnie Abraham.[55]

From September 1955, the Hanos resided in Laguna Beach, besides a two-year Peace Corps stint in Costa Rica in 1991.[56] Hano was instrumental in writing and promoting a 1971 voter initiative establishing a 36-foot height limit on new buildings; with close to 62 percent of the city's registered voters participating, the measure was approved by a better than 3-to-1 margin.[57] [58] In 2013, Hano and his wife were honored as Laguna Beach "Citizens of the Year" in the city's annual Patriot's Day Parade.[29]

Hano died on October 24, 2021, at his home in Laguna Beach, California. He was 99 years old.[16] [59]

Further reading

Articles

Written by Hano

Written about Hano

Books

Non-fiction

Fiction (all paperback except as indicated)

External links

Notes and References

  1. Haut, Woody. "Best of 2013: Ten Favorite Crime Novels of 2013". Los Angeles Review of Books. December 22, 2013. Retrieved August 30, 2015.
  2. https://web.archive.org/web/20150819081041/https://starkhousepress.com/newsletters/shnews0206.html "Now Shipping... Arnold Hano: Three Steps to Hell"
  3. Haut, Woody. "Noir On Horseback: Flint by Arnold Hano". WOODY HAUT'S BLOG: A Weblog Dedicated to Noir Fiction and Film, Music, Poetry and Politics. December 12, 2012. Retrieved October 5, 2015.
  4. http://www.gftpln.org/Article.do?orgId=458&articleId=25890 "Writer Creates a Scholarship for Journalists"
  5. Appel, Marty. "A Day in the Bleachers—The Willie Mays Catch". Sports Collectors Digest. Retrieved August 24, 2015. "'A Day in the Bleachers' was an immediate hit – with reviewers. It received 65 reviews, 64 of them glowing, with a full page in the New York Herald-Tribune, and an important review in The New York Times by James ('Studs Lonegan') Farrell. But it didn’t score with the public – barely 3500 sold in a year, and it went out of print a few years later, only to reemerge in 1982 as a reissue by DeCapo Press, and again, by DeCapo, a year ago in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the game.' [...] "Hano was a long-time contributor to SPORT Magazine, writing over 100 features for editors Ed Fitzgerald and Al Silverman, while also developing biographies of Mays, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Muhammad Ali. [...] He also wrote western novels and 'novelizations' of motion pictures (stories based on screenplays), like 'Marriage Italian Style,' a Sophia Loren film. He wrote some early novels for Lion under 'Matthew Gant,' because, 'I didn't want to be publishing myself while I was editor-in-chief!'."
  6. Farrell, James T. "Pastime Denizen: A Day in the Bleachers". The New York Times. August 7, 1955. Accessed via ProQuest, 2015-08-24. "On September 29, 1954, some 52,751 people jammed into the Polo Grounds to see the first game of that series. One of them was a highly articulate Giant fan named Arnold Hano. [...] He has written a pleasing and attractive book, recreating an almost legendary day in the history of baseball. He describes the practice before the game, gives vignettes of other bleacher denizens, and writes a dramatic account of the game itself—and, though we know its outcome, our interest is held here as it might be in a novel."
  7. Einstein, Charles (1983). The Baseball Reader: Favorites from the Fireside Book of Baseball. New York: McGraw Hill Companies. p. 134. ISBN . Retrieved 2015-08-24.
  8. Kupferberg, Herbert. "Books: Diamond Show". Parade. April 15, 1990. Retrieved 2015-08-24. "There's lots of good reading too, the writers including Ernest Hemingway, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, John Updike and Arnold Hano—the author of a particularly vivid description of Willie Mays' most famous catch."
  9. Vecsey, George. "Hazy Sunshine, Vivid Memory". The New York Times. September 29, 2004. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
  10. [Allen Barra|Barra, Allen]
  11. http://www.baseballreliquary.org/awards/hilda-award-recipients/#2012-arnold-hano "Hilda Award recipients"
  12. Dreier, Peter. "The Blog: 'Hano! A Century in the Bleachers' Profiles Sportswriting Superstar in New Documentary". The Huffington Post. July 19, 2015. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
  13. https://www.nytimes.com/1964/04/22/sociologist-scores-new-negro-leaders.html?_r=0 "Sociologist Scores New Negro Leaders"
  14. Associated Press. "McNamee, Runyon to Get Hall Spots". The Reading Eagle. April 7, 1964. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
  15. http://www.baseballreliquary.org/awards/shrine-of-the-eternals/shrine-of-the-eternals-electees "Shrine of the Eternals – Inductees"
  16. News: Arnold Hano, Author of a Bleachers' View Baseball Classic, Dies at 99. Richard. Goldstein. October 26, 2021. October 26, 2021. The New York Times.
  17. http://www.geni.com/people/Clara-Hano/6000000020627895449 "Clara Hano (Millhauser)"
  18. https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X76F-SFZ "United States Census, 1930: Person Details for Arnold Hano"
  19. https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K7MZ-XPN "United States Census, 1940: Person Details for Arnold Hano"
  20. Waddles, Hank."Bronx Banter Interview: Arnold Hano". Alex Belth Bronx Banter. September 28, 2009. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
  21. http://www.arionpress.com/catalog/more/076author.html About the Author: Arnold Hano
  22. Hano, Arnold. "Life With Alfie". Orange Coast Magazine. November 1990. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  23. Web site: Laguna Beach Oral History Project . Arnold Hano, Oral History – Interview conducted by Glenna Matthews . Laguna Beach Library . October 27, 2021 . February 5, 2007 . GM. So when did you go seriously into writing? AH. I went seriously into writing when I was in college and I was a pre-med student. I was going to be a doctor studying chemistry and biology and it did me in. And at the end of my sophomore year I wandered into the newspaper office. They had a weekly paper called the Seawanhaka at Long Island University...it was in Brooklyn. And they were laughing. The people in there were having fun. And I didn't know you were allowed to have fun in college, so I changed majors almost on the spot and became an English Journalism major and I worked for the newspaper.... Alt URL
  24. Blevins, Dave (2012). The Sports Hall of Fame Encyclopedia: Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey, Soccer, Volume 1. Lanham, MD. p. 67. . Retrieved August 24, 2015.
  25. "195 Are Graduated at L.I.U. Ceremony". The New York Times. June 10, 1941. p. 26. Accessed via ProQuest August 24, 2015. "Thirteen students received their degrees cum laude and two magna cum laude. [...] The following students were listed as winners of departmental honors: Seymour Bier, accounting; Anthony Barbaccia, Martin Bloom and Murray Silberberg, biology; Noel L. Conrade and Jack B. Hosid, chemistry; Andrew G. Crowley and Henry G. Neuschaefer, economics; John E. Gurka, Arnold Hano, Josephine Pincus and Ethel J. Shohet, English; Helen O. Pause, mathematics; Selma Rubin, retail distribution; Mildred Eichel, secretarial studies."
  26. Hano, Arnold. "A Love Affair With the Press". Orange Coast Magazine. February 1991. pp. 152–154. Retrieved August 31, 2015.
  27. https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K8LV-NP3 "United States World War II Army Enlistment Records: Person Details for Alfred Hano"
  28. https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K8LL-6FL "United States World War II Army Enlistment Records: Person Details for Arnold Hano"
  29. http://www.lagunabeachparade.org/2013%20Parade/2013honorees.htm "All Together Now: Parade Honorees: The 2013 Laguna Beach Parade Honored Citizens of the Year, Arnold and Bonnie Hano"
  30. http://raymondlieberman.blogspot.com/2010/05/by-bonnie-and-arnold-hano.html "Our Raymond, Our Friend"
  31. Rich, Mark (2010). C.M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. p. 203. . Retrieved August 24, 2015.
  32. Silverman, Al. "Introduction". The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors and Authors. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 11. . Retrieved August 24, 2015.
  33. Server, Lee (2002). Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers. New York: Facts on File. p. 253. . Retrieved August 24, 2015.
  34. Brown, Ralph Adams. "Among the New Books for Younger Readers". The New York Times. August 5, 1951. Accessed via ProQuest on August 24, 2015. "In 'The Big Out,' Arnold Hano has written one of the most thrilling sports novels this reviewer has ever read. Brick Palmer, outstanding major league catcher, accepts the charge of throwing a game, and banishment from organized baseball, rather than reveal his younger brother's dishonesty and thus ruin the latter's medical career. Brick's struggle with himself as he plays outlaw ball in Canada, the dramatic closing of a great career and the final clearing of his name are achieved through a well-knit plot."
  35. Kahn, Roger. "Introduction", in Hano, Arnold (1955, 2004). A Day in the Bleachers. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. . "A question, then, is why A Day in the Bleachers did not win more attention and, incidentally, all the sales that were its due? In the 1950s, a prominent author announced, 'Don't waste your time with sports books. They never sell.' In publishing, a trendy business, editors believed the same thing. There is a significant element of self-fulfilling prophecy in the attention a book receives. If a publisher believes a book can be a best-seller, he takes steps to convert that belief to truth. Advertise. Send the author about to appear on radio and television programs. Get copies of the book into the hands of columnists, other authors and people of prominence who read. in short, get the book talked about. [...] But without loud banging of publicity drums, few books really have a chance.
  36. http://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=5972&recPointer=1&recCount=25&bibId=4207104 "A Day in the Bleachers"
  37. Epting, Chris. "Back to the Bleachers". Los Angeles Times. August 27, 2006. Retrieved 2015-08-24.
  38. http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/games/spectator.html "Games People Play: A Historical Perspective > Spectator Sports: Baseball Fiction"
  39. Sherwin, Bob. "Griffey And Mays – A New Legend Catches On: Mariners' Ken Griffey Jr. Draws Comparisons With Hall Of Famer Willie Mays For His Defensive Ability – The Kid And The Say Hey Kid". The Seattle Times. July 7, 1991. Retrieved August 30, 2015. See also:
    • Walsh, Joan. "Willie Mays". Salon. July 13, 1999. Retrieved 2015-08-30.
    • Tygiel, Jules. "The Polo Grounds", in Leuchtenburg, William E., editor (2000). American Places: Encounters with History. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 305. . Retrieved 2015-08-30.
    • Smith, Dr. Terry. "Remembering the great Willie Mays". The Wesleyan Decree. February 22, 20002. Retrieved 2015-08-30.
    • Light, Jonathan Fraser (2005). "Defensive Gems". The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. p. 251. . Retrieved 2015-08-30.
    • Saccoman, John. "SABR BioProject: Willie Mays". Society for American Baseball Research. Retrieved 2015-08-30. "At least as impressive as the catch was what happened next: As Arnold Hano described it in A Day in the Bleachers: '[He] whirled and threw like some olden statue of a Greek javelin hurler. ... What an astonishing throw. ... This was the throw of a giant, the throw of a howitzer made human.'"
    • Levin, Josh. "Letter From the Playoffs: On Endy Chávez's catch in the sixth inning of Game 7 of the NLCS". Slate. October 20, 2006. Retrieved 2015-08-30. "Hano's book-length account of Game 1 of the 1954 Series, A Day in the Bleachers, describes Mays' catch for nine beautiful, suspenseful pages. 'Mays simply slowed down to avoid running into the wall, put his hands up in cup-like fashion over his left shoulder, and caught the ball much like a football player catching leading passes in the end zone,' Hano continues..."
    • Aronoff, Jason (2009). "Part II: The Catches". Going, Going ... Caught!: Baseball's Great Outfield Catches as Described by Those Who Saw Them, 1887–1964. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. p. 196. . Retrieved 2015-08-30.
    • Hirsch, James S. (2010). "The Catch". Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 194–195. . Retrieved 2015-08-30.
  40. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/25410726 "The Twentieth Century Treasury of Sports (Book, 1992): Contents"
  41. Silverman, Jeff, editor (2001). "The Catch': Arnold Hano". The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press. p. 151. . Retrieved August 30, 2015.
  42. http://www.baseballindex.org/results_get.asp?sid=182328&stype=adv&r1=ofc "Arnold Hano 1956 Citations"
  43. http://www.siprep.org/page.cfm?p=7537&newsid=2428 "SI in the News: Jon Leonoudakis '76 has new film on unsung writer Arnold Hano"
  44. http://www.baseballindex.org/results_get.asp?sid=182331&stype=adv&r1=ofc "Arnold Hano 1960 Citations"
  45. http://www.baseballindex.org/results_get.asp?sid=182333&stype=adv&r1=ofc "Arnold Hano 1961 Citations"
  46. http://www.baseballindex.org/results_get.asp?sid=182329&stype=adv&r1=ofc "Arnold Hano 1958 Citations"
  47. http://www.baseballindex.org/results_get.asp?sid=182353&stype=adv&r1=ofc "Arnold Hano 1967 Citations"
  48. http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00079931/00102/19j "Full Page Announcement re Hillman Awards from page 18 of the April 22, 1963 issue of the Gainesville Sun"
  49. https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/25248099/ Text from April 23, 1963 issue of Anderson Herald, p. 17
  50. Hano, Arnold. "In Retrospect: Ya Voy Already". Orange Coast Magazine. March 1992. p. 149. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
  51. http://www.baseballreliquary.org/awards/hilda-award-recipients/ "Baseball Reliquary – Hilda Award"
  52. http://www.baseballindex.org/results_get.asp?sid=182385&stype=adv&r1=ofc "'Orlando Cepeda' in 'Hano, Arnold': Full Citations"
  53. http://www.baseballindex.org/results_get.asp?sid=182386&stype=adv&r1=ofc "'Felipe Alou' in 'Hano, Arnold': Full Citations"
  54. http://www.baseballindex.org/results_get.asp?sid=182399&stype=adv&r1=ofc "'Alou, Felipe; with Arnold Hano': Full Citations"
  55. Hano, Arnold. "In Retrospect: Views from Abroad". Orange Coast Magazine. May 1991. Retrieved August 28, 2015.
  56. http://static1.squarespace.com/static/53881470e4b04631a5e04ebb/t/5403ff6ae4b0a35ea01dd6ca/1409548138192/Historical+Society+Newsletter+November+2011.pdf "Arnold Hano: History Not Always Made by a Committee"
  57. Maxwell, Evan. "High Rise Issue Will Be Put to Voters in Laguna". Los Angeles Times. May 15, 1971. Retrieved February 10, 2020.
  58. Maxwell, Evan. "Laguna Beach Vote Bans Tall Buildings; Large Election Turnout Approves 36-Foot Limit". Los Angeles Times. August 4, 1971. Retrieved February 10, 2020.
  59. News: Arnold Hano, baseball journalist and Village Laguna patriarch, dies at 99. Daniel. Langhorne. October 25, 2021. October 26, 2021. Laguna Beach Independent.

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