Clement Quirk Lane

Last updated

Clement Quirke Lane was the city editor for the Chicago Daily News from 1942 to 1958. [1] Born in 1897, he joined the Chicago Daily News after high school, where during Prohibition he worked the crime beat. As described in Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone, legend has it that many of the often-comical nicknames for Chicago's underworld figures, including "Greasy Thumb" Gusik, "Loudmouth" Levine, and "Violet" Fusco, can be credited “to James Doherty, a Chicago Tribune crime reporter, and Clem Lane, a Chicago Daily News rewrite man, who supposedly amused themselves on slow nights by coining them." [2]

Later he became a columnist, where in 1938 he invented the characters "Oxie O'Rourke" and "Torchnose McGonigle." [3] These were figures in the vein of predecessor Chicago newspaperman Finley Peter Dunne's "Mr. Dooley" and "Mr. Henessey," stand-ins for the "voice of the people." [4] Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko would take up that tradition afterwards with his character "Slats Grobnik." According to a Time magazine article about his work in January 1944, Lane said, in reference to his creation, Oxie was "the perfect answer for a newspaperman; he can't be scooped because he knows everything. He is the voice of the people west of the tracks." [5] [6]

Lane was known for his temper; according to his obituary he "ruled the city staff ... in fiery justice." [7] A reporter who began his career under Lane, James McCartney, described him later as "the archetype of the old-fashioned city editor, an Irish Catholic, reformed alcoholic with a high school education, a great mane of white hair ... irascible, immensely honest, tremendously talented, the personification of the newspaper ... and very, very difficult to work for." [8]

According to Peter Smith’s memoir, A Cavalcade of Lesser Horrors—in part about Smith’s relationship to his father, John Justin Smith, one of Lane’s reporters—Lane produced a memo to guide the writing on his paper sometime in the 1950s. Smith has reproduced that document:

To the staff:

By and large your writing is clean and sharp. But not always. And there are still laggards among you.


So— Short words. Anglo-Saxon words. The King James version has some fine ones. So does A. Lincoln. Let’s make it little Latin and less Greek.


Short sentences. Old J.P. Harding, the restaurant man, told his meat cutters: “Slice it thin and it’ll never be tough.” Keep sentences short and you won’t puzzle the customers. Nor the city desk.


Short leads. What’s the copywriter going to say in the headline? Your lead should be the same thought with a bit of flesh over the skeleton. Ease the customer into the story.


Short paragraphs. Easy on the eye. Short story. Easy on the markup man AND the customer. Anybody can get all the facts in, given space enough. But it takes the skilled craftsman, the artist, to tell the same story, short and smart.


Before you start writing your story, get the desk word as to length. Tell it in the length decided on. Tell it in broad strokes. Forget everything that isn’t vital. By writing it short you can write it whole. And it will do away with city desk surgery that may cut off your favorite paragraph or sentence.

Lane

Note: after you have mastered these rules, you’ll know enough to know when you can break them.

— Clem Lane, "The Gospel According to Clem", A Cavalcade of Lesser Horrors (2011)

The memo is a notable model of mid-century American newspaper style, whose roots may perhaps go back, through Ernest Hemingway and Mark Twain, to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Later in life Lane became involved in Alcoholics Anonymous, helping to establish it in Chicago after that group's founding in Akron, Ohio, in 1935. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ring Lardner</span> American writer (1885–1933)

Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical writings on sports, marriage, and the theatre. His contemporaries—Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and F. Scott Fitzgerald—all professed strong admiration for his writing, and author John O'Hara directly attributed his understanding of dialogue to him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nathan Lane</span> American actor (born 1956)

Nathan Lane is an American actor. Since 1975, he has been seen on stage and screen in both comedic and dramatic roles. Lane has received numerous awards, including three Tony Awards, six Drama Desk Awards, two Obie Awards, the Olivier Award, three Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Lane received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010, The New York Times hailed Lane as "the greatest stage entertainer of the decade".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Lane (actor, born 1905)</span> American actor (1905–2007)

Charles Lane was an American character actor and centenarian whose career spanned 76 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neal Pollack</span> American journalist and novelist

Neal Pollack is an American satirist, novelist, short story writer, and journalist. He lives in Austin, Texas. Pollack has written 10 books: The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, Never Mind the Pollacks, Beneath the Axis of Evil, Alternadad,Stretch,Jewball, Downward-Facing Death, Open Your Heart,Repeat, and Keep Mars Weird. He is also a three-time Jeopardy! champion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Alterie</span> American mobster (1886–1935)

Louis "Two Gun" Alterie, born Leland A. Varain, and aka "Diamond Jack Alterie", was a Californian who became a notorious hitman for the Chicago North Side Gang during the early years of Prohibition.

Edward Doherty was an American newspaper reporter, author and Oscar-nominated screenwriter. Twice-widowed, he married once more to Catherine de Hueck Doherty, founder of the Madonna House Apostolate, and later ordained a priest in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jake Lingle</span> 20th-century American journalist; reporter for the Chicago Tribune (1891-1930)

Alfred "Jake" Lingle was an American reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He was shot dead gangland-style in the underpass leading to the Illinois Central Randolph Street station on the afternoon on June 9, 1930, as dozens of people watched. The man convicted of the murder was mob associate Leo Vincent Brothers.

Al Hoffman was an American song composer. He was a hit songwriter active in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, usually co-writing with others and responsible for number-one hits through each decade, many of which are still sung and recorded today. He was posthumously made a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984. The popularity of Hoffman's song, "Mairzy Doats", co-written with Jerry Livingston and Milton Drake, was such that newspapers and magazines wrote about the craze. Time magazine titled one article "Our Mairzy Dotage". The New York Times simply wrote the headline, "That Song".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cleve Cartmill</span> American journalist

Cleve Cartmill was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy short stories. He is best remembered for what is sometimes referred to as "the Cleve Cartmill affair", when his 1944 story "Deadline" attracted the attention of the FBI by reason of its detailed description of a nuclear weapon similar to that being developed by the highly classified Manhattan Project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dick Elliott</span> American actor (1886–1961)

Richard Damon Elliott was an American character actor who played in over 240 films from the 1930s until the time of his death.

<i>The Untouchables</i> (film) 1987 American crime film directed by Brian De Palma

The Untouchables is a 1987 American crime film directed by Brian De Palma, produced by Art Linson, and written by David Mamet. It stars Kevin Costner, Charles Martin Smith, Andy García, Robert De Niro and Sean Connery. Set in Chicago in 1930, the film follows Eliot Ness (Costner) as he forms the Untouchables team to bring Al Capone to justice during Prohibition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murray Humphreys</span> Chicago mobster (1899 – 1965)

Murray Humphreys, was a Chicago mobster of Welsh descent who was the chief political fixer and labor racketeer, beginning with the Chicago Outfit during Prohibition. Considered to be a ruthless but also well-dressed, socially refined, and clever man, Humphreys believed in killing only as a last resort. He was known to place far greater trust in the bribability of lawmen, seemingly respectable businessmen, labor union leaders, and public officials. A favorite maxim of Humphreys' was: "The difference between guilt and innocence in any court is who gets to the judge first with the most". But perhaps the statement that best summed up Humphreys' philosophy of life was: "Any time you become weak, you might as well die". Al Capone once said of Humphreys, "Anybody can use a gun, but 'The Hump' uses his head. He can shoot if he has to, but he likes to negotiate with cash when he can. I like that in a man."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vernon Dent</span> American actor and comedian (1895–1963)

Vernon Bruce Dent was an American comic actor, who appeared in over 400 films. He co-starred in many short films for Columbia Pictures, frequently as the foil, main antagonist, and an ally to The Three Stooges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank J. Wilson</span> American law enforcement administrator (1887–1970)

Frank John Wilson was best known as the Chief of the United States Secret Service and a former agent of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Internal Revenue, later known as the Internal Revenue Service. Wilson most notably contributed in the prosecution of Chicago mobster Al Capone in 1931, and as a federal representative in the Lindbergh kidnapping case.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyril Ring</span> American actor (1892–1967)

Cyril Ring was an American film actor. He began his career in silent films in 1921. By the time of his final performance in 1951, he had appeared in over 350 films, nearly all of them in small and/or uncredited bit parts.

John Macleod is a Canadian-born English songwriter and musician. he co-wrote the hits "Baby, Now That I've Found You" for The Foundations, "Let the Heartaches Begin for Long John Baldry, "Heaven Knows I'm Missing Him Now" and many more.

Nelson Coral Nye (1907–1997) was an American writer, editor, and reviewer of Western fiction, and wrote non-fiction books on quarter horses. Besides Nelson C. Nye he also wrote fiction using the pseudonyms Clem Colt and Drake C. Denver. He wrote over 125 books, won two Spur Awards: one for best Western reviewer and critic, and one for his novel Long Run, and in 1968 won the Saddleman Award for ""Outstanding Contributions to the American West".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Merle Tottenham</span> British actress (1901–1958)

Merle Tottenham was a British stage and film actress. Her stage work included the original West End production of Noël Coward's Cavalcade in 1931; and she reprised her role as Annie the servant in the subsequent Hollywood film, in 1933. She also appeared as Dora, the maid in Night Must Fall (1937) with Robert Montgomery and Rosalind Russell, and the film version of Coward's This Happy Breed (1944), as Edie, the maid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Williams (American actor)</span> American actor and writer (1898–1958)

Charles Williams was an American actor and writer. He appeared in over 260 film and television productions between 1922 and 1956. He also worked as a writer on 30 films between 1932 and 1954.

David Silverstein was an American screenwriter and journalist who worked at MGM, Universal, and Columbia in the 1930s and 1940s.

References

  1. ↑ "From West of the Tracks". Time. January 24, 1944.
  2. ↑ Kobler, John (1971). Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone. Da Capo Press. p. 432. ISBN   978-0-306-81285-9.
  3. ↑ "From West of the Tracks". Time. January 24, 1944.
  4. ↑ "From West of the Tracks". Time. January 24, 1944.
  5. ↑ "From West of the Tracks". Time. January 24, 1944.
  6. ↑ "The Press: From West of the Tracks". 24 January 1944. Time Inc. 24 January 1944. Archived from the original on December 14, 2008. Retrieved 8 March 2011.
  7. ↑ Stepp, Carl. "A Dying Breed". American Journalism Review. Archived from the original on December 12, 2010. Retrieved March 11, 2011.
  8. ↑ Stepp, Carl. "A Dying Breed". American Journalism Review. Archived from the original on December 12, 2010. Retrieved March 11, 2011.
  9. ↑ Stepp, Carl Sessions. "A Dying Breed". December 1994. American Journalism Review. Archived from the original on 12 December 2010. Retrieved 8 March 2011.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.