Birth of a Book

One day last October Sportswriter Robert Considine of International News Service got a letter from the printer of a paper he had once worked for: "Dear Bob, I'm living next to one of the flyers, Captain Ted Lawson, who bombed Tokyo. Lawson lost his leg on the trip and is trying to do the story of the flight. ... Do you think you might help him?"

Considine got permission from the Air Forces Public Relations Bureau to talk to Lawson, took the train to Washington. There he met a 25 -year-old flyer who had worked his way through Los Angeles Junior College, going to school in the day, working in the Douglas factory at night and sleeping in the school library between classes. An unselfconscious individual, untroubled by his missing leg, Captain Lawson had been trying to get his story on paper, hammering away doggedly but ineffectually. He needed to get his story told. His wife (he had married the Junior College librarian) had just borne him a daughter. When Considine appeared, Captain Lawson poured out in speech the words he could not get on to paper.

Among newspapermen, Considine, 36, a veteran of twelve years of sportswriting, has the reputation of being able to work anywhere. One of his editors once said: "During the World Series, we watched Bob bat out a swell column ... in exactly nine minutes, with his typewriter on a baggage wagon and the conductor yelling 'All aboard.' " Now he was too absorbed to take notes.

He rushed back to New York, typed up 13 pages of notes on the train and carried them to the managing editor of Collier's. Collier's gave Captain Lawson $12,000 for first serial rights. Working from 9 a.m. until 3 the next morning, Considine and Lawson put together Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo in six sessions. Lawson made his corrections on the back of each sheet.

Random House's Bennett Cerf gave Lawson and Considine an advance of $7,500. (Considine asked for $5,000.) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer paid $100,000 for movie rights. Except for the $12,000 from Collier's, which was entirely Captain Lawson's (the magazine paid Considine $4,500), the flyer and the newspaperman divided the book's earnings--two-thirds to Lawson, one-third to Considine.

Random House printed 100,000 copies. The Book-of-the-Month Club took the book for August, printed 340,000 copies more. All told, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is expected to earn for its authors around a quarter of a million dollars.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.