Richard Pike Bissell
c. 1953
Richard Bissell, early 1950s
Born(1913-06-27)June 27, 1913
Dubuque, Iowa
DiedMay 4, 1977(1977-05-04) (aged 63)
Dubuque, Iowa
OccupationAuthor
Alma materHarvard College
Notable works7½ Cents, The Pajama Game, Say, Darling
Notable awardsTony Award for Best Musical, 1955
SpouseMarian Van Patten Grilk
Children4

Richard Pike Bissell (June 27, 1913 – May 4, 1977) was an American author of short stories and novels. His third book, and second novel, 7½ Cents, was adapted into the Broadway musical The Pajama Game. This won him (along with co-author George Abbott) the 1955 Tony Award for Best Musical. He wrote a book about the experience called Say, Darling, which chronicled the ins and outs of a Broadway musical production and featured characters based on those (such as Harold Prince) he worked with; this book was also turned into a musical, also called Say, Darling, in 1958.

Early life

Bissell was born, in Dubuque, Iowa, the second son of Frederick Ezekiel Bissell and Edith Mary Pike Bissell, in Dubuque, Iowa.[1][2] He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1932, and graduated from Harvard College in 1936, with a B.A. in anthropology.[2][3]

Career

After college, Bissell worked tor Polaroid,[2] and worked in the Venezuelan oil fields,[4] later signing on as a seaman on an American Export Lines freighter. In 1938, he married Marian Van Patten Grilk, returning to Dubuque, and living on a Mississippi River houseboat, then worked for the family clothing manufacturer business, H. B. Glover Company. After being rejected by the Navy for enlistment during World War II because of poor eyesight,[2] Bissell worked river towboats in the Midwest, rising from a deckhand to a river pilot.[5] After the war, he returned to Dubuque and resumed his work for the garment factory founded by his great-grandfather in 1845.[3] He published articles on his war experiences in Atlantic Monthly, Collier's, and Esquire.[6]

The Bissell family moved to the East coast so he could turn his book, 7½ Cents, into a Broadway musical, which later became a motion picture. This inspired his novel Say, Darling, which also became a Broadway musical.

Bissell wrote works about his experiences on the Mississippi River, including, novels: A Stretch on the River, High Water, Goodbye Ava, The Monongahela, and the non-fiction: My Life on the Mississippi or Why I am Not Mark Twain, that had some critics comparing him to Mark Twain. Bissell's 7½ Cents was based on his experiences in the garment industry, written while he was the vice-president of his family's Dubuque pajama factory.[7]

He wrote a memoir of his experiences at Harvard, You Can Always Tell a Harvard Man (McGraw Hill, 1965). He worked on a freighter on the American Export Business Lines and riverboats, served as vice president at a Dubuque clothing manufacturer which had been bought by his great-grandfather (who worked his way from the bottom to the top of the company).

Personal life

On February 15, 1938,[3] he married Marian Van Patten Grilk, an editor, who he met at Phillips Exeter Academy, raising a daughter, Anastasia, and three sons, Thomas, Nathaniel, and Samuel,[2] and living in a 1909 Fairfield, Connecticut, home designed by Stanford White. Bissell belonged to 11 historical societies, spent his summers in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, collected antique cars to saloon pianos, and a majestic 11-foot mirror from Mark Twain's New York home.[3] A 2017 biographical article in The Iowan Magazine noted that "his gravestone in the Linwood Cemetery contains an etching of the upper Mississippi, much like the one he had to draw to get his pilot’s license, cutting straight through, from corner to corner."[8] He lived for several years in Rowayton, Connecticut. Bissell was a member of The Lambs from 1956.[9]

Death

In 1975, Bissell moved back to Dubuque, Iowa to live in the house his grandfather built. He died in a Dubuque hospital on May 4, 1977, of a brain tumor.[5][2]

Works

  • A Stretch on the River (1950)
  • The Monongahela (1952)
  • 7½ Cents (1953)[10]
  • High Water: A Novel of Adventure on a Mississippi River Towboat (1954)[11][12][13][14]
  • Say, Darling (1959)
  • Good Bye, Ava (1960)[15][16]
  • You Can Always Tell a Harvard Man (1962)
  • Still Circling Moose Jaw (1965)
  • How Many Miles to Galena; or, Baked, Hashed Brown, or French Fried? (1968)
  • Julia Harrington, Winnebago, Iowa, 1913 (1969)
  • My Life on the Mississippi, or Why I Am Not Mark Twain (1973)
  • New Light on 1776 and All That (1975)

Influence

In 2008, Elmore Leonard cited Richard Bissell as a major influence in formation of his style because he felt Bissell could be naturally funny:

Once I realized he (Ernest Hemingway) doesn't have much of a sense of humor, at least he doesn't show it in his books then I had to find someone else. And there was a writer by the name of Richard Bissell and Bissell wrote 7½ Cents which became The Pajama Game and wrote books set on the Mississippi river where he was a pilot, a towboat pilot I don't know for how long. Then he wrote about five books and he had such a natural style. There was humor on his towboat guys' talk, but it was never forced. He wasn't trying to be funny. That was the main point. I thought that's the way to do it. That's the way.[17]

Awards

Portrait of Bissell at the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium

References

  1. ↑ Daniel, John M. (June 1, 2016). "His stretch on the river". Black Lamb. Portland OR. Bissell went to Phillips Exeter Academy, where he met his future wife, Marian...majored in anthropology and took classes from sociologist Pitrim Sorokin...nonfiction book called How Many Miles to Galena (1968), about travels, mainly with his family....
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Calm, Louis (May 5, 1977). "Richard Bissell, 63, Was Playwright". The New York Times. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Bissell, Richard Pike (June 27, 1913 – May 4, 1977)". The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa. The University of Iowa Libraries.
  4. ↑ "Richard Bissell Manuscript An inventory of his item". Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Syracuse University. The Richard Bissell Manuscript consists of a three-page holograph signed book review by the American author, playwright and critic. The book reviewed is Voices on the River: the story of the Mississippi Waterways by Walter Havighurst. The review is noted as being typed and mailed by "Marian." A reprint of the published review from Minnesota History is included for reading clarity. .... In addition to his literary pursuits, Bissell also worked in the Venezuelan oil fields, as a seaman, a factory superintendent, and as a river pilot on the upper Mississippi and Monongahela Rivers.
  5. 1 2 "Papers of Richard Pike Bissell". Special Collections – The University of Iowa Libraries. The University of Iowa. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  6. ↑ "Richard Bissell". eNet Press. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  7. ↑ "Public Art – Richard Bissell (1913–1977)". Iowa Avenue Literary Walk. City of Iowa City. November 23, 2009. Archived from the original on November 23, 2009. Retrieved April 15, 2021. In addition to his involvement in the pajama business, Bissell served as a mate and pilot on the rivers of America. He offers a glimpse of the country's inland waterways in My Life on the Mississippi: or, Why I Am Not Mark Twain (1973). His other works include A Stretch on the River (1950), You Can Always Tell a Harvard Man (1962), How Many Miles to Galena; or, Baked, Hashed Brown, or French Fried? (1968), and Julia Harrington, Winnebago, Iowa, 1913 (1969).
  8. ↑ Gregurich, Avery (November–December 2017). "Richard Bissell" (PDF). The Iowan Magazine. Des Moines, Iowa: Heuss Printing. Retrieved April 15, 2021. His gravestone in the Linwood Cemetery contains an etching of the upper Mississippi, much like the one he had to draw to get his pilot's license, cutting straight through, from corner to corner.
  9. ↑ Foy, Ryan (November 9, 2015). "Awards won by members". The Lambs. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  10. ↑ "'The Pajama Game'". The Gazette. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. June 30, 2013. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  11. ↑ "High Water". Minnesota Historical Society. Retrieved April 15, 2021. The story of these crewmen and their hopeless fight to bring the Royal Prince into port pushing her cargo ahead of her is so compelling that every sensitive reader will resent each drop of rain that swells the waters moving down against them. : New York Herald Tribune Book Review (First published in 1954, this Mississippi River classic is filled with a rare blend of excitement and pathos.)
  12. ↑ "High Water, by Richard Bissell". The Neglected Books Page. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  13. ↑ Stong, Phil (September 26, 1954). "Despite Pa's Warning; HIGH WATER. By Richard Bissell. 280 pp. Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown & Co. $3.75". The New York Times. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  14. ↑ "Nude on DUST JACKET HIGH WATER 1954 Vintage Book w/ RICHARD BISSELL HARDCOVER". eBay. Archived from the original on April 15, 2021. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  15. ↑ Bissell, Richard (1961). Good Bye, Ava. Secker & Warburg. OCLC 30238844.
  16. ↑ "Good Bye, Ava: Richard Pike Bissell". Kirkus Reviews. October 18, 1960. Retrieved April 15, 2021. Mr. Bissell is back to his river-mongering again in a high kicking story of houseboat living at Blue Rock, a harbor on the Iowa shore of the Mississippi. The narrator, Frank, keeps his romance strictly for Ava Gardner, his interests in his Sno-Fuzz and Sno-Cone business and his hobby in life as a river nut. His time is however taken up with his neighbors, Clyde and Jeri, and their children, because Clyde is just naturally a ""pistol"" and his rebellion against conformity gives Frank a chance to say farewell to his dream love, Ava. For Rip Ryan is adding to his fortune by bringing in the Imperial Fertilizer Company to lease river front space and everyone is told to move – only, of course, Clyde will not. His gesture of defiance holds up trans-continental traffic for ten miles (his boycotting takes place on a bridge) but, if it is the cause of his death, it does defeat Ryan and the Imperial Fertilizer Company, and gives Frank the chance to wed Clyde's widow in double-quick time. Daffy doings, characters and situations have a topographical as well as a sociological interest throughout and accompany a story that has a broadly humorous attitude toward conventionality. Special tastes.
  17. ↑ Elmore Leonard Interview from the 2008 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference in Montgomery College, YouTube.com. Retrieved January 20, 2015.
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