Trouble in Paradise: Dillwyn Parrish, Praise the Lord!, and Religious Fervor in Southern California in the 1930s

Abstract: Dillwyn Parrish's 1932 novel Praise the Lord! depicts Midwestern migrants and their search for the Promised Land in Southern California, the shattered illusions that follow the highest of their hopes, and the strong, sometimes misplaced, and occasionally fanatical religious fervor in the Southland of the early twentieth century, both historically and in the literature of the region. It is an effective reflection of the quest by newcomers to Los Angeles for spiritual as well as economic fulfillment. It is an undeservedly overlooked work that merits a place in the literary and cultural histories of Los Angeles, particularly for its stark, unromanticized depiction of the spiritual zeal of many newcomers to the Southland. ********** "Typical California weather, Mrs. Crims!" "Oh yes--it's real lovely." "Yes--yes, yes. Rain's all right if you like rain, but give me sunshine, Mrs. Crims--give me sunshine every time." "Yes indeed, sir--Los Angeles is blessed of the Lord." --Dillwyn Parrish, Praise the Lordt. (1932) Dillwyn Parrish's 1932 novel Praise the Lord! tells the story of the Crims family, who have packed their load-like truck, left their failing Iowa farm behind in the dead of night, and headed for Los Angeles in order to escape their debts and find a better life. The lines in the passage above, taken from Parrish's novel, are spoken by Miller, a crafty con man, and Jenny Crims, who does believe that Los Angeles is literally blessed of the Lord and whom, in a scheme modeled on the Julian Petroleum scandal of the 1920s, Miller is about to bilk out of the Crims' life savings, amounting to $1,875 in cash that they have kept stashed away. This novel, sharply etched and unsentimental, offers a classic example of the roles played by Midwestern migrants and their search for the Promised Land in literary and historical Southern California, of the shattered illusions that almost inevitably follow the highest of their hopes, and of the strong, sometimes misplaced, and occasionally fanatical religious fervor existing in the Southland of the first decades of the twentieth century, both in fact and in the literature of the region. Parrish's novel, though largely unknown today, is an extremely effective reflection of the search by newcomers to Los Angeles for spiritual as well as economic fulfillment. It is an undeservedly overlooked work that deserves a place in the literary and cultural histories of Los Angeles, particularly for its stark, unromanticized depiction of the various manifestations of the spiritual zeal of many newcomers to the Southland. Parrish was an artist as well as a writer. He was the cousin of famous illustrator Maxfield Parrish and the brother of Anne Parrish, with whom he co-wrote and illustrated a number of children's books, some of which are highly sought after today. Born in Colorado, he moved to Southern California in the late 1920s, renting a house in Laguna Beach with his fifteen-year-old bride, Gigi. Lawrence Clark Powell, in his 1952 book about Southern California writing, Land of Fiction, says that Parrish once ran a lunchroom across the street from Angelus Temple. Although still married, he became deeply involved in the early 1930s with writer M. F. K. Fisher, his next-door neighbor in Laguna Beach and fourteen years his junior; Fisher's sister Norah Kennedy Barr spoke of Parrish's "deft and insouciant handling of depressed times, his worldliness, deep sensitivity, and compassion" (Fisher x). After divorcing his wife, the "charming, outgoing, companionable" Parrish (Starr 380) accompanied the still-married Fisher on a shipboard voyage to Europe in 1935. After the Fishers divorced in 1938, Parrish and Fisher were married. Their marriage, although from Fisher's accounts happy and passionate, was destined to be short lived. Parrish suffered from Buerger's Disease, which Barr speculates was the consequence of his having been the victim of gas attacks in World War I. …