WALLACE THURMAN IS MODEL HARLEMITE

Author of "Harlem" Is Leader of "Shock-Proof" Young Sophisticates.
Born in Mormon State. Now Professional New Yorker.

OPHILUS LEWIS

By Th. By THEO

Wallace Th. Lewis

take of q made the mis-
sticks. Pinself born in the
accurate it would be more
presided lat whatever spirits
take, for birth made the mis-
from ski atom of Thurman
as urban on, is of such stuff
his element, 10. Born out of
ting into his proime in get-
day he is the unphere. To-
the quintessential hattanite,
Yorker, who, in boon New
captured and reprod play, has
ing moods and wild, ie vary-
of the sepia city berhythms
other American writer an any

It is quite appropri-
fame—some indignant that his
metropolis of Negro-America will
contend that notoriety is a better
word—should rest mainly on hi-
play, "Harlem." The play is com-
pounded of the soul stuff of a man
born to be the model Harlemite, a
man who, to use one of his own ex-
pressive phrases, hates every damned
spot in these United States outside
Manhattan Island.

I am certain the attitude was born
in him. His pet loathings are the
ways of life and points of view of the
country and small town. He affects
and practices the virtues of city life
with an ardor that all but amounts
to religious fervor. He even makes
virtues of city vices and practices
them, too. We shall come to more
of this later.

Thurman, to begin at the begin-
ning, was born in Salt Lake City,
Utah, August 16, 1902. Readers with
a flair for higher mathematics will
be able to figure out that this man
who has been playwright, novelist,
poet and editor is still on the sunny
side of thirty. It is also apparent
that he has set quite a mark for his
contemporaries to shoot at.

Every schoolhouse in the West
seems to have contributed to his edu-
cation, for an interview disclosed
that he attended public schools in
Boise, Ida., Chicago, Omaha, Nebras-
ka and Pasadena, as well as in sev-
eral towns in his native Mormon
state. He received his higher learn-
ing, if any, at the University of Utah
and the University of Southern Cali-
fornia. He emerged from the latter
institution with a yen for literature
to which he sought to give expres-
sion in a magazine called The Outlet.
The magazine was published in Los
Angeles and existed for six months.

It was his first and most successful
venture at the editorial desk.

Thurman arrived in New York, or
as he would express it, he began to
live on Labor Day, 1925. He cele-
brated the grand event by falling ill.
That is one of his favorite recrea-
tions. The man literally luxuriates
in being ill. His anatomy and physi-
ology seem to be nicely adjusted for
falling out of gear from the slightest
cause. Make him laugh at a joke
and his jaw is likely to become dis-
located. Carry a can of formaldehyde
past the speakeasy where he
happens to be drinking and he will

immediately come to
with liquor
poisoning.

His propensity for making business
for doctors and drug stores suggests
some interesting statistics. If the
pills he has swallowed since he has
been in New York, were laid end to
end they would reach from the Clam
House to Frank's place in Seventh
avenue. The total volume of the
liquid prescriptions which have
sloshed over his tonsils would be suf-
ficient to float a battleship and two
destroyers. If the hours he has spent
writhing in pain, real or imagined,
had been devoted to turning out con-
tributions to the national letters the
volume of his work would now equal
that of Lope Da Vega.

This is not say that he has been
trundled from one sick bed to an-
other. Four times since coming to
Harlem he has been an editor. His
first editorial berth in the big black
town was on the abortive Looking
Glass. When that paper vanished
into thin air Thurman succeeded
George Schuyler as managing editor
of the Messenger, where his most
signal feat was the outraging the
black folks of his home state with a
peppery contribution to the series of
articles called These Colored United
States. He went from the Messen-
ger to The World Tomorrow, a white
publication. Returning to his own
side of the color line he launched
Fire, which published but a single
issue, and Harlem, a magazine
equally shortlived. It was a lack of
money not a dearth of merit which
caused the last two magazines to dis-
appear.

In the meantime he wrote a con-
siderable quantity of poetry which he
is trying to forget and a novel, The
Blacker the Berry, of which he ought
to be proud, but isn't. His play "Har-
lem" is too well known to require
mentioning.

His ambition, he says, is to be the

editor of a financially secure maga-
zine. I wonder if he knows his
mind? I rather think his real aim
in life is being a model Harlemite,
dwelling on Sugar Hill and making
flying trips through the West solely
to disparage provincial ways and to
enjoy the luxury of returning to New
York.

Listen to his preferences and
abominations. His pet hates, he says,
are all Negro uplift societies, Greta
Garbo, Negro novelists including
himself, Negro society, New York
State divorce laws, morals, religion,
politics, censors, policemen, sympa-
thetic white folks who go in for help-
ing Negroes and, as quoted above,
every damned spot in the United
States except Manhattan. Among
his favorites are: poets, Edna St
Vincent Millay, Shelley, Keats and
Dorothy Parker; actress, Rose Mc-
Clendon; color, blue; color in wo-
men, olive or russet brown with
beauty mark on shoulder; novelists,
Dostoevsky, Andre Gide, Thomas
Mann, Aldous Huxley, Ernest Hem-
ingway; novels, Of Human Bond-
age, The Idiot, Penguin Island,
Magic Mountain, Jurgen, Sister Car-
rie, Judge the Obscure, Farewell to

Arms and Madame Bovary.

His favorite Negro characters are
Fred Douglas and Marcus Garvey.
The people who have influenced his
life most are: Jean Toomer, Elisabeth
Marbury, Richard Bruce and—a
break for the provinces—his grand-
mother. He likes taxicabs. His pre-
ferred drink used to be gin, but is
now sherry. His favorite menu is
fried chicken with cream gravy, waf-
ries and strawberry shortcake.

He says his philosophy of life is
Hedonism. That's the final mark of
the ultra New Yorker. Whoever
heard of Hedonism in the sticks?

If anything more is needed to
prove him the typical Harlemite, lis-
ten to this: He would like to fall in
love with a woman like Nora Holt
Ray.

This was printed in
the n.Y. Amsterdam-
news (N.) *Sometime
between the producin*
of the play, *Harlem*,
and Wallace Sherman's
death, (in February)
March