Frederick Faust, et al.

A shellburst in Italy last week killed a terrific character. Frederick Schiller Faust, 51, was serving as correspondent for Harper's. But "Heinie" Faust was, more notably, the incredibly prolific "King of the Pulps" who wrote westerns, romances, whodunits and cinema stories under the pseudonyms Max Brand, David Manning, George Owen Baxter, Evan Evans, Nicholas Silver, Hugh Owen, Frank Austin, George Challis, Walter C. Butler, John Frederick, Peter Henry Moreland, Lee Bolt, Dennis Lawton, Frederick Frost. Among his creations were Hollywood's Drs. Kildare and Gillespie, Horseman Destry, Secret Agent Anthony Hamilton, Silvertip the Outlaw.

Heinie Faust, the 17th U.S. war reporter killed on duty, started writing at 23 (as Max Brand), sold his first effort to Argosy. In the next 28 years he wrote some 30 million words--115 published books,* and an uncharted quantity of magazine material, including at least 350 serials and novelettes. For a dozen years he was all over Street & Smith's magazines; now & then a single issue had three or four Faust stories under different pseudonyms. In his most productive years Faust averaged two million words a year--at the pulp magazines' top rate of 4-c- a word. He once wrote Hollywood an Alaska story, but the studio needed a sarong scenario. Faust was back in five days, his story reset in the South Seas.

Cornered Man. Seattle-born Heinie Faust actually knew little about the West, wrote about tropical isles without having been near them. A massive man with a long, chiseled face, his appetites for work and living were enormous. He could lock himself in a hotel room with two typewriters and a bottle of Irish whiskey, emerge four days later with a neatly typed, complete magazine serial. Faust's explanation of his capacities: "No one is more than 40 to 50% efficient, but when a man is backed into a corner by a man who intends to kill him, he can be as high as 90% efficient."

Faust never explained what kept backing him so desperately into his productive corner. But he loved rich living, and that took the kind of money he made. He had a villa in Florence, with squads of servants, instructors and tutors for his son and two daughters. In his Florentine study were two desks: one with a typewriter; the other with a quill pen for the abstruse, elegant poetry he liked to write but seldom sold (only two volumes were published: The Village Street, Dionysus in Hades).

Last week it was calculated that Faust had topped the combined output of E. Phillips Oppenheim, J. S. Fletcher, Edgar Wallace and all those who wrote as Nick Carter. More Faustiana remained: the Saturday Evening Post will shortly begin his romantic serial, After April; scheduled for the August Argosy is a short story, By Their Works. Friends said that Faust was in the middle of a Civil War novel when he sailed to Italy.

Also killed on the Italian front: Correspondent Cyril Bewley of Lord Kemsley's chain of British papers; Roderick MacDonald of the Sydney Morning Herald and London News Chronicle. Seriously wounded: Reuters' Henry Buckley.

* Among them: The Untamed, The Iron Trail, Six Golden Angels, Mistral.

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