Does anybody read Lucius Beebe these days?

[Dayliner]

"I dug a cat named Lucius--Beebe, I think, was his name--he's quoted more than Confucius, and clothes brought him his fame."

"And it's also said, when he goes to bed, that his pyjamas are as groovy as a Technicolor movie."

Yes, friends, those lines from the 1944 movie "Carolina Blues" are referencing our very own Lucius Beebe--bon vivant, boulevardier, cafe society scribe, and railfan.  Beebe's fame rested on his sartorial elegance and trenchant conservatism, but he invented the railroad picture book, and endured much scorn from his sophisticated contemporaries for his passion for railroad trains and travel.  But does anyone from our fraternity read him any more?

My mother-in-law (blessed is she among women, and blessed is the fruit of her womb) gave me a copy of "The Trains We Rode" (Promontory Press, 1990--combining the orginal two volumes of 1965 and 1966); I keep it beside my favorite chair in the living room, and I never fail to find something new every time I dip into it.

The prose is orotund and grandiloquent, and I see where David P. Morgan got his style.  The photographs are pedestrian by contemporary standards, but feature GG1s and NYC Hudsons and Santa Fe F units doing what they were built to do, and countless pictures of men in suits and ties, and women in hats, riding the fancy cars in style, and a never-ending stream of open-platform observation cars carrying the markers of the grandest name trains in American history.

My favorite is a picture on page 168 of the Great Man himself, yukking it up with Sheila Barrett in the bar car of the Denver Zephyr, hoping that both of them will remain vertical and operable by dawn's early light.  Where has this man been all my life and where (preferably on rails) can I buy him a drink?

[ROBERT WILLISON]

I reread my Beebe books... Classic stuff from a by gone era

[daveklepper]

Beebe wrote an excellent bookwith fine pix on the 20th Century Lmtd.  The reporter for the New Yorker magazine, covering the last eastbound run (eon't think it was Frimbo/Rogers Whittiker) had a copy with him on that run and in his story occasionally  makes a comparison.

[Ulrich]

I bought a used book of his back a few years ago. I'll never forget that buying experience.. I was at a used bookstore in LA and had spent hours perusing the beautiful used volumes. I ended up spending about four hours in that store, and I bought a Lucius Beebe as well as an original Jack London hardcover (!!!) for only about $10.00!!! What a deal I thought to myself as I walked back to me car.. and then I noticed something under my windshield wiper: it was a $293.00 parking ticket.. so much for my cheap encounter with the works of two great writers. 

[samfp1943]

daveklepper

Beebe wrote an excellent bookwith fine pix on the 20th Century Lmtd.  The reporter for the New Yorker magazine, covering the last eastbound run (eon't think it was Frimbo/Rogers Whittiker) had a copy with him on that run and in his story occasionally  makes a comparison.

 

Lucius Beebe,( and Charles Clegg)  in the 1950 and beyond, were almost seemlessly spoken as if they were one. Lucius Beebe authored between thirty and thirty five books (?), and with Charles Clegg as his co-author something like half of those; Charles Clegg was the photographer of the two.  Their pictorial books were a staple for railfans of the time. Beebe was a reporter of Society, and its affairs for the NY Tribune(?). One of those gadabout types that seem to people the movies of the 40's, Some of can recall those time when people when traveling on planes or trains wore suites ties, and the women their finest dresses. Lucius Beebe was known as fashonable, and flashy dresser.  Pullman Porters polished traveler's shoes, meals were formal occasions, and on some trains there were barbers, and many railroads did employ registered nurses , on board their trains, as well as in a role of customer service.  Travel and environment was part of a long distance train journey.  The presence of Lucius Beebe on a long distance train to that experience.

In about 1950 Beebe and Clegg moved to the Virginia City,Nevada area; they bought the then defunct newspaper, Territorial Enterprise. That paper had at one time employed Mark Twain as a reporter.

They refurbished a Victorian-age Manse, and in 1954 they purchased the Pullman Car " Golden Peak" from the Pullman Company for $5k.  It was done in a style of Victorian Baroque by a then famous Hollywod set designer. See link @ http://www.vcrail.com/vchistory_railcars.htm

Recently, on the Discovery Channel the car was featured in a portion of the broasdcast on the Travel Channel the show was a parade of Private Rail Cars on the show "Tricked Out Trains"  The Beebe and Clegg car " Virginia City" was one of the stories featured.  that Thread is linked @ http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/240080.aspx

Lucius Beebe died in 1966 and his partner of many years Charles Clegg committed suicide in 1973 ( on the same day as Beebe's passing).

 

 

[sandyhookken]

Many years ago, I was an active member of my town's First Aid Squad, who's HQ was in the same municipal complex as the town library. One day, one of my colleages mentioned to me that the library had discarded a lot of books in the dumpster, and that he thought that he saw some train books in there.

 

I immediately went "dumpster diving", and saved several books, among them the following by Beebe:

     Narrow Gauge in the Rockies

     Highball

     High Iron

     Mixed Train Daily

I still enjoy looking through these, especially now with the youngest generation.

[billio]

If Lucius Beebe came back today, one would love to know his thoughts on high speed rail and, especially, on Amtrak.

[Wizlish]

-- Half a bottle of claret serves two.

... serves two what? ...

Now that was one of my favorite demonstrations of how to use the English language.

[Deggesty]

His thoughts on Amtrak? I fear that many would be unprintable.

I do remember that he was in favor of slow trains, and thought the railroads should charge extra fare to ride a slower train because of the pleasure of being on a train for a longer time. (Pullman charged the same for a particular space between two cities, no matter how long it took.)

[wanswheel]

“Mr. Beebe,” the song and dance at Turner Classic Movie "Carolina Blues"

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/651091/Carolina-Blues-Movie-Clip-Mr-Beebe.html

[erikem]

My first Beebe & Clegg "book" was the booklet on the V&T given by mom about a year after we left Carson City (would have been fun having that book while we were still living there). Next book was the Golden Spike edition of his The CP and SP Railroads. Have acquired several other of his books over the years, my favorite is "Mansions on Rails".

Not sure what he would think of today's railroads, though very sure he would detest the modern airline industry.

 

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

I wasn't too taken with his prose or books (I like Ian Fleming and Tom Clancy, so consider that accordingly . . . ), but he wrote some good poetry (not something in which I'm real qualified, either . . . ).  In particular, Trains published one in the 1960's that I believe was titled something like "The Ballad of the Twentieth Century Limited".  It had an interesting train-like rhythmic 'meter', and each verse ended with the command: "The 20th Century must go through!" 

- Paul North.

[Wizlish]

"Hold the Vanderbilt, stab the Mail
Annul the Limited, flag the Flyer,
leave the Iroquois in a fix;
This is the World, revealed and true:
Give green to twenty-five and six;
The 20th Century must go through!"

 

[DSchmitt]

Wizlish

Wizlish wrote the following post an hour ago: "Hold the Vanderbilt, stab the Mail Annul the Limited, flag the Flyer, leave the Iroquois in a fix; This is the World, revealed and true: Give green to twenty-five and six; The 20th Century must go through!"

Trains Oct 1965 page 30

[CShaveRR]

Yes, there was some interesting prose, and good photography, but the guy lost me when he mangled factual information (and he was a newspaper man!).  I remember a description on a typical wedge shot of an Alton steam locomotive passing an "unusual hollowed-out semaphore signal".

It was a B&O-style CPL.

[ACY Tom]

Pretty shocking to hear his pajamas describerd as "groovy" in 1944.  I thought my generation invented that word about 22 years later!

Wonder how he reacted to hearing about that song.  Hard to imagine him watching and listening in the theater.

Tom

[dknelson]

I had his "Trains in Transition" as a boy -- available then as a cheap reprint -- and I suspect most of us got to know his black and white photography in less than optimal reproductions.  His fondness for the 3/4 wedge might seem monotonous to us now (and in fact not all the pictures in his books were so stereotyped as that) but he was shooting in the early days of fast shutter speeds.   

One famous (non railroad) story about Lucius Beebe that I recall reading.  He hired a moving man and a crew of movers, and dressed himself in a fine suit.  He picked one of the most fashionable residental streets in Manhattan and knocked on the door which given the neighborhood would invariably be answered by a butler or a maid.  "We've come for the piano" he'd announce, and his diction and dress gave him such authority that he and his crew were admitted without question.  There was invariably a Steinway grand in the home and his crew would remove it.  He went up and down both sides of the street and took several pianos.

Then he reversed the procedure, would knock on the doors and proclaim "We're here with the new piano" -- again with total authority and no questions were asked, no servant would think to question or doubt -- and would deliver a piano which he tried to make sure generally belonged to the people across the street.  By the end of the day all sorts of people had someone else's piano.  Wonder if they ever noticed?

 

Dave Nelson

[schlimm]

dknelson

I had his "Trains in Transition" as a boy -- available then as a cheap reprint -- and I suspect most of us got to know his black and white photography in less than optimal reproductions.  His fondness for the 3/4 wedge might seem monotonous to us now (and in fact not all the pictures in his books were so stereotyped as that) but he was shooting in the early days of fast shutter speeds.   

One famous (non railroad) story about Lucius Beebe that I recall reading.  He hired a moving man and a crew of movers, and dressed himself in a fine suit.  He picked one of the most fashionable residental streets in Manhattan and knocked on the door which given the neighborhood would invariably be answered by a butler or a maid.  "We've come for the piano" he'd announce, and his diction and dress gave him such authority that he and his crew were admitted without question.  There was invariably a Steinway grand in the home and his crew would remove it.  He went up and down both sides of the street and took several pianos.

Then he reversed the procedure, would knock on the doors and proclaim "We're here with the new piano" -- again with total authority and no questions were asked, no servant would think to question or doubt -- and would deliver a piano which he tried to make sure generally belonged to the people across the street.  By the end of the day all sorts of people had someone else's piano.  Wonder if they ever noticed?

 

Dave Nelson

 

 

Apparently never prosecuted for his actions?

[daveklepper]

Beebe would not be too hard on Ambrak as long as they would handle his private car.  And he would possitively delight in the variety of private cars that are handled.   As I am delighted.  

and would be happy with UP's and NS's steam programs.

[MidlandMike]

I have a few Beebe books in my collection.  I bought the first one about 50 years ago.  He was more of a story teller than a historian.  I would read his books hoping to find out about the construction of the subject RR.  He would usually skip thru such mundane matters, but would go into great detail over the dedication ceremony and grand party at the completion of the rail line.

[erikem]

Myrick was better at those mundane details... Thought it was kind of fun to read Beebe's tale on how the entire Nevada legislature was bought off...

[wanswheel]

Beebe had a sister, Lucia, who was an ambulance driver at Camp Devens during World War I, a brother, Junius, who served in France, and a brother he never met, also named Junius.

Beebe’s grandparents

Beebe’s father

https://archive.org/details/luciusbeebeofwak00wild

[cefinkjr]

The piano caper is a great story; very worthy of Beebe.  Reminds me of the prank described in A Chorus Line about breaking into a house and stealing nothing but rearranging all of the furniture.

 

[rfpjohn]

I recieved a copy of "Highball" for my sixth birthday, from my parents. I loved the real train pictures and my dad would read me sections at bed time. The adult words were beyond me, but I learned a little about the big railroad world beyond the Pennsy branch which passed my grandparents house and those Budd cars to the shore. I know dad bought it for the "Pennsy and the Pacific" chapter, but "Some little railroads" was always my favorite.

[wanswheel]

Excerpt from Backward Ran Sentences: The Best of Wolcott Gibbs from the New Yorker

When Lucius Beebe came to the Herald Tribune from the Boston Transcript, in June, 1929, he was twenty-seven years old, six feet four inches tall, and weighed in the neighborhood of a hundred and eighty pounds. His blond hair was closely cropped, and he looked strongly Germanic, like an especially rubicund officer in the Potsdam Guard. When he was introduced to Stanley Walker, the city editor, he said “sir” in a tone of booming deference, to the grateful amazement of the Tribune staff, which was not itself inclined to be punctilious.

Mr. Walker had never seen a reporter of such baroque design, but he was no man to recoil from the unknown, and he hired Beebe for thirty-five dollars a week. Thus began a career which may be tritely described as unique in American journalism, although it can never be said that Mr. Beebe was much of a reporter. He had an apathy about facts which verged closely on actual dislike, and the tangled wildwood of his prose was poorly adapted to describing small fires and negligible thefts. His splendid plumage and a certain jovial condescension in his manner were probably a source of either terror or indignation to the homely citizens who provide the bulk of routine news. We hear of him, in a top hat and opera cape, arriving fashionably late for the annual dinner of the Landscape Gardening Society, and there is a story that he attended a fire in a morning coat.

Nor was he always very clear about his assignments. Told to cover a banquet of the New York Central Railroad Engineers, he appeared somehow at one sponsored by the Caledonian Club, and after lingering only long enough to get a prepared copy of the principal speech, went back to his office to report that the President of the Central had incomprehensibly chosen to talk to his men about Scotland. He was astonished by the clamor which the publication of this item aroused, being clearly of the opinion that one damn dull dinner was very much like another.

Real Trains Are His Toys by Lucius Beebe, about Edward Hungerford, on these 2 pages:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19390319&id=_6VQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MCIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5931,5301427

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_6VQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MCIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3143%2C5340801

[Firelock76]

I've got several Lucius Beebe books, enjoy re-reading them from time to time.

Lucius' prose does take a bit of getting used to, not quite 20th Century but not quite 19th either, if you know what I mean.  Once you "get it" it's OK.

Beebe supposedly pulled the greatest prank on record at Yale, hiring an airplane to toilet paper bomb J.P. Morgan's yacht, with Lucius as the bombardier.  Got him expelled, too.

That's an interesting film clip. Lucius is supposed to be in a Thirties movie called "Cafe Society" playing himself.  Haven't seen it myself, though.

My favorite Beebe quote?  In the lead up to election day 1948 an aquaintance of Beebe's said "If Dewey is elected President it'll set the country back 50 years!"  Lucius' response?  "And just WHAT was so wrong with 1898?"

Just as well Beebe died when he did, the post-Sixties world would have driven him insane.

By the way, gossip columnist Walter Winchell used to call Beebe "Luscious Lucius", but I doubt it was to his face.  Beebe was one formidable looking individual!

 

[daveklepper]

I found Beebe's article on Hungerford excellent.  Hungerford had a colulmn in Trains in the '40's and possibly the early '50's.   Kurt Wile (Sp?) wrote the music for Railroads on Parade at the 1939  1940 WF, which I attended several times.   He was a Jewish refugee from Germany, already famous as a composer with his Three Penny Opera still a regular at opera houses, and earned a living in the USA mostly at Hollyhwood for film scores and defense training films.  After WWII, the East German government invited him back to Germany to revive classical music, and he put away his political qualms and did return and lived out his remaining life there.  I believe he died before the Berlin Wall came down and before the Unification.  His musical creativity seemed to dimimish with his return to Germany.

[schlimm]

daveklepper

Kurt Wile (Sp?) wrote the music for Railroads on Parade at the 1939  1940 WF, which I attended several times.   He was a Jewish refugee from Germany, already famous as a composer with his Three Penny Opera still a regular at opera houses, and earned a living in the USA mostly at Hollyhwood for film scores and defense training films.  After WWII, the East German government invited him back to Germany to revive classical music, and he put away his political qualms and did return and lived out his remaining life there.  I believe he died before the Berlin Wall came down and before the Unification.  His musical creativity seemed to dimimish with his return to Germany.

It's Weill and you have your story wrong.   he did not return to Germany, lived out his life in Rockland County and died in 1950 in NYC.

[wanswheel]

Edward Hungerford was the principal author of a history of the Central Vermont, in which he explained why St. Albans had a magnificent station.

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3866496;view=1up;seq=41

http://www.1939nyworldsfair.com/ftp/39_RR_PlayBill.PDF

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090705/COL03/307059997

The Threepenny Opera “by playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950), was first performed in its original German as Die Dreigroschenoper at Berlin’s Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on August 31, 1928, with Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenya, in the role of Jenny Diver. The show quickly became an international sensation and its opening number, “Mack the Knife,” achieved iconic status as one of the most popular songs of the century.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPG9GcykPIY  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnOWikgTG2Q 

[Firelock76]

"Mack the Knife"?  Bobby Darrin nailed it!  The definative version!