Lakewood Lore

Lakewoodite is recognized as great Western writer

“Shane,” one of western movie buffs’ favorite classics, was written by a former Lakewoodite, the late Jack Schaefer, who is acknowledged as one of our nation’s greatest western story writers.

“Shane” was made into a film in 1953, starring Alan Ladd and produced by Paramount. It earned more than $8,000,000.

A literary roundup presentation featuring Schaefer and his works will be held at 2 p.m. July 13 at the Lakewood Main Library. It will be open to the public with no charge for admission.

Presenter will be Sidney D. “Sid” Comings, teacher of literature at Lorain County Community College and Lorain County Metro Parks office employee. The program will be embellished with film clips, music, readings and anecdotes.

Early on, Schaefer became an avid reader of Zane Grey and developed a fascination for the Old West. He had a lively imagination and gained much on which to base his stories from his studies of American history, drawing on diaries and yellowing newspapers.

Schaefer, who died six years ago, was born Jack Warner Schaefer on Cleveland’s East Side in 1907. He was one of four children of Carl Walter Schaefer, attorney, and Minnie (Hively) Schaefer.

The family moved to Warren Road in Lakewood when Jack was 3 years old. Later, his parents built a home on the northwest corner of Belle and Franklin, a large white house facing Belle that still is impressive in appearance.

Jack lived there, as did his late brother Richard and his two sisters, Dorothy Teare and Catherine McEwan, when all attended Lakewood High School (LHS).

Dorothy, who eventually served 13 years on the Lakewood school board and was president three times, remembers her brother Jack as an accomplished pianist during their high school days.

“He played beautifully in the band, was editor of ‘The Cinema’ yearbook, and wrote for the school’s literary magazine, then known as ‘The Arrow,’” she recalled. Among his other activities were Student Council, National Honor Society, Hi-Y, Debate and Spanish clubs, and track team.

Dorothy graduated from LHS in 1923, and Jack, two years later. Both, as well as their siblings, attended Oberlin College, where Jack lived on campus and, in 1929, earned a bachelor of arts degree, majoring in English.

Following his graduation, Jack went east to do graduate work at Columbia University. However, in 1930, when the faculty there denied him permission to prepare a master’s thesis on the development of motion pictures, he left in a huff and joined the United Press news service in New Haven, Conn., as a rewrite man.

He became assistant director of education in 1931 at the Connecticut Reformatory in Cheshire, Conn., and a year later restarted his journalistic endeavors, which would span nearly 20 years, before he decided to devote full time to the writing of westerns.

Among the key posts he held during his newspapering period were editor, New Haven Journal-Courier; editorial writer, Baltimore Sun; and associate editor, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot.

Schaefer was married to Eugenia Ives in 1931, and the couple had three sons and a daughter. There was a divorce in 1948, and he was married a year later to Louise Deans. There are three stepchildren.

By 1989, Schaefer had published 22 works, including 10 novels, several collections of short stories, and numerous pieces of non-fiction. Eight of his works were adapted to the silver screen.

During the filming of “Shane,” his first and best-known book, Schaefer had some misgivings. When he returned in 1989 to Ohio to receive an honorary doctorate in literature, he told the Oberlin alumni magazine that his “Shane” character was supposed to be a “dark, deadly person.” Thus, he had hoped the movie version would be played by the actor George Raft, instead of Alan Ladd.

But that wasn’t to be the case, because the movie studio wanted to give a boost to Ladd’s sagging career, according to Schaefer, who then quickly admitted that, nevertheless, he was pleased with the final screen product.

The book was praised by many critics as one of the finest of its type ever written. By 1988, 12 million copies had been sold. “Shane” was translated into various foreign languages, among them, Afrikaans, Burmese, Chinese, Czech, Finnish, Thai and Urdu.

The four years after “Shane” were particularly productive for Schaefer. He wrote two excellent short novels -- “First Blood” and “The Canyon.” For the latter , the author had a special fondness.

“I sat down at my old portable and wrote it in the serene assurance that it would have no commercial success, but it would be a book I wanted to write,” Schaefer once commented.

In 1960, he tried his hand in a field that was new to him -- children’s literature. He published “Old Ramon,” which would become a Newberry Honor Roll book.

In 1964, he produced “Monte Walsh,” a long book about a fearless, hard, tall, lean and squint-eye cowboy a la Clint Eastwood. In a review, Lakewood journalist and author George Condon described it as “an episodic saga of that brief but fascinating period in American history when the western lands were unfenced and cattle was king.”

For many years Schaefer resisted moving to the West. An assignment from Holiday magazine in 1955 to do some research on old western cow towns changed his mind.

Two weeks after returning to the East, he sold his farm near Waterbury, Conn., and moved to Santa Fe, N.M. He died there of congestive heart failure in 1991 at age 83.

Toward the end of his career, he became concerned that his popularization of the West might destroy that part of the country by encouraging oversettlement, disturbing the ecology and the former way of life he so cherished.

By 1967, after writing “Mavericks,” his last western, his attention turned to nature and he became a conservationist.

He wrote three essays in the form of conversations with animals. They were published in book form entitled “Conversations with a Pocket Gopher.”

His last book, “American Bestiary,” another animal volume, came out in 1975. In Sid Comings’ opinion, it was, for Schaefer, a labor of love.

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post July 3, 1997. Reprinted with permission.

[For more information: The Jack Schaefer Home Page from the journal Aristos]

More Lakewood Lore