1. For the remark on Exodus outselling Gone with the Wind, see Otto Preminger, CBC radio interview, 24 February 1961, reprinted in Gerald Pratley, The Cinema of Otto Preminger (New York: Barnes, 1971), 133; the 2,500-a-day figure occurred in February 1959 (Publishers Weekly, 9 March 1959). Exodus reached the top spot on the New York Times best-seller list on 17 May 1959, eight months after its debut.
2. Sales figures for QB VII come from the president of Doubleday, John T. Sargent, in a letter dated 15 March 1971 to Herb Schlosberg, Uris’s business manager (copy in the Library of Congress). In April 1974, just before QB VII was to be shown as a televised miniseries, Bantam Books reprinted a further 300,000 paperback copies (John Bear, The #1 New York Times Best Seller [Berkeley, Calif.: Ten Speed Press, 1992], 113, 137).
3. Quoted in Thomas A. Larkin, “A Talk with Uris,” Scáthán, July 1995. This is a Celtic literary and news magazine.
4. Leon Uris to William Uris, 10 July 1957, box 137, folder 8, Leon Uris Archive, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin (hereafter cited as Uris Archive).
5. Leon Uris to William Uris, 17 July 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
6. Ibid.
7. William S. Burroughs, “Screenwriting and the Potentials of Cinema,” in Writing in a Film Age: Essays by Contemporary Novelists, ed. Keith Cohen, 77 (Niwot: Univ. Press of Colorado, 1991).
8. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, act 1, scene 3, line 107. Uris opposed the view of Abram Leon Sachar, the author of The Jew in the Contemporary World: Sufferance Is the Badge (New York: Knopf, 1939), who wrote: “It is stupid to call upon Jews to show their indomitable fortitude by defiance in lands where all groups have been beaten and cowed into submission” (573). Tragically, given the events that were soon to unfold, he added: “He [the Jew] can bear his fate … very much better when he knows that he is an innocent victim and that the tirades of detractors are vile lies, made out of whole cloth, for self gain or power” (577).
9. Quoted in Hillel Italie, “Leon Uris … Dies at 78,” Associated Press, 24 June 2003. Uris originally made his comments in an Associated Press interview in 1988. To his satisfaction, an earlier interview began with “Leon Uris is a tough, squat, mod-haired, bluntnosed son of an immigrant paperhanger. He looks like an old street fighter and ex-Marine and he is” (Paul Henderson, “A School Drop Out, Leon Uris Knows What Success Is,” Watertown (N.Y.) Daily News, 1977 [box 175, Uris Archive]).
10. Quoted in Bill Clopton, “Author of No. 3 Best Seller Once Flunked English,” Cincinnati Post and Times-Star, 18 February 1959.
11. Quoted in Pearl Sheffy Geffen, “Leon Uris,” Lifestyles 17 (1989): 16.
12. Michael Korda, Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller, 1900–1999 (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2001), 108–109 and passim.
13. “Topaz,” Library Journal, 1 October 1967; Melvin Maddocks, “The Uris School of Non-Fiction Fiction,” Life, 27 October 1967; Anthony Boucher, “Criminals at Large,” New York Times, 29 September 1967.
14. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929; New York: Scribner’s, 1949), 191. “Accuracy means something,” a character adds late in the novel (292).
15. Uris, speech at the dedication of the library of Mesa College, Grand Junction, Colorado, 13 October 1967.
16. Although Uris was never a journalist, reporters appear in a number of his novels: Michael Morrison in The Angry Hills, Mark Parker in Exodus, Christopher de Monti in Mila 18, and Seamus O’Neil in Trinity.
1. Leon Uris, “The Truth Will Rise,” n.d. [1940?], box 114, folder 9, Uris Archive.
2. These student compositions are found in box 119, folder 9, Uris Archive.
3. Abram Bellow to his son Saul in Mel Gussow and Charles McGrath, “Saul Bellow, Who Breathed Life into American Novel, Dies at 89,” New York Times, 6 April 2005.
4. Arthur Liebman, Jews and the Left (New York: Wiley, 1979), 346.
5. Ibid., 348.
6. Leon Uris was born on the day Joseph Conrad died, 3 August 1924.
7. Isaac M. Fein, The Making of an American Jewish Community: The History of Baltimore Jewry from 1773 to 1920 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1971), 223.
8. Sandra Featherman, “Jewish Politics in Philadelphia, 1920–1940,” in Jewish Life in Philadelphia, 1830–1940, ed. Murray Friedman (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1983), 288–289.
9. Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth-Century Norfolk, Virginia (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1991), 129.
10. An article in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (27 February 1977) called attention to parallels between Ben Cady, brother of the hero in QB VII, and an actual Jewish athlete from Norfolk, Sam Friedberg, who attended Maury High School. In the novel, Uris vividly describes Church and Holt streets, Colonial Place, J. E. B. Stuart Elementary School, Blair Junior High School, the old airfield with a dirt runway in Granby Street across from the cemetery, and the Bush (Boushi) Street Bowling Alley.
11. Eli N. Evans, “Southern-Jewish History Alive and Unfolding,” in Turn to the South: Essays on Southern Jewry, ed. Nathan M. Kaganoff and Melvin I. Urofsky (Charlottesville, Va.: American Jewish Historical Society/Univ. Press of Virginia, 1979), 159.
12. A copy of the program is in box 167, Uris Archive.
13. These student compositions are found in box 119, folders 6 and 9, Uris Archive.
14. It was discovered forty years later when the brother of his teacher found it in anattic trunk and sent it to Uris. The synopsis reads in part:
Act I. Rosett makes love to Gracia in an old garden. She tells him that she loves him too. He asks her mother for her daughter, and she tells him to be good to her always.
Act II. The Wedding
Act III. Six years later. Gracia, the mother of children, is very ill. The father is away from home trying to earn money.
15. Military personnel record of Leon Uris, U.S. National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Missouri.
16. Michael Gold, Jews without Money, 2nd ed. (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1996).
17. Ibid., 309.
18. Leon Uris, address to the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., 24 October 1988, box 3, folders 4–5, Uris Archive.
19. Leon Uris, address to the New York Times Literary Luncheon, 18 September 1988, box 181, folder 8, Uris Archive.
20. John Steinbeck, Novels and Stories, 1932–1937 (New York: Library of America, 1994), 888.
21. Ibid., 897.
22. Quoted in Myra Yellin Goldfarb, “Leon Uris: A Profile,” Hakol (Allentown, PA), November 1989.
23. Gefen, “Leon Uris,” 15.
24. Leon Uris to William Uris, 20 February 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
25. Quoted in Leslie Hanscom, “Author of Exodus Tells of His Genesis,” Newsday, 23 October 1988.
26. Gefen, “Leon Uris,” 15.
27. Quoted in Hillel Italie, “Uris Taps His Own History,” Associated Press, 1988.
28. Gefen, “Leon Uris,” 16.
29. Leon Uris to Anna Blumberg Uris, 30 July 1943, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
30. Leon Uris to Anna Blumberg Uris, n.d., box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive. The date of the letter was obliterated by wartime censors.
31. Leon Uris to Anna Blumberg Uris, n.d. [1940 or 1941], box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
32. In a July 2001 taped interview for his grandchildren, Uris was more direct: “I joined up because I had to get out of a difficult family situation.”
33. The note is folded in a first edition of Battle Cry that Uris inscribed to his son Michael.
34. Leon Uris to “Uncle Eddie,” n.d. [1942?], box 136, folder 6, Uris Archive.
1. Uris was so proud of his number that he assigned it to Danny Forrester in Battle Cry and to Clinton Loveless in Armageddon. It is also became the number tattooed on Dov Landau’s forearm at Auschwitz in Exodus.
2. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 18 January 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
3. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 8 February 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
4. Ibid.
5. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 15 February 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
6. Ibid.
7. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 16 March 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
8. See, for example, Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 19 March 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
9. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 8 April 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
10. Ibid.
11. Harry Bioletti, The Yanks Are Coming: The American Invasion of New Zealand, 1942–1944 (Auckland: Century Hutchinson, 1989), 195.
12. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 13 April 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
13. Leon Uris to Harry Kofsky, 13 April 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
14. Leon Uris to Esther Uris from San Diego, n.d. [mid-1942?], box 10, folder 11, Uris Archive.
15. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, n.d. [1942?], box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
16. Quoted in Julie Hutchinson, “Uris: A Life as Epic as the Stories He Tells,” ElectriCity (Denver), June 1984, 31.
17. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 28 May 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive. The International Workers Order, established in 1930, assumed an outlook close to that of the Communist Party. In addition to its political interests, the IWO sold insurance and offered money and other benefits to needy members and their families. It also sponsored schools, summer camps, lectures, dances, and dinners, essentially creating a social world for left-leaning, progressive Jews.
18. William Blake, The Copperheads (New York: Dial, 1941). The 741-page book contains a panoramic story, anticipating the sweep and history of Uris’s own fiction.
19. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 22 April 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
20. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 4 May 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
21. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 24 May 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
22. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 1 June 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
23. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 6 June 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 23 January 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
27. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 17 July 1943, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
28. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, 26 January 1943, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
29. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, 12 May 1943, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
30. Bernard Guilbert Guerney, translator’s note to Alexandre Kuprin, Yama (The Pit) (New York: Modern Library, 1932), xix. The original English edition, translated and published by Bernard Guilbert Guerney, appeared in 1922.
31. Kuprin, Yama, 82.
32. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 12 May 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
33. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 4 January 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
34. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 1 February 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
35. Major John L. Zimmerman, The Guadalcanal Campaign (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Marine Corps, Headquarters, Historical Division, 1949), 159n12.
36. Ibid., 164.
37. Ibid., 169.
38. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 11 January 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
39. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 19 January 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
40. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, April 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
41. Joseph A. Alexander, Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 44.
42. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, April 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
43. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 5 April 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
44. Ibid.
45. Betty Cogswell to Leon Uris, 24 March 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
46. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, 9 May 1943, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
47. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 9 November 1943, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
48. William Uris to Esther Uris, 17 October 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
49. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 9 April 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
50. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 29 June 1942, box 136, folder 8, Uris Archive.
51. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, 26 April 1942, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
52. Nearly a year later (August 1944), however, an argument emerged over who had originated and contributed the most to the show. A letter to Leatherneck, the marine magazine, by Sergeant Paul Smith, says that the follies, which Uris claimed to have written and produced, were one of those “returned veteran snow jobs.” In fact, according to Smith, all Uris did was to sing “one very corny song” and read a few lines. Etheridge conceived the show, which Earl Hall and Smith enlarged. “Direction came from Capt. Walter and Lt. Babo,” he added, “and that leaves us with very little room for PFC Uris. And that is that” (Paul Smith, “At Ease,” Leatherneck, Pacific edition, 1 August 1944). However, Smith laterapologized for having overstated the case (Paul Smith to Leon Uris in San Francisco, 18 December 1944, box 165, Uris Archive).
53. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 29 May 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
54. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 11 July 1943, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
55. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 9 August 1943, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
56. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, 13 October 1943, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
57. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 9 November 1943, box 136, folder 9, Uris Archive.
58. Alexander, Utmost Savagery, 206.
59. Uris, interview by the Memphis Press-Scimitar, 4 February 1955.
60. Uris, speech at the dedication of the Tarawa Monument, Long Beach, California, 1 July 1998, box 182, folder 1, Uris Archive.
61. Ibid., 3.
62. Ibid., 4.
63. Ibid., 8.
64. Gefen, “Leon Uris,” 9.
65. Norman Mailer went to the Philippines after Uris had come home, later publishing the first important novel of the Second World War, The Naked and The Dead (1948). James Jones’s From Here to Eternity (1951) appeared next, along with Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny (1951), followed by Uris’s Battle Cry (1953). Interestingly, each was a first novel.
66. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, 24 March 1944, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
67. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, 31 March 1944, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
68. A clipping of this article is located in a scrapbook in box 165 of the Uris Archive.
69. These items are in a scrapbook in box 165, Uris Archive.
70. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, 7 July 1944, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
71. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, 11 December 1944, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
72. Ibid.
73. Mark Uris, interview by the author, 20 June 2005, Boulder, Colorado.
74. A copy of the rebuttal editorial is located in a scrapbook in box 165 of the Uris Archive.
75. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, 26 April 1945, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
76. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, 21 March 1945, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
77. Ibid.
78. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, 3 November 1945, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
79. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, 29 May 1945, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
80. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, 11 December 1944, box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
81. Laura Wilck to Chelle Janis (the publisher of Opportunities on Parade and perhaps Uris’s agent), 19 January 1946, box 165, scrapbook, Uris Archive.
82. Story department to Leon Uris, 26 January 1945, box 165, scrapbook, Uris Archive.
83. For details on Israel London (1898–1968), see David Mazower, “Israel London’s Life and Work,” Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language 6 (13 April 2002). The Marstin Press had its offices at 228 East 45th Street in New York City.
84. Isaac E. Rontch, foreword to Jewish Youth at War: Letters from American Soldiers, ed. Isaac E. Rontch (New York: Marstin Press, 1945) 1.
85. Martin Greenberg, “Jewish Youth at War,” Commentary 1, no. 3 (January 1946): 98.
86. A copy of the protest letter is located in a scrapbook in box 165 of the Uris Archive.
87. Clippings and handbills are located in a scrapbook in box 165 of the Uris Archive.
88. Clipping in a scrapbook in box 165, Uris Archive.
1. Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead (1948), James Gould Cozzens, Guard of Honor (1948; Pulitzer Prize, 1949), James Jones, From Here to Eternity (1951), Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny (1951), and Leon Uris, Battle Cry (1953).
2. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, n.d., box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
3. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, n.d., box 10, folder 11, Uris Archive.
4. Two decades later, Larkspur would gain fame as the home of Janis Joplin, who lived in the suitably named (for Uris) Baltimore Canyon. Other notables in Larkspur at that time included Jerry Garcia, founder of the Grateful Dead, and Ken Kesey. For a short time in the mid to late sixties, Larkspur became a hippie enclave.
5. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, n.d., box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
6. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, n.d., box 136, folder 5, Uris Archive.
7. Ibid.
8. Uris, Memphis Press-Scimitar interview.
9. Leon Uris to Esther Uris, n.d., box 137, folder 5, Uris Archive.
10. Marsh Maslin, “Leon Uris,” San Francisco Call-Bulletin, 10 April 1953.
11. Donald Cormack to Leon Uris, 9 June 1950, box 166, folder 1, Uris Archive.
12. Leon M. Uris, “All-American Razz-Matazz,” Esquire, January 1951, 95.
13. Quoted in Donald Kirley, “A Marine’s Literary Landing,” Sunday Sun Magazine, Baltimore Sun, 17 October 1954.
14. Recounted in Mark Uris interview.
15. “Newspaper Driver-Author, Local 921 Member, Writes Book while Working as Circulation Man,” San Francisco Labor, 17 April 1953 (clipping in box 166, Uris Archive).
16. Quoted in Marylou Luther, “Don’t Let Education Sanitize Talent—Uris,” Los Angeles Times, 10 November 1960 (clipping in box 169, Uris Archive).
17. Francis Veach, “Author of Famous War Novel Tells Story of Success,” Waterloo (IA) Sunday Courier, 2 January 1955.
18. “Cleveland Amory’s Celebrity Register, Leon Uris,” 1966 (clipping in box 173, folder 1, Uris Archive).
19. Uris, Memphis Press-Scimitar interview.
20. Quoted in Bernard Kalb, “The Author,” Saturday Review of Literature, 25 April 1953, 16.
21. Ibid.
22. Ed Brooks, “Battle Cry Aim Told by Author,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 3 February 1955. The novel, he added, was out in 14 languages, and the one-millionth copy was presented to the Los Angeles Public Library. Also see Uris, “Why the Marines?” incomplete typescript, for McClurg’s Book News (Chicago; Uris, box 17, folder 8). Article by Uris (April 1953) and Uris, “Interview, Songs of A City,” San Diego Union, July 1954.
23. Paul Nathan, “Rights and Permissions,” Publishers Weekly 1953 (clipping in box 166, Uris Archive).
24. A copy of the contract is located in box 155, folder 8, Uris Archive.
25. Gefen, “Leon Uris,” 9.
26. Ibid.
27. Win Fanning, “Battle Cry Author Here First to Reject Own Book,” Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 8 February 1955.
28. Quoted in Veach, “Author of Famous War Novel.”
29. Interestingly, in the fiftieth reprinting of the paperback of the novel in 1980, thisstatement appears at the end rather than the beginning. By the sixty-third reprinting, the section was dropped.
30. Shapiro becomes heroic through his antiauthoritarian, risk-taking actions. He dieson Saipan with his two pistols firing (echoes of the Old West) as he screams, “Blood!” (BC, 498).
31. John McCormick to Leon Uris, 13 April 1953, box 166, scrapbook, Uris Archive.
32. C. S. Nichols, review of Battle Cry, by Leon Uris, Military Affairs 18 (1953): 38.
33. Merle Miller, “The Backdrop Is Victory,” review of Battle Cry, by Leon Uris, Saturday Review of Literature, 25 April 1953, 16–17.
34. The citation is located in a scrapbook in box 166 of the Uris Archive.
35. The critics’ poll was reported in the Cleveland Press, 2 December 1953; for the readers’ poll, see “Year’s Best,” Saturday Review of Literature, 26 December 1953, 36.
36. Joseph Blotner, Faulkner: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1974), 2:1106– 1107, 1120–1121.
37. Faulkner, in ibid., 2:1144.
38. Ibid., 2:1142; Louis Daniel Brodsky and Robert W. Hamblin, eds., Faulkner: A Comprehensive Guide to the Brodsky Collection, vol. 4: “Battle Cry” (Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1985), xix.
39. Blotner, Faulkner, 2:1142.
40. Brodsky and Hamblin, Faulkner Guide, 4:xv.
41. Ibid., 4:xxv.
42. Quoted in ibid., 4:xxxi.
43. Ibid., xi. After leaving Hollywood, Faulkner received credit for only two works: collaborating on the adaptations of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not (1944) and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1946), both directed by Howard Hawks. Upset at not being able to negotiate a new contract, Faulkner walked out of Warner Bros. in September 1945, telling Jack Warner, “I feel that I have made a bust at moving picture writing.”
44. Faulkner quoted in Rudy Behlmer, ed., Inside Warner Bros., 1935–1951 (New York: Viking, 1985), 250; on the early publicity for Battle Cry, see Publicity Department, Warner Bros., “Trades,” Warner Bros. Archive, University of Southern California [1953].
45. Script report on Battle Cry, n.d., 1 (Warner Bros. Archive, University of Southern California; hereafter cited as WB Archive).
46. Ibid., 1–2.
47. Paul Nathan, “Rights and Permissions,” Publishers Weekly, 7 February 1955.
48. Leon Uris to Ted Purdy, n.d., box 1, folder 8, Uris Archive.
49. Ibid.
50. Leon Uris to Bob Amussen, 21 September 1953, box 1, folder 9, Uris Archive.
51. Bob Amussen to Leon Uris, 16 September 1953, box 1, folder 9, Uris Archive.
52. Willis Wing to Leon Uris, 21 September 1953, box 1, folder 9, Uris Archive.
53. Leon Uris to Bob Amussen, 21 September 1953, box 1, folder 9, Uris Archive.
54. Putnam catalogue, 1954, box 166, Uris Archive.
55. A manuscript copy of Aaron Yerushalmi’s autobiography is located in box 1, folder 1 of the Uris Archive.
56. Bob Amussen, handwritten note on the typescript of “Hellenic Interlude,” box 1, folder 9, Uris Archive.
57. Leon Uris, draft of The Angry Hills, 119, box 1, folder 9, Uris Archive.
58. Leon Uris to Bennett Cerf, 22 September 1955, box 168, Uris Archive. Cerf’s reply is in the same box.
59. Katherine Gauss Jackson, review of The Angry Hills, by Leon Uris, Harper’s Magazine, December 1955, 105.
60. Review of The Angry Hills, by Leon Uris, Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch, 30 October 1955.
1. Janetta Somersett, “Mayor, Marines and a Mob Help Send off Battle Cry,” Baltimore Sun, 2 February 1955.
2. Also in the cast was a young Fess Paker (Speedy), later to become a television star as Davy Crockett, and Jonas Applegarth (Shining Lighttower), a Cree from Alberta who, when he heard he had won the part, had to take a sleigh to an airport to fly to Puerto Rico.
3. Finley McDermid to Steve Trilling, Warner Bros., 20 February 1954 and 23 February 1954 (WB Archive).
4. Warner Bros. publicity release, box 167, Uris Archive.
5. Warner Bros. publicity department, memo, WB Archive.
6. Uris to Mort Blumenstock, 1 April 1954, WB Archive.
7. Lemuel Shepherd, 9 December 1954, WB Archive.
8. Daily Variety, 27 January 1955 (clipping in WB Archive).
9. Quoted in ibid.
10. Herbert Pickman to Mort Blumenstock, telegram, 1 February 1955, WB Archive.
11. In a letter dated 10 October 1955, Uris told Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro that he was returning the three awards given to him in February: “You may burn them in the Civic Plaza along with all known copies of Battle Cry.” He sent back the key to the city, the proclamation declaring February Battle Cry month, and the scroll given to him on the stage of the Stanley Theatre. In a free society, he writes, “we must live with these small-minded groups of malcontent blowhards who live in mental vacuums,” but he wanted nothing to do with them (box 168, Uris Archive).
12. Warner Bros. reported that the film earned $1,250,000 in its initial thirty-three engagements and that it was “shaping up as the company’s top grosser of all time” (Variety, 16 February 1955). Warner Bros. also reported 100 percent holdovers in movie theatres in the first dates, with the peak pace continuing in twenty-one additional dates.
13. Quoted in Ian Hamilton, Writers in Hollywood, 1915–1951 (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), 52.
14. Uris, speech at the dedication of the library of Mesa College, Grand Junction, Colorado, 13 October 1967, 11–12.
15. Ibid., 12.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. “I Like Hollywood Because …,” Dallas Morning News, October 1955.
19. Fred Johnson, “On the Aisle,” San Francisco Call-Bulletin, 8 January 1955. See also passages in Mitla Pass in which the writer-hero’s father warns him that those who go to Hollywood are soon degraded and forgotten (MP, 68–70). On Tab Hunter’s experience in making Battle Cry, see Tab Hunter, Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin, 2005).
20. Betty Uris to her parents, 28 May 1954, box 185, folder 3, Uris Archive.
21. Bosley Crowther, review of Battle Cry, directed by Raoul Walsh, New York Times, 3 February 1955.
22. The memo is quoted in Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel, Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making “Rebel Without a Cause” (New York: Touchstone, 2005), 48. The details in the next several paragraphs come from this source.
23. Quoted in Hayden White, “The Modernist Event,” in The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event, ed. Vivian Sobchack, 17 (New York: Routledge, 1996).
24. Bruce Cook, “Did Uris Write Novel or Script?” Chicago Sunday Sun-Times, 25 June 1961.
25. Betty Uris, diary, 1954, box 185, folder 3, Uris Archive; Uris to William Uris, 25 February 1956, box 137, folder 7, Uris Archive.
26. Paul Joseph Gulino, Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach (New York: Continuum, 2004), 4.
27. Diane Eagle, “Leon Uris—The Work Day,” unpublished essay dated 13 July 2005, private collection.
28. Leon Uris to Colin Robertson, 10 October 1974, box 101, folder 1, Uris Archive.
29. John Steinbeck, The Red Pony (1937; repr., New York: Viking Press, 1960), 7.
30. On this structure, see Philip Parker, The Art and Science of Screenwriting (Exeter, UK: Intellect Books, 1998), 27–29. Also helpful are William Miller, Screenwriting for Film and Television (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998), 49–51, and Ari Hiltunen, Aristotle in Hollywood (Bristol, UK: Intellect Books, 2002), 19–20, 124–126.
31. Donald Freeman, “Wyatt Earp Story Stirs Up Dispute, “San Diego Union, 23 September 1955.
32. Quoted in Publishers Weekly, 29 March 1976. On the western, see, for example, Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996), and Jeffrey Wallmann, The Western: Parables of the American Dream (Lubbock: Texas Tech Univ. Press, 1999). Flexibility might be illustrated by Nelson Nye’s novelization of Uris’s Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (South Yarmouth, Mass.: Curley, 1982).
33. Emily Dickinson titled an early poem “My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun.” Faulkner’s Light in August (1932) and Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) are two important modern examples of violent literary novels. Sherwood Anderson sensed the endemicnature of violence in American writing: “For a long time I have believed that crudity is an inevitable quality in the production of a really significant present-day American literature” (Sherwood Anderson’s Notebook [1926; repr., Mamaroneck, N.Y.: Appel, 1970], 195).
34. Eastwood, quoted in Mitchell, Westerns, 150. This is reminiscent of Peter Ustinov’s advice to a young Method actor: “Don’t just do something—stand there!” (quoted in Ira B. Nadel, David Mamet: A Life in the Theatre [New York: Palgrave, 2008], 132).
35. Paula Mitchell Marks, And Die in the West: The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight (Norman, OK: Oklahoma University Press, 1996), 18–33 and passim.
36. Uris, author’s note to QB VII, 9. Of course, writers of historical fiction have long followed this practice. In E. L. Doctorow’s Civil War novel The March (2005), he fabricates a moving letter from General William T. Sherman to General William Hardee after the latter loses a son in battle, as had the former; see Janet Maslin, “Using History as a Guide, but Skipping the Details,” New York Times, 27 September 2005.
37. Nevertheless, Uris said he learned more about motion pictures from Hitchcock in six months then he had learned before or since (Ted Bredt, “Leon Uris Retains Rugged Charm,” San Jose Mercury News, 22 August 1976).
38. Murray Schumach, “Hollywood Prose, Studio Deal with Novelist Prompts Reappraisal of the Movie Writer,” New York Times, 23 August 1959.
39. Quoted in Gefen, “Leon Uris.”
40. Griffith, quoted in Hamilton, Writers in Hollywood, 9.
41. Cited in Uris to William Uris, 11 January 1956, box 137, folder 7, Uris Archive.
1. Ezra Rusinek, “Afterword: The Samizdat,” in Alla Rusinek, Like a Song, like a Dream: A Soviet Girl’s Quest for Freedom (New York: Scribner’s, 1973), 256; see 252–256 for one of the most extensive descriptions of the samizdat process for translating Exodus. The translation Rusinek describes occurred in 1963. Numerous accounts of these samizdat efforts exist; one of the fullest is in Leonard Schroeter, The Last Exodus (1974; repr., Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1979), 64–68. When Uris visited the Soviet Union in 1989, one of his most cherished moments was the presentation of a samizdat translation of the novel. The inscription on the bootlegged copy read: “Thank you for reaching us.” According to Michael Neiditch, who was with Uris at the time, this copy was signed by Natan Sharansky. For Sharansky on Exodus, see his Fear No Evil, trans. Stefani Hoffman (New York: Random House, 1988), xv. On the origin of the Russian dissident movement, see Anatole Shub, “From Russia with Chutzpah: Origins of a New Exodus,” Harper’s, May 1972, 72–79.
2. Feldman is quoted in Allan Richter, “Exodus: A Ship’s Hold on the Jewish Imagination,” Jewish World (September 30–6 October 1988). Feldman told his story on 6 September 1988 at the Baltimore celebration of the Exodus, with Uris present. Feldman became the first refusenik ordained as a Conservative rabbi in the United States.
3. Edwin McDowell, “‘Exodus’ in Samizdat: Still Popular and Still Subversive,” New York Times Book Review, 26 April 1987, 13.
4. Schroeter, Last Exodus, 64–68.
5. Arie Lova Eliav, in Israel at Sixty: An Oral History of a Nation Reborn, ed. Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober, 168 (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2008).
6. On the role of the Mossad in bringing in copies, see ibid. Eliav served in the Haganah, the Jewish Brigade of the British army in the Second World War, the Aliyah Bet movement after the war, and the Mossad. He was also a member of the Knesset for eighteen years. The actions of Ari Ben Canaan in Exodus parallel Eliav’s in many ways (see “Leon Uris Says,” EX, 1–2).
7. Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Crown, 1988), 299, 394–395.
8. Foster Hirsch, Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King (New York: Knopf, 2007), 284. Ingo Preminger was a political progressive who had several Hollywood blacklisted writers among his clients. In a “Note of Thanks” in the first edition of Exodus, Uris writes that the book “evolved out of a conversation at lunch and became a tangible project because of the dogged persistence of Malcolm Stuart,” his agent (EX, 5). Stuart (1928–2004) was Malcolm “Max” Sterz, who became “Stuart” when he started an agency career.
9. Uris, “About Exodus,” in The Quest for Truth, ed. Martha Boaz (New York: Scarecrow, 1961), 127.
10. Details of the contract are located in box 156, folder 1, at the Uris Archive. If MGM exercised its rights to fully purchase his story, Uris would receive $42,500, assuming he met the deadline of 25 January 1957.
11. Gabler, Empire of Their Own, 421.
12. Leon Uris, “Notes on the Background of Exodus,” box 25, folder 7, Uris Archive.
13. William Uris, quoted in “Uris Pere,” Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, 11 July 1959.
14. Leon Uris to Anna Abrams, n.d. [1942?], box 135, folder 5, Uris Archive.
15. Leon Uris quoted in Jill Lai, “Uris Looking At His Past,” United Press International, Washington, 4 November 1988, 331.
16. Leon Uris, quoted in George Murray, “Tough Israelis Inspire Author,” Chicago American, February 1959 (clipping in box 11, folder 1, Uris Archive). He also says he “was made almost ill by those beatnik writers who degrade Jews. I wanted to do Exodus.”
17. Leon Uris to William Uris, 8 March 1956, box 137, folder 7, Uris Archive.
18. Other books that retold the story of Israel at this time include Ernest Pawel, The Island in Time: A Novel of Survival (1951); Dean Brelis, Shalom (1959; the author was a passenger on a refugee ship to Israel in 1948); Lester Gorn, The Anglo-Saxons (1958); and James Murdock, Ketti Shalom (1953).
19. Leon Uris to William Uris, 10 May 1956, box 137, folder 7, Uris Archive.
20. Ilan Hartuv, interview by the author, 23 February 2007, Jerusalem.
21. In a 1959 interview, Uris remarked that when he heard his voice on playback, he felt the strong emotional effect on him at the time he recorded. This was important in re-creating the feeling that he tried to convey in the novel (Uris, interview by Yoram Vidan, “Uris’s Tricks in Creating Exodus,” Yedi’ot Aharonot [Tel Aviv], 4 December 1959 [in Hebrew]).
22. Hartuv interview. Hartuv was appointed government liaison officer for Otto Preminger’s production staff during filming. But he was rebuffed when he confronted Preminger with anomalies. He pointed out, for example, that it would have been impossible to bury Karen, the young immigrant in love with Dov Landau, and Taha, the Arab friend of Ari Ben Canaan, in the same grave. Neither Islam nor Judaism condones it, and neither permits an unmarried couple to be buried together. Preminger refused to change the scene.
23. See Michalais Firillas, “Prodromos Papavasileiou,” Ha’aretz, 3 January 2007. The correct spelling is “Papavassiliou,” according to his son, who is the current managing director of Shosham (Cyprus) Ltd. The father died on 22 December 2006. Hugh Griffith played him in the film.
24. Hartuv’s own life is quite extraordinary. In 1976, he was a hostage at Entebbe, and his mother, Dora Block, was the only Israeli killed by Idi Amin’s men. He went on to become the Israeli ambassador to Fiji and the Solomon Islands. He also had the longest nonspeaking role in Preminger’s Exodus, shown first listening to a radio announcement of the UN partition vote on 29 November 1947 and then standing on a balcony between Lee J. Cobb, playing Barak Ben Canaan, Ari’s father, and Meir Weisgal (president of the Weizmann Institute), who was standing in for David Ben-Gurion when the news was announced to the crowd of some 20,000. Hartuv retired from the Foreign Ministry in 1993 but has taught African studies (another of his specialties) at Hebrew University formanyyears. Uris’s appreciation of Hartuv remained long after Exodus was completed. He based the character of Shlomo Bar Adon, in Mitla Pass, on him. A fighter who also worked at the Foreign Ministry, Shlomo heroically dies in the final battle (MP, 302, 410–416).
25. Leon Uris to William Uris, 3 June 1956, box 137, folder 7, Uris Archive.
26. Leon Uris, “Notes on the Background of Exodus,” box 25, folder 7, Uris Archive.
27. Ibid.
28. Leon Uris to William Uris, 3 June 1956, box 137, folder 7, Uris Archive.
29. Leon Uris to William Uris, 25 June 1956, box 137, folder 7, Uris Archive.
30. Levin’s career in many ways anticipated Uris’s. His early work about Palestine, Yehuda (1931), followed by a work on assimilated second-generation Jews in Chicago, The Old Bunch (1937), and then My Father’s House (1947), the first full-scale feature filmproduced in Palestine, were successes. Both Compulsion (1956) and The Obsession (1973), the latter about his battle over his stage adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank, illustrate how he anticipated some of the critical subjects that define Uris’s work. Levin’s popularity may have prepared readers to accept Uris.
31. Hartuv interview.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Leon Uris to Doubleday, 25 September 1956, box 137, folder 7, Uris Archive.
35. Uris quoted this exchange in his address to the West Area Conference of Hadassah, St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco, California, 7 December 1958.
36. A copy of this document is in a scrapbook in box 168, Uris Archive.
37. Leon Uris, first dispatch to the Philadelphia Inquirer, October 1956 (unpublished), box 25, folder 6, Uris Archive.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid
40. Ibid.
41. Mark Uris interview.
42. Leon Uris, first dispatch to the Philadelphia Inquirer, October 1956 (unpublished), box 25, folder 6, Uris Archive.
43. The telegram is in a scrapbook in box 168 of the Uris Archive.
44. Leon Uris, second dispatch to the Philadelphia Inquirer, October 1956 (unpublished), box 25, folder 6, Uris Archive.
45. Leon Uris, third dispatch to the Philadelphia Inquirer, October 1956 (unpublished), box 25, folder 6, Uris Archive.
46. Leon Uris, printed notice, letter of gratitude to the Israeli public, November 1956, box 114, folder 8, Uris Archive.
47. Leon Uris, “Notes on the Background of Exodus,” box 25, folder 7, Uris Archive.
48. Kenneth McCormick to Leon Uris, 9 May 1969, box 139, folder 8, Kenneth Mc-Cormick Collection, Library of Congress; hereafter cited as McCormick Collection.
49. Leon Uris to William Uris, 26 February 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
50. Leon Uris to William Uris, 29 March 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
51. George Haessler, “Author Tells of History without Parallel,” Daily Collegian (Pennsylvania State Univ.), 2 March 1960.
52. Leon Uris to William Uris, 25 April 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
53. Leon Uris to William Uris, 17 July 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
54. Leon Uris to William Uris, 20 June 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
55. Leon Uris to William Uris, 29 March 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
56. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 22 April 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
57. Ibid.
58. Leon Uris to William Uris, 14 August 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
59. Leon Uris to Walter Bradbury (at Doubleday), 22 April 1957, box 135, folder 6, Uris Archive.
60. Leon Uris, quoted in Joe Saltzman, “The Literary Lab,” Daily Trojan (Univ. of Southern California), ca. 1958 (clipping in Uris Archive).
61. Raymond Stross to Leon Uris, 1 May 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
62. Leon Uris to William Uris, 8 May 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
63. Leon Uris to William Uris, 29 May 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
64. Leon Uris to William Uris, 4 June 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
65. Uris was the one of several writers to work on the script, which was an adaptation of Donald Hamilton’s short story “Ambush at Blanco Canyon” from the Saturday Evening Post (later expanded into a novel, The Big Country). When the film was finally released in August 1958 in North America, it grossed four million dollars in its first year. Uris, however, did not receive any screen credit. The film, with Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, Carroll Baker, Charles Bickford, and Chuck Connors, was reported to have been President Eisenhower’s favorite. Variety called it “a serviceable adult yarn” that “lives up to its title” (review of The Big Country, directed by William Wyler, Variety, 13 August 1958, 6).
66. Leon Uris to William Uris, 3 July 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
67. Leon Uris to Walter Bradbury, 24 May 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
68. Leon Uris to William Uris, 27 June 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
69. Leon Uris to William Uris, 1 May 1957 box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
70. Moshe Pearlman to Leon Uris, 15 July 1958, box 137, folder 7, Uris Archive.
71. Leon Uris to William Uris, 3 December 1957, box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive.
72. Uris, “About Exodus,” in The Quest for Truth, ed. Martha Boaz, 128.
73. “He Went for Broke,” ca. 1959 (copy in box 170, Uris Archive).
74. Uris, interview by Joseph Wershba, New York Post, 2 July 1959; a section of the interview is quoted in Philip Roth, “Some New Jewish Stereotypes,” in Reading Myself and Others (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1975), 138. Roth called Uris’s last statement (“In truth, we have been fighters”) a simplification “so bald, stupid, and uninformed … that it is not even worth disputing”—although he then proceeded to do so (138). He cites Elie Wiesel’s Dawn as a more genuine picture of the struggle for Jewish heroism (139). Roth finds disingenuous Uris’s celebration of the “Hebrew Hero” and the Jew as a perpetrator of violence (141).
75. On the Israeli criticism of the sabras as Uris depicted them, see Philip Gillon, “The Image of Ari,” Jerusalem Post, 21 May 1961.
76. Bantam promotional material, box 171, scrapbook, Uris Archive.
77. Harry Gilroy, “The Founding of the New Israel,” New York Times Book Review, 12 October 1958.
78. David Boroff, “Exodus: Another Look,” New York Post, 17 May 1959.
79. Herman Wouk is quoted in an advertisement for the novel (box 170, scrapbook, Uris Archive); the reviews from the San Francisco Examiner and the Nation are quotedin Boroff, “Exodus Another Look.”
80. There is a copy of the poster in a scrapbook in box 169, Uris Archive.
81. Johannesburg Jewish Herald, 2 December 1960.
82. The British officers club at Goldschmidt House, on King George Street in the center of Jerusalem, was the object of an Irgun assault on 1 March 1947. Dressed in British uniforms, the attackers placed bombs in the compound that killed seventeen officers and injured twenty-seven. The immediate result was the imposition of martial law and the removal of all civil judicial procedures. Attacks by the Irgun and the Lehi increased (sometimes called the Stern Gang, after its leader, the Lehi was the most violent and radical of the three Zionist paramilitary groups, the others being the Haganah and the Irgun). On 12 March, the Irgun succeeded in blowing up another British stronghold in Jerusalem, the Schneller camp.
The attack on Goldschmidt House and the debacle of martial law motivated the opposition in Great Britain under Winston Churchill to increase its denunciation of governmental policy in Palestine. This, in turn, forced the government to bring forward to 28 April 1947 a UN special session to debate the Palestine question, which had originally been proposed for September. The attack on Acre prison on 4 May 1947, which freed twenty-seven members of the Irgun and seven of the Lehi, intensified pressure on the British to revise their policy in the Middle East.
The result was a UN committee formed to study the problem. The committee arrived in Jerusalem on 14 June to meet with Jewish representatives, the Arabs having boycotted the proceedings. During this visit, the Exodus 1947, with 4,539 displaced persons, att empted to break the British blockade and land. The British turned the ship back, and Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary, ordered the refugees and Holocaust survivors to return to Europe. The UN committee witnessed this event on 18 July 1947. Its report of 31 August 1947 recommended that the British mandate for Palestine be ended and that the country be granted independence. On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted the committee’s recommendation to partition Palestine. UN Resolution 181 separated the Israelis and Arabs, who, nevertheless, violently came together on 14 May 1948 when Israel proclaimed its independence. But as the British mandate ended, five Arab armies prepared to invade the new country. The United States recognized the State of Israel eleven minutes after David Ben-Gurion finished reading the proclamation; Russia and Guatemala quickly followed suit. (This account is drawn from Ahron Bregman, A History of Israel [New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003], 39–46).
83. For contemporary criticism of the novel, see “Diplomat Puts His Foot in It,” Johannesburg Jewish Herald, 24 January 1961; for later criticism, see Jeremy Salt, “Fact and Fiction in the Middle East Novels of Leon Uris,” Journal of Palestine Studies 14 (1985): 54–63; William Darby, Necessary American Fictions: Popular Literature of the 1950s (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State Univ. Press, 1987), 93–100.
84. Roth, “Some New Jewish Stereotypes,” 137–147; this was originally a speech delivered in Chicago in 1961. Robert Alter, “Sentimentalizing the Jews,” Commentary (September 1963): 72.
85. Aziz S. Sahwell, Exodus: A Distortion of Truth (New York: Arab Information Center, 1960), 1.
86. Andrew Furman, Israel through the Jewish-American Imagination (Albany: State Univ. Press of New York, 1997), 39–40.
87. Unidentified Israelis quoted in Seth S. King, “Exodus and Israel,” New York Times, 4 October 1959.
88. On the concept and representation of the tough Jew, see Paul Breines, Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry (New York: Basic Books, 1990); Todd Samuel Presner, Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration (London: Routledge, 2007).
89. Said, “Propaganda and War,” Al-Ahram Weekly Online, 30 August–5 September 2001; http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2001/550/op2.htm. More recently, the Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman, the director of Waltz with Bashir (2008), referred to Exodus as a “must-read” in Israel and the film of the novel a “must-film” (quoted in Deborah Solomon, “The Peacemaker,” New York Times Magazine, 11 January 2009, 11).
90. Sara R. Horowitz, “Cinematic Triangulation of Jewish American Identity,” in The Americanization of the Holocaust, ed. Hilene Flanzbaum, 155 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999).
91. Ibid., 156.
92. Bernard Malamud, quoted in Leslie Field, “Israel Revisited in American Jewish Literature,” Midstream, November 1982, 50.
93. David Ben-Gurion, quoted in Seth S. King, “‘Exodus’ and Israel,” New York Times, 4 October 1959. Ilan Hartuv later questioned the remark, saying someone must have told Ben-Gurion about the book, since he “wasn’t a man who cared very much about propaganda” and hardly had time for fiction (Hartuv interview).
94. Aharon Geffen, “U.N. Delegates Read Exodus,” Yediot Aharonot, 22 September 1959 (in Hebrew).
95. Specially designed tours quickly materialized, one unabashedly called the “Exodus Tour.” This twelve-day sojourn around the country, beginning at the port of arrival and led by a guide who had fought in the war of liberation, included visits to practically all the key sites in the war and the novel. Also, INBAL, an Israeli dance group, added an “Exodusdance” to its repertoire. Cyprus similarly benefited when tourists began to look for the Dome Hotel in Kyrenia, where Ari met Kitty, and sought the spot in the port where the Exodus had departed (materials related to these events are found in a scrapbook in box 169 of the Uris Archive).
96. United Artists publicity statement, box 169, scrapbook, Uris Archive.
97. Otto Preminger, Preminger: An Autobiography (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977), 165.
98. Hirsch, Otto Preminger, 165–167.
99. Chris Fujiwara, The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger (New York: Faber and Faber, 2008), 257. Preminger would receive $160,000 for services, the first $250,000 of profits, and 75 percent of the profits thereafter.
100. A copy of the photo is in a scrapbook in box 169 of the Uris Archive.
101. Otto Preminger, Preminger, 166; for Uris’s side, see Hirsch, Otto Preminger, 321.
102. Dalton Trumbo, who eventually wrote the screenplay, received $50,000.
103. Leon Uris, quoted in Hirsch, Otto Preminger, 321.
104. Ibid., 325.
105. Leon Uris, quoted in “Leon Uris, I’m in Every One of My Books,” Dayton Journal Herald, 23 June 1980.
106. Preminger, quoted in Gerald Pratley, The Cinema of Otto Preminger (New York: Barnes, 1971), 133.
107. Otto Preminger, quoted in Ted Bredt, “Leon Uris Retains Rugged Charm,” San Jose Mercury News, 22 August 1976. Supposedly, there is not a single word of dialogue from the novel in the movie.
108. Trumbo and Preminger quoted in Bruce Cook, Dalton Trumbo (New York: Scribner’s, 1977), 274. On the script of Exodus and the working methods of Dalton Trumbo and Preminger, see Cook, Dalton Trumbo, 273–275, and Fujiwara, World and Its Double, 259–260. For Preminger’s lack of interest in the script, see Trumbo’s comic letters to Ingo Preminger, collected in Additional Dialogue: Letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1942–1962, ed. Helen Manfull, 527–532 (New York: Evans, 1970). Everything, it seems, distracted Preminger, including lunch (Pratley, Cinema of Otto Preminger, 135). Pratley quotes from a CBC interview with Preminger recorded on 24 February 1961.
109. Fujiwara, World and Its Double, 263.
110. Otto Preminger, quoted in Pratley, Cinema of Otto Preminger, 133.
111. Georgia Hesse, “A New Siege for the Exodus,” San Francisco Examiner, 5 February 1961.
112. Otto Preminger, quoted in ibid.
113. Otto Preminger, quoted in Willi Frischauer, Behind the Scenes of Otto Preminger: An Unauthorised Biography (London: Michael Joseph, 1973), 187. For the most extensive website dealing with the film, see http://www.cine-holocaust.de/eng (search for “Exodus”). Also useful is Tom Ryan, Otto Preminger Films: “Exodus” (New York: Random House, 1960). This contains stills from the film and location shooting. On Newman’s notes and Preminger’s reaction, see Frischauer, Behind the Scenes, 187, as well as Fujiwara, World and Its Double, 265. Fujiwara also reports that Newman tried to get out of the film, deeming the script too cold and expository (258).
114. Frischauer, Behind the Scenes, 191–192.
115. Ibid., 186.
116. Fujiwara, World and Its Double, 269.
117. Hartuv interview; see also Frischauer, Behind the Scenes, 193. Foster Hirsch says Eva Monley, Preminger’s production manager, came up with the idea of the lottery; the source is in dispute (Otto Preminger, 334). Hartuv and his wife were also to attend the New York premiere; Preminger conveniently forgot to invite them.
118. Geographical errors also occur. Uris put Gan Dafna in the Upper Galilee, where Arabs try to overrun it in their drive to Safed. Preminger puts Gan Dafna in the Emek, opposite Kafr Kanna (modern Cana), five miles north of Nazareth. There are many beautiful shots of the Emek, and they are mentioned in dialogue, but a contradiction emerges when the defenders of Gan Dafna say it must be held to protect Safed, in the north.
119. Bosley Crowther, “3½ Hour Film based on Uris’ Novel Opens,” New York Times, 16 December 1960.
120. Mort Sahl, quoted in Fujiwara, World and Its Double, 271.
121. A copy of the cartoon is in a scrapbook in box 171, Uris Archive.
122. See Yosefa Loshitzky, “National Rebirth as a Movie: Otto Preminger’s Exodus,” National Identities 4 (2002): 119–131. For another view, see Rachel Weissbrod, “Exodus as a Zionist Melodrama,” Israel Studies 4 (1999): 129–152.
123. Fujiwara, World and Its Double, 271.
124. Capitalizing on his fame, an ambitious Uris decided to try another genre and contracted for a new project in September 1959: a children’s book on the subject of Jewish heroes. He was to receive a modest $5,000 advance and submit a manuscript by June 1960. It is one of the few projects he did not complete, although he hired a researcher to get the work underway and even proposed a title: “Judah’s Warriors.” He cancelled the contract in May 1961.
125. “The characters are firmly typecast, but their main function is to carry along the plot that history has already written and in that service they do quite well” (Dan Wakefield, “Israel’s Need for Fiction,” Nation, 11 April 1959, 319).
126. Review of a Robert Ludlum novel in the Washington Post, cited in the Associated Press obituary of Ludlum, who died on 12 March 2001.
1. A report on the evening is in a scrapbook in box 170, Uris Archive.
2. On 13 February 1960, for example, the Irving Thalberg Lodge of B’nai B’rith honored Uris as “Man of the Decade.” Jeff Chandler, an actor, presented the award at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Mel Blanc and Alan Reed were masters of ceremony.
3. Don Duncan, “Best-Seller Author Admits Flunking High School English,” Seattle Times, 4 November 1959.
4. “Clerk Loses Case against Exodus,” Australian Jewish Herald [November] 1960 (clipping in box 169, scrapbook, Uris Archive).
5. Murray Schumach, “Hollywood Prose,” New York Times, 23 August 1959, 348.
6. Ibid.
7. Thomas M. Pryor, “Mirisch to Film New Uris Novel,” New York Times, 7 January 1959. Also see Louella Parsons, “Fantastic Deal at Columbia for 4 Books Still Unwritten,” Los Angeles Examiner, 13 August 1959. Stuart and Preminger could be partners with Uris because they were not members of the Artists Management Guild, which prohibited any of its agent members from having a stake in any type of production.
8. In Exodus, Uris depicts the lashing of Aronsohn’s feet and the placement of hotstones in her armpits.
9. Hollywood Reporter, [March?] 1959 (clipping in box 170, scrapbook, Uris Archive).
10. Uris, interview in the Kansas City Times, 8 December 1960.
11. Quoted in “Uris Blasts Pasternak,” Heritage Southwest Jewish Press, 17 November 1959 (clipping in box 170, scrapbook, Uris Archive).
12. Uris in Gefen, “Leon Uris,” 15.
13. Israel Gutman, Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 76. See also Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt, trans. Ina Friedman (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1982). The most important recent and comprehensive work is Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City, trans. Emma Harris (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 2009). The original Polish text was published in 2001.
14. Gutman, Resistance, 77.
15. Ibid., 82.
16. For other photographs of the Ghetto, see Gunther Schwarberg, In the Ghetto of Warsaw: Heinrich Jost’s Photographs, trans. George Frederick Takis (Gottingen: Steidl Verlag, 2001), which includes photographs of burials at the mass graves. Jost, a sergeant in the Wehrmacht, photographed the Warsaw Ghetto in September 1941. The pictures remained unpublished until displayed at Yad Vashem (the Holocaust memorial) in Jerusalem in 1988.
17. While the Warsaw Ghetto was the largest one in Poland, it was not the first. The Ghetto in Lodz, the city with the second-largest concentration of Jews in the country, was formed in May 1940.
18. Haggai Hitron, “Jewish History Museum Rises from Old Warsaw Ghetto,” Ha’aretz (Israel), 13 January 2006.
19. Gutman, Jews of Warsaw, 129, 141.
20. Ibid., 197–213, 362–363.
21. Ibid., 312–323.
22. Quoted in Uris, Exodus Revisited, 259.
23. Uris’s visit to the Warsaw Ghetto and Lublin empowered him to criticize Boris Pasternak. Uris began by sarcastically saying to Pasternak, who had given up his Jewish identity, that he was sorry, but the Jews were not giving up theirs. He then criticized the attack on Jewish survival that coincides with a celebration of the strength of the Christian faith in Dr. Zhivago (“Uris Blasts Pasternak”).
24. David Grober, quoted in Emanuel Ringelblum, “Time Capsule in a Milk Can,” an exhibition at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., Summer 2004.
25. The surviving archives are in the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, part of the state archives, and at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. In 1999, the United Nations placed the Oneg Shabbat archives in the Memory of the World Register. For more information, see Samuel D. Kassow, Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oneg Shabbat Archive (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2007).
26. Hersey used the diary to frame all of The Wall. Uris used a diary form as a springboard for a conventional third-person narrative. Uris also preferred a broader approach than Hersey, allowing him to range freely from Ghetto victims to the office of the German commander. Hersey’s form gives the illusion of reality, which makes the reading deeply personal. Mila 18 lacks the depth and intensity of The Wall, but has more drama and movement. For Uris on The Wall, see his (unpublished) interview with Sharon D. Downey, 26 November 1976, Aspen, Colorado, 36 (private collection). (Downey was a student at the University of Nevada at the time; I am indebted to the late Mark Uris for alerting me to this source.) Uris criticized Hersey’s paternalism toward Jews, noting, emphatically, that Hersey was not Jewish.
27. Emanuel Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum, trans. Jacob Sloan (1958; New York: Schocken Books, 1974), 326.
28. Berg’s account was published as Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary, ed. S. L. Schneiderman (New York: Fischer, 1945).
29. Korczak’s diary was published as The Ghetto Years, 1939–1942 (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1980).
30. Gutman, Resistance, 257.
31. Uris, interview by Joseph Wershba, New York Post, 2 July 1959.
32. Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Slave (1962; New York: Fawcett, 1980), 249. On Jews as fighters, see the Uris quotation in Roth, Reading Myself and Others, 138. On the long history of tough Jews, see Breines, Tough Jews, 77–167. Also see Isaiah Trunk, Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution (New York: Stein and Day, 1982), and Reuben Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975). On Jewish revenge in the Second World War, see Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglourious Basterds (2009). Two novels that present tough Jews are Clive Irving’s Promise the Earth (1982), dealing in part with Sarah Aronson and her spy network of the twenties, and Primo Levi’s If Not Now, When? (1985).
33. Quentin Reynolds, “In the Ghetto a Battle for the Conscience of the World,” New York Times, 4 June 1961.
34. Patrick Crutt well, review of Mila 18, Guardian, 27 October 1961. Also see “Back to the Wall,” Time, 2 June 1961, 94.
35. Bruce Cook, “Did Uris Write Novel or Script?” Chicago Sunday Sun-Times, 25 June 1961.
36. To avoid confusion with Uris’s best seller, Heller’s agent, Candida Donadio, suggested replacing “Catch-18,” the original title of the 1955 short story and later novel, with something else. Supposedly, “Catch-22” was chosen because October 22 was her birthday (Lawrence Van Gelder, “Candida Donadio, 71, Agent who Handled ‘Catch 22,’ Dies, New York Times, 25 January 2001).
37. Quoted in “Exodus Author Tells Jewish Appeal of Warsaw Fight,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 20 April 1961.
38. The slides are in box 163, folders 8 and 11, Uris Archive; the photos are in box 203.
39. Uris, interview by Sharon Downey, 29.
40. Joseph P. Tustin, USAFE and the Berlin Airlift, 1949: Supply and Operational Aspects (1950). “USAFE” was the abbreviation for “United States Air Forces in Europe.” Uris’s copy is in box 12, folders 1–2, Uris Archive.
41. Display advertisement from the New York Times, 27 September 1964. The ad citesreviews from the Associated Press, the Denver Post, and Newsday.
42. Gefen, “Leon Uris,” 10.
43. William Barrett, “Big Canvas and Small,” review of Armageddon, by Leon Uris, Atlantic Monthly July 1964.
44. Herbert Mitgang, “Problems and Perils of Berlin Airlift,” review of Armageddon, by Leon Uris, New York Times Book Review, 28 June 1964, 22–23.
45. Review of Armageddon, by Leon Uris, Denver Post, 1964, as cited in a New York Times advertisement, 27 September 1964.
46. Frederic E. Faverty, “Turbulent Times, 16 Centuries Apart,” review of Armageddon, by Leon Uris, Chicago Tribune, 7 June 1964.
47. “Fresh off the Assembly Line,” review of Armageddon, by Leon Uris, Time, 12 June 1964.
48. Uris, interview by William A. R. Melton, Jr., “Uris Negotiates Harper Pact,” Los Angeles Times, 27 March 1966.
49. Ibid.
1. Leon Uris to William Uris, 16 February 1964, box 11, folder 4, Uris Archive.
2. Leon Uris to William Uris, 6 July 1964, box 11, folder 4, Uris Archive.
3. Forty-six of the 130 experimental operations were recorded in Dr. Dering’s hand. See Mavis M. Hill and L. Norman Williams, Auschwitz in England: A Record of a Libel Action (New York: Stein and Day, 1965), 26–27. This is a 293-page account of the trial written by two barristers. A more detailed account of the testimony appears in my chapter dealing with the novel QB VII.
4. Copy in box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
5. Leon Uris to William Uris, 15 June 1966, box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
6. Leon Uris to William Uris, 6 July 1964, box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
7. Ibid.
8. Leon Uris to William Uris, 9 July 1964, box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
9. Leon Uris to William Uris, 4 August 1964, box 139, folder 4, Uris Archive.
10. Mark Uris interview.
11. Betty Uris, diary, box 185, folder 3, Uris Archive.
12. Mark Uris interview.
13. The two novels he wrote before he left Aspen in 1988 (The Haj and Mitla Pass), however, did not generate the astonishing sales or attention of his earlier work. His last three novels, written after his 1988 move to New York and then Shelter Island, at the tip of Long Island, marked his continued decline in popularity.
14. Leon Uris to William Uris, 9 November 1964, box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
15. Bob Braudis, “On the Trail,” Aspen Peak, Summer–Fall 2005, 300. More recent violence included the car-bomb murder of drug dealer Steven Grabow in 1985 and the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson in 2005.
16. Ted Conover, Whiteout: Lost in Aspen (New York: Random House, 1991), 124.
17. Hunter S. Thompson, “Freak Power in the Rockies,” in The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales for a Strange Time (New York: Summit, 1979), 166. The essay documents the attempt by Joe Edwards, a young pothead, lawyer, and bike racer from Texas, to become the mayor of Aspen in 1969. Thompson added that Aspen was “full of freaks, heads, fun-hogs and weird night-people of every description” (155).
18. Jill Uris, interview by the author, 21 June 2005, Aspen, Colorado.
19. Ibid.
20. Leon Uris, “Heatherbedlam,” Ski Magazine, February 1965. The article also summarizes some of Aspen’s cultural accomplishments.
21. Martie Sterling, interview by the author, 21 June 2005, Aspen, Colorado.
22. Mark Uris interview.
23. This description comes from the author’s visit to the house on June 22, 2005.
24. Off that room was a small bathroom with a finicky door that some would later say was controlled by the ghost of the woman who would become his second wife, Margery Edwards. If she chose, she could trap anyone in that small space (Jill Uris interview).
25. See Jill and Dick Durance, “A Town … a Mountain … a Way of Life,” National Geographic 144, no. 6 (December 1973), 788–807; Nellie Blagden, “To Jill and Leon Uris: ‘Our Marriage Is like the Melding of Two Generations,” People, 12 January 1976, 40–44.
26. Quoted in Joanne Ditmer, “Uris Fills Home with Junk” [1966] (clipping in ascrapbook in box 172, Uris Archive).
27. Jill Uris interview.
28. Ibid.
29. Ken McCormick, “Leon Uris: An Editor’s View,” Literary Guild Magazine, January 1971.
30. Betty Uris, diary, box 185, folder 3, Uris Archive.
31. Ibid.
32. Leon Uris to William Uris, 15 June 1966, box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
33. Mark Uris to the author, e-mail, 5 March 2006.
34. Leon Uris to William Uris, 15 June 1966, box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
35. Leon Uris to William Uris, 27 June 1966, box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
36. Leon Uris to William Uris, 15 December 1966, box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
37. Leon Uris to William Uris, 5 August 1966, box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
38. Leon Uris to William Uris, 19 September 1966, box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
39. Leon Uris to William Uris, 9 November 1966, box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
40. Ibid.
41. Leon Uris to William Uris, 15 December box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
42. Leon Uris to William Uris, 23 December 1966, box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
43. Leon Uris to William Uris, 27 December 1966, box 137, folder 10, Uris Archive.
44. Jill Uris interview.
45. Leon Uris, deposition, Superior Court of California, 14 May 1969 (copy in box 84, folder 2, Uris Archive).
46. Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995); Roger Faligot and Pascal Krop, La Piscine: The French Secret Service since 1944, trans. W. D. Halls (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).
47. Philippe de Vosjoli, deposition, 15 May 1969, before Notary Public. Box 84, folder 1, Uris Archive.
48. Leon Uris, deposition.
49. A few days later, Uris gave Vosjoli $2,500 and then a check for $22,500, money from the Bantam deal, which was supposedly worth $400,000. Schlosberg normally received 10 percent.
50. This would become the source of a 1971 California court case between the two men, Vosjoli claiming he had not been given his share of the proceeds (Uris claimed that Vosjoli had violated their agreement by publishing some of his material under his own name in Life). Vosjoli said he had been paid only $65,000; Uris had supposedly received nearly $1 million. Uris testified that Vosjoli hoped that publicity for the novel would spark an official investigation, which would permit him to return to France a hero. In February 1972, Uris lost the case, one of the few legal disputes he did not win. After losing at the appellate level in August 1973, he had to pay Vosjoli $352,350 in royalties. In 1970, Vosjoli had published his version of the original autobiography as Lamia.
51. Vosjoli, deposition.
52. Mark Uris interview.
53. Leon Uris, deposition.
54. Leon Uris, “The Third Temple,” in Strike Zion! William Stevenson, 121–142 (New York: Bantam, 1967).
55. Leon Uris, deposition. The details in this paragraph and the next come from this source.
56. Topaz, Bantam pamphlet (1968), [3].
57. Ibid., [6].
58. Ibid., [11].
59. Mark Uris interview.
60. Review of Topaz, by Leon Uris, Library Journal, 1 October 1967.
61. Review of Topaz, by Leon Uris, Los Angeles Times, 22 October 1967.
62. Melvin Maddocks, “The Uris School of Non-Fiction Fiction,” review of Topaz, by Leon Uris, Life, 20 October 1967.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid.
65. Review of Topaz, by Leon Uris, London Sunday Times, 31 March 1968. A review in the New York Times opined that Uris was “flagrantly unable to construct a plot, a character, a novel or a sentence in the English language—and he takes 130,000 words to display his incompetence” (Anthony Boucher, “Criminals at Large,” review of Topaz, by Leon Uris, New York Times, 29 September 1967).
66. Quoted in Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: Regan Books, 2003), 684.
67. Alfred Hitchcock to Leon Uris, memorandum, 18 June 1968, folder 681, Hitchcock Collection, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, Los Angeles, California (hereafter cited as Hitchcock Collection).
68. Ibid.
69. Leon Uris to Alfred Hitchcock, memorandum, 24 June 1968, folder 681, Hitchcock Collection.
70. Alfred Hitchcock to Lew Wasserman, memorandum, 24 June 1968, folder 681, Hitchcock Collection.
71. McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock, 685.
72. Ibid., 685–686.
73. Transcript of audiotape reel 2, section 16, Hitchcock Collection.
74. Transcript of audiotape reel 2, section 18, Hitchcock Collection.
75. Vincent Canby, “Topaz,” New York Times, 20 December 1969. On the difficulties of filming, see McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock, 684–693.
76. The information in this paragraph comes from newspaper clippings from 1968 in box 173, scrapbook, Uris Archive.
77. Time, 20 September 1968.
78. Newspaper clippings, box 173, scrapbook, Uris Archive.
79. Leon Uris, statement to Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office, 20 February 1969.
80. Barbara Browne, “Author Uris Testifies in Death of Wife,” Rocky Mountain News, 8 March 1969.
81. Ibid.
82. Dr. H. C. Whitcomb, 22 February 1969, case #69106, case report, Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office, Pitkin County, Colorado.
83. Leon Uris, statement to Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office, 20 February 1969, 2.
84. Los Angeles Times, 21 February 1969.
85. “Services Held Sun. for Margery Uris,” Aspen Times, 27 February 1969.
86. Statement of Sergeant Bob Husted, Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office, Aspen, Colorado, 23 February 1969, 4.
87. Quoted in “Jury Still Ponders Death of Mrs. Uris,” Aspen Times, 6 March 1969.
88. Uris in Hutchinson, “Uris: A Life,” 31.
1. Michael Mulnix, “The Battle Cries of Leon Uris,” Writers Digest, November 1977, 26.
2. Gefen, “Leon Uris,” 16.
3. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 24 February 1970, box 139, folder 2, McCormick Collection.
4. Ken McCormick to Leon Uris, 16 February 1970, box 139, folder 2, McCormick Collection.
5. Ken McCormick to Sam Vaughan, memorandum, 14 April 1970, box 139, folder 2, McCormick Collection.
6. Ken McCormick to Sam Vaughan, 29 April 1970, box 139, folder 2, McCormick Collection.
7. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 2 May 1970, box 140, folder 7, McCormick Collection.
8. Ken McCormick to unidentified recipient, 12 January 1971, box 140, folder 8, McCormick Collection.
9. W. G. Rodgers, “Dr. Adam Kelno: Hero or Villain?” review of QB VII, by Leon Uris, New York Times, 15 November 1970.
10. Martha Duffy, “Bestseller Revisited,” review of QB VII, by Leon Uris, Time, 28 June 1971, 80.
11. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “How to Write a Leon Uris,” review of QB VII, by Leon Uris, New York Times, 2 December 1970.
12. Larry McMurtry, “Prose Isn’t the Worst of It,” review of QB VII, by Leon Uris, Washington Post, 6 April 1971.
13. Newspaper clippings, box 72, folders 4 and 5, Uris Archive.
14. On the differences between the novel and the miniseries, see Horowitz, “Cinematic Triangulation,” 156–161.
15. Quoted in Michael C. Hodes, “The Battle Cry of Leon Uris,” Maryland Magazine, February 1996, 23.
16. Uris in Hutchinson, “Uris: A Life,” 33.
17. Gefen, “Leon Uris,” 16.
18. Ibid.
19. William Collins, “‘Ari’ Has More Chutzpah than Inspiration in Opening at Shubert,” review of the musical Ari, by Leon Uris, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 December 1970.
20. Ernest Schier, “‘Ari’ Lies Becalmed in Its Own Rhetoric,” review of the musical Ari, by Leon Uris, Philadelphia Bulletin, 1 December 1970.
21. Clive Barnes, “Uris’s Ari,” review of the musical Ari, by Leon Uris, New York Times, 16 January 1971.
22. Hodes, “Battle Cry of Uris,” 23.
23. Ken McCormick to William Kimber, 9 September 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
24. Ken McCormick to Sam Vaughan, 3 September 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
25. Ken McCormick to Sam Vaughan, 14 September 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
26. Leon Uris to Col. Robert H. Fechtman, 15 September 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
27. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 23 September 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
28. Ken McCormick to Gunnar Dahl, 21 September 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
29. Ken McCormick to Mr. Sharif, Ministry of Information and Culture, Kabul, Afghanistan, 20 September 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
30. Ken McCormick to Ambassador Huang Hua, 28 July 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
31. Transcript of a telephone conversation between Ken McCormick and Leon Uris, 20 July 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
32. Ken McCormick to Sam Vaughan, memorandum, 14 September 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
33. Ibid.
34. Paul Feffer to Jack Madgwick, 28 September 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
35. John Sargent to Ken McCormick, memorandum, 28 September 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
36. Ken McCormick to the consul general of India, Washington, D.C., 20 September 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
37. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 11 November 1971, box 140, folder 7, McCormick Collection.
38. Ambassador Robert Neumann to Ken McCormick, 11 October 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
39. Ken McCormick to G. S. Bryant, 28 September 1971, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
40. Jill Uris to the author, e-mail, 6 June 2007.
41. Hodes, “Battle Cry of Uris,” 21.
42. Jill Uris to the author, e-mails, 6 June 2007 and 9 June 2007.
1. Paul Bew and Gordon Gillespie, Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles, 1968–1999, 2nd ed. (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1999), 57.
2. Jill Uris to the author, e-mail, 8 June 2007.
3. Ibid.
4. The letter from Col. Tugwell is in box 175, Uris Archive.
5. Jill Uris to the author, e-mail, 8 June 2007.
6. Uris, interview by Sharon Downey, 9.
7. Quoted in Linda Zink, “Seeks Clues to Ireland’s Fate,” Long Beach (CA) Independent Press Telegram, 16 July 1976.
8. Jill Uris, outline of Ireland: A Terrible Beauty, box 51, folder 7, Uris Archive.
9. Quoted in Zink, “Seeks Clues to Ireland’s Fate.”
10. Andrew M. Greeley, “A View of Ulster,” review of Ireland: A Terrible Beauty, by Leon and Jill Uris, Irish People, 5 June 1976, 11.
11. David Legate, “Foray to a Strange Land,” review of Ireland: A Terrible Beauty, by Leon and Jill Uris, Montreal Star, June 1976.
12. Jill Uris to the author, e-mail, 8 June 2007.
13. Leon Uris to Sam Vaughan, 19 November 1974, box 140, McCormick Collection.
14. George D. Kane, “Leon Uris Embraces Irish Soul,” Los Angeles Times, March 1976.
15. Uris, interview by Sharon Downey, 7.
16. Ibid., 10.
17. Ibid.
18. Uris, interviewed after the publication of Redemption (1995); the interview is quoted in an entry on Trinity on the website 20th-Century American Bestsellers, http://www3.isrl.illinois.edu/~unsworth/courses/bestsellers/search.cgi?title=Trinity (accessed November 28, 2009).
19. Jill Uris, interview by Michael Norris; quoted in ibid.
20. Quoted in Travis Willmann, “Leon Uris’s Exodus,” Ransom Edition (University of Texas at Austin), Fall 2003; available at http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/ransomedition/2003/ fall/exodus.html (accessed November 28, 2009). In 1996, Uris criticized Gore Vidal’s liberal treatment of history in creating conversations and situations that could not have taken place (Hodes, “Battle Cry of Uris,” 21).
21. Uris once asked a military expert for an exact description of the British infantry rifle used in the Boer War, specifically whether it fired a bolt-operated clip containing several bullets or a single shot. And were officers’ pistols automatic or revolvers? (Leon Uris to Colin Robertson, 10 October 1974, box 151, folder 6, Uris Archive).
22. Diane Eagle, interview by the author, 13 July 2005.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Michael Neiditch, interview by the author, Washington, D.C., 6 May 2004. Neiditch had become a close friend of Uris’s through his work with B’nai B’rith.
26. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 31 October 1974, box 151, folder 1, Uris Archive.
27. Leon Uris to his children, 31 October 1974 (box 101, folder 1, Uris Archive).
28. Leon Uris to Topper Wilson, travel agent, 1 November 1974 (box 101, folder 1, Uris Archive).
29. Leon Uris to Mrs. Svend Beck, n.d., 1974 (box 101, folder 1, Uris Archive).
30. Uris, interview by Sharon Downey, 17.
31. Patrick Dillon, “Ireland: A Dirge Yet Unfinished,” San Diego Union, 11 April 1976. Also see Neil Morgan’s earlier report in the San Diego Evening Tribune, 25 July 1975.
32. Diane Eagle interview.
33. Uris liked the drama of trial scenes, as QB VII proved.
34. George D. Kane, “Leon Uris Embraces the Irish in Trinity,” Los Angeles Times, 11 April 1976.
35. Quoted in Jan Golab, “Leon Uris,” Denver, November 1976, 31.
36. Thomas A. Larkin, “A Talk with Uris: ‘Trinity’ Was the Seed, ‘Redemption’ Was the Unplanned Progeny,” Interviews with Past Masters, http://www.readersroom.com/masters.html (accessed November 28, 2009).
37. John Barkham, “Eloquent Uris Has Made Irish Cause His Own,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7 March 1976.
38. William C. Woods, “The Literary Scene,” review of Trinity, by Leon Uris, New York Post, 11 May 1976.
39. Christopher Hudson, “Ireland, 1885–1915: Uris Insists on Present-Day Parallels,” review of Trinity, by Leon Uris, Chicago Tribune, 7 March 1976.
40. Pete Hamill, review of Trinity, by Leon Uris, New York Times Book Review, 29 August 1976, 5.
41. June Southworth, “Pompous, Old Hat and Very, Very Dangerous,” review of Trinity, by Leon Uris, Daily Mail, 8 October 1976.
42. Philip Howard, review of Trinity, by Leon Uris, London Times, 7 October 1976.
43. John Hume, “As It Was in the Beginning,” review of Trinity, by Leon Uris, Hibernia Fortnightly Review, 8 October 1976: 20.
44. Uris, interview by Sharon Downey, 36.
45. Charles J. Haughey, “Suffering Still but the Dream Remains,” review of Trinity, by Leon Uris, Sunday Independent (Ireland), 10 October 1976.
46. Uris, interview by Sharon Downey, 22.
47. Ibid., 8.
48. Ibid., 11.
49. Ibid., 2.
50. Mark Uris interview.
51. Leon Uris to Reuven Dafni, 3 April 1976, box 151, folder 6, Uris Archive.
52. John Coleman, “Proper Study,” review of Exodus, by Leon Uris, Spectator, 10 July 1959.
53. Quoted in Brian Benna, “Leon Uris, Author Bristles at Suggestion of Historical Distortion,” Calgary Herald, 9 May 1980.
54. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 4 February 1975, box 135, folder 8, Uris Archive.
55. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 14 February 1975, box 135, folder 8, Uris Archive.
56. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 14 October 1975, box 135, folder 8, Uris Archive.
57. Ibid.
58. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 29 December 1975, box 135, folder 8, Uris Archive.
59. Gefen, “Leon Uris,” 10.
60. Uris, interview by Sharon Downey, 34.
61. Ibid.
62. Gefen, “Leon Uris,” 10.
63. Bergen (NJ) Record, 1988.
64. Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (London: Macmillan, 2003), 197; J. Bower Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA, rev. 3rd ed. (London: Transaction, 1997), 500–503.
65. Uris, interview by Sharon Downey, 24.
66. Ibid., 19.
67. Ibid.
68. Promotional material, box 101, folder 1, Uris Archive. The announcement of 1 September 1976 noted that the production would be financed by Fred Brogger and Video Progressive Service of Toronto. Trinity Productions was the name of the company.
69. This material is in box 101, folder 1, Uris Archive.
70. Leon Uris, quoted in promotional material, box 101, folder 5, Uris Archive.
71. A copy of the guest list is in box 101, folder 3, Uris Archive.
72. Leon Uris to Warren Cowan, 31 January 1977, box 151, folder 6, Uris Archive.
73. Leon Uris to Rogers Cowan Agency, 31 January 1977, box 101, folder 5, Uris Archive.
74. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick and Sam Vaughan, 16 July 1976, box 135, folder 6, Uris Archive.
75. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, box 151, folder 6, Uris Archive.
76. Leon Uris to Sam Vaughan, 3 August 1976, box 151, folder 6, Uris Archive.
77. Ibid.
78. Brogger reportedly backed out after negotiations between Uris and Ardmore Studios, in Wicklow, Ireland, failed (“Trinity Film Out,” Dublin Sunday Press, 25 June 1978). The Irish government would not agree either to invest several million dollars in the project or to provide film equipment or facilities. Apparently, no formal negotiations with the government ever occurred; Uris just met a few ministers socially.
79. Leon Uris to William Uris, 18 December 1974, box 151, folder 1, Uris Archive.
80. Leon Uris to Yohanon Behan, 18 December 1974, box 151, folder 1, Uris Archive.
1. Uris in Paul Hendrickson, “Exodus to Trinity: The Impact of Leon Uris’ Runaway Epics,” Washington Post, 2 May 1978.
2. Mulnix, “Battle Cries of Uris,” 26–27. Adding further insult, Mailer was a presenter at the Academy Awards in March 1977; the attention angered Uris.
3. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 31 December 1976, box 150, folder 7, Uris Archive.
4. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 27 July 1977, box 135, folder 8, Uris Archive.
5. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 24 August 1977, box 135, folder 8, Uris Archive.
6. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 5 September 1977, box 135, folder 8, Uris Archive.
7. Ibid.
8. Leon Uris to Joan Ward, 4 November 1977, box 135, folder 8, Uris Archive.
9. Jill Uris to the author, e-mail, 9 June 2007.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. “Uris Visitor,” Aspen Daily News, 13 September 1979.
13. Sam Vaughan to Ken McCormick, memorandum, 14 November 1983, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
14. A copy of the manuscript is in box 46, folder 1, Uris Archive.
15. Copies of these draft s of what would become The Haj are in box 46, folders 2–3, Uris Archive.
16. Ken McCormick to Sam Vaughan, memorandum, 16 October 1982, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
17. Sam Vaughan to Doubleday staff, 27 December 1982, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
18. Sam Vaughan to Ken McCormick, 24 January 1983, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
19. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 3 August 1984, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
20. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 4 March 1983, box 140, folder 6, McCormick Collection.
21. Sam Vaughan to John O’Donnell, 8 March 1983, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
22. Ibid.
23. Leon Uris to John O’Donnell, 26 July 1983, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
24. Linda Winnard to Sam Vaughan, 29 July 1983, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
25. Ken McCormick to Sam Vaughan, 8 September 1983, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
26. Ken McCormick to Leon Uris, 7 September 1983, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
27. Sam Vaughan to Leon Uris, 12 September 1983, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
28. Leon Uris to Sam Vaughan, 14 September 1983, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
29. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 29 September 1983, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
30. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 20 January 1984, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
31. Ibid.
32. Quoted in Pearl Sheffy Gefen, “From the Inside Out,” Jerusalem Post, 28 January 1995. Ironically, the “new historians” in Israel have recently upheld some of Uris’s views. In 1948: The First Arab-Israel War (2008), Benny Morris argues that the Arabs’ lack of a national identity, combined with their focus on the family, the clan, and internal struggles for power, made them vulnerable to the better-organized and better-prepared Israelis in 1948. It was no surprise that determined Israeli forces, though fewer in number, defeated the underfunded and poorly prepared Arab armies.
33. Jill Uris to the author, e-mail, 8 June 2007.
34. Uris, “A Special Message for the First Edition from Leon Uris,” The Haj (Franklin Center, Penn.: Franklin Library, 1984), n.p.
35. The creation of such strong father figures as Ari Ben Canaan, Gideon Asch, or Haj Ibrahim compensated, perhaps, for the absence of a strong, supportive, nurturing father in Uris’s own life.
36. Sam Vaughan to Ken McCormick and the Doubleday PR staff, 3 June 1984, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
37. Review of The Haj, by Leon Uris, ALA Booklist, 15 February 1984.
38. Gerald Green, “A Novel of Besieged Israel, from an ‘Arab’ Viewpoint,” review of The Haj, by Leon Uris, Chicago Sun-Times, 15 April 1984.
39. Quoted in John Coit, “Son of Abraham Pitches a New Tent,” Denver Rocky Mountain News, 10 April 1984.
40. Quoted in Gefen, “From the Inside Out.”
41. Ibid.
42. Leon Uris to Sam Vaughan, 16 July 1984, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
43. Dick Hoffman to Sam Vaughan, 21 June 1984, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
44. Sam Vaughan to Ken McCormick, memorandum, 23 July 1984, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
45. Ibid.
46. Leon Uris to Sam Vaughan, 23 July 1984, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
47. Sam Vaughan to Ken McCormick, 23 July 1984, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
48. Leon Uris to Lou [?], 16 July 1984, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
49. Ibid.
50. Herb Schlosberg, deposition, 17 May 1989 (copy in box 135, folder 4, Uris Archive). This was testimony during Uris’s divorce from Jill Uris.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Diane Eagle, “Ode to Leon,” August 1984 (private collection).
54. Leon Uris to Sam Vaughan and Ken McCormick, 2 November 1983, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
55. See Uris, address to the New York Times Literary Luncheon, 18 September 1988 (box 181, folder 8, Uris Archive).
56. Mark Uris, who was present at the event, to the author, 20 June 2005.
1. Ken McCormick to Sam Vaughan, 10 October 1984, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
2. Vaughan explained to Uris that the words “diplomacy,” “State Department,” and “foreign policy” were usually “numbing, commercially.” Nevertheless, he believed that Uris’s handling of the topic would be strong. And even though Uris wanted “to do an American novel,” Vaughan thought that “it ought not to be a ‘Washington novel.’” There was a great deal of fatigue among people in the trade about Washington novels at the moment. In any new topic explored by Uris, Vaughan wondered whether it would be something that would engage his “sympathy, power and passion? Where is the underdog?” A final suggestion was for a novel set in the American West, where Uris lived—a new American western, perhaps (Sam Vaughan to Leon Uris, 9 May 1984, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection).
3. Sam Vaughan to Leon Uris, 25 October 1984, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection.
4. Hodes, “Battle Cry of Uris,” 22.
5. Leon Uris, “Old Letters, New Life,” Franklin Mint Almanac (Exton, Penn.: Franklin Library, 1988); copy in box 140, folder 8, McCormick Collection.
6. Leon Uris, “Old Letters Never Die,” box 179, Uris Archive. The scale of the Uris Archive at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin attests to the magnitude of what Uris retained: 169 boxes, 43 oversize boxes (containing scrapbooks and other material), and 6 galley folders, filling 108 linear feet.
7. Uris quoted in Hillel Italie, “Leon Uris … Dies at 78,” Associated Press, 24 June 2003.
8. Copy in box 140, folder 8, McCormick Collection.
9. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick, 3 June 1986, box 140, folder 8, McCormick Collection.
10. Uris, “Rough Outline and Ramdon [sic] Notes for Lullaby—The life story of Gideon Zadok” [1986], box 140, folder 8, McCormick Collection.
11. Anna Blumberg Abrams, “Won’t Somebody Please Hold Me!” 1970, box 140, folder 8, McCormick Collection.
12. Leon Uris, “Gideon’s Early Childhood Memories,” 1986, 13, box 140, folder 11, McCormick Collection. This differs from Uris’s “Rough Outline” and appears in an outline, sent to McCormick, of the new novel, then called “Lullaby.” Additionally, a file in the McCormick Collection contains excerpts from the letters of William Uris, selected by Leon Uris, along with McCormick’s objections to Uris writing an autobiography.
13. For McCormick’s benefit, Uris excerpted a letter from his father (dated 22 April 1953), sent just after the publication of Battle Cry: “I received the book you sent me, but ‘Oi Gewald’ I am t-e-r-r-i-b-l-y d-i-s-s-a-p-o-i-n-t-e-d you didn’t autograph it. I was really embarrassed, when I looked for the autograph and didn’t find it” (box 140, folder 8, McCormick Collection).
14. Ken McCormick to Leon Uris, 5 June 1986, box 140, folder 8, McCormick Collection.
15. Uris in Gefen, “Leon Uris,” 15.
16. “Imaginative fodder” is from Webster Schott, “Pilgrim in the Promised Land,” review of Mitla Pass, by Leon Uris, Washington Post Book World, 30 October 1988; the description of the novel as a personalization of history is from “Uris’ Mitla Pass,” Boston Globe, November 1988.
17. Roger Jaynes, “Michener Syndrome: Leon Uris Writes a Masterpiece then Buries It in Words,” Milwaukee Journal, 20 November 1988.
18. Faulkner to his stepson, Malcolm Franklin, ca. 1942; see William Faulkner, Selected Letters of William Faulkner, ed. Joseph Blotner (New York: Random House, 1977), 165–168.
19. Myra Yellin Goldfarb, “Leon Uris, a Profile,” Allentown (PA) Hakol, November 1989, 4.
20. Leon Uris to Burlington Township Schools, 31 October 1991, box 133, folder 4, Uris Archive.
21. Uris, address to the New York Times Literary Luncheon, 18 September 1988, box 181, folder 8, Uris Archive.
22. Ibid.
23. Leon Uris, “Answers to Petitioner’s Interrogatories,” 6 September 1989 (copy in box 135, folder 5, Uris Archive).
24. Antony Delano, “Shtetls and Sweatshops,” review of Mitla Pass, by Leon Uris, London Sunday Times, 7 May 1989.
25. Leon Uris, “Leon Lays Bare His Complex Life,” interview by Julie Cockcroft, Edinburgh Evening News, 13 May 1989.
26. Uris, speech at the dedication of the Tarawa Monument, Long Beach, California, 1 July 1998 (box 182, folder 1, Uris Archive).
27. Leon Uris to Ken McCormick and Sam Vaughan, 4 March 1983, box 140, folder 3, McCormick Collection.
28. Jill Uris to Leon Uris, 16 February 1989 (box 135, folder 4, Uris Archive).
29. Jill Uris to Leon Uris, n.d., box 135, folder 4, Uris Archive.
30. Leon Uris to Jill Uris, 10 November 1988, box 135, folder 4, Uris Archive.
31. Leon Uris to Herb Schlosberg, Andy Hecht, and Robert Kendig, 3 January 1988, box 135, folder 5, Uris Archive.
32. Herbert Schlosberg, deposition, 17 May 1989 (copy in box 135, folder 4, Uris Archive).
33. Uris, “Answers to Petitioner’s Interrogatories.”
34. Ken McCormick to Leon Uris, 17 May 1989, box 135, folder 4, Uris Archive.
35. Uris, “Answers to Petitioner’s Interrogatories.”
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Hodes, “Battle Cry of Uris,” 21.
40. Uris to Schlosberg, Hecht, and Kendig, 3 January, box 135, folder 5, Uris Archive.
41. Leon Uris to Jill Uris, 10 April 1989 (box 135, folder 5, Uris Archive).
42. Jill Uris to Leon Uris, 12 September 1989, box 135, folder 5, Uris Archive.
43. Jill Uris to Leon Uris, 23 April 1990, box 135, folder 5, Uris Archive.
44. Leon Uris to Robert Kendig, 13 September 1989, box 135, folder 5, Uris Archive.
45. Andy Hecht, interview by the author, 21 June 2005, Aspen, Colorado.
46. Michael Neiditch interview.
47. Leon Uris, interview by Esther Boylan, Columbia Perspectives (Columbia University), February–March 1989.
48. Budapest Daily News, 31 October 1989 (clipping in a scrapbook in box 179, Uris Archive).
49. Pia Ingstrom, “I’m No Diplomat,” Independent (Sweden), 12 October 1989.
50. [Priscilla Higham], “USSR,” chronology, box 149, folder 6, Uris Archive.
51. Michael Neiditch interview.
52. Uris, speech in Riga, Latvia, 15 October 1989, box 149, folder 6, Uris Archive.
53. Michael Neiditch interview.
54. Michael Neiditch to E. Barnes, Motion Picture Association of America, 6 October 1989, box 149, folder 6, Uris Archive.
55. Ibid.
56. Michael Neiditch, “The Dead Hand of Perestroika,” Ha’aretz, 10 November 1989, box 149, folder 6, Uris Archive.
57. Ibid.
58. Uris, “Helsinki-Leningrad Express,” typescript, n.d., box 149, folder 6, Uris Archive.
59. Essie Kofsky, “Notes,” Russia, 1989, box 149, folder 6, Uris Archive.
60. Alan L. Shulman to Leon Uris, 11 August 1989, box 149, folder 6, Uris Archive.
61. Uris’s notes for the talk are in a scrapbook in box 178, Uris Archive.
62. The itinerary for the trip is in box 149, folder 6, Uris Archive.
63. Ibid.; Michael Neiditch interview.
The epigraph to this chapter is from Michael C. Hodes, “The Battle Cry of Leon Uris,” Maryland Magazine, February 1996, 23.
1. Goldfarb, “Uris Profile,” 4.
2. Channing Thieme, interview by the author, 18 April 2008.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Linda Moss, “Authors Restive at Doubleday,” Crain’s New York Business, 16 April 1990.
7. Mark Uris interview; Marilynn Pysher, interview by the author, 18 May 2005.
8. Hodes, “Battle Cry of Uris,” 22.
9. Ibid., 23.
10. Nancy Stauffer, interview by the author, 20 May 2005, New York City.
11. Marjorie Braman, HarperCollins, interview by the author, 17 May 2005, New York City.
12. Maxwell Ayrton and Arnold Silcock, Wrought Iron and Its Decorative Use (1929; repr., Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2003).
13. Larkin, “A Talk with Uris.”
14. Uris, interview by Boylan.
15. Malachy Duffy, “In Short: Fiction. Redemption,” New York Times Book Review, 2 July 1995, 11.
16. Marjorie Braman interview.
17. Mark Uris interview.
18. Ibid.
19. Jill Uris interview.
20. Nancy Stauffer interview.
21. Mark Uris interview.
22. Marjorie Braman interview.
23. Linda L. Richards refers to his labored and stilted writing, childish dialogue, and rambling narrative, which begins with a first-person account by O’Connell but is quickly replaced by an omniscient narrator. She goes on to say that the work reads more like a poorly executed screenplay than a novel, the plot exposition resembling set directions (“A Story in Ruins,” January Magazine, July 1999). Publishers Weekly called the novel “too stylistically scattered” (July 1999).
24. Uris in Pearl Sheffy Gefen, “Among the Ruins … Leon Uris Struggles back,” National Post, 17 July 1999, 9.
25. Mark Uris interview.
26. More vividly, according to his oldest son, Uris told him the woman had nearlybitten off one of his testicles. He took pride in this proof of his masculinity.
27. Marjorie Braman interview.
28. Uris provided the following blurb on the back of Stanley Fisher and James Ellison’s Discovering the Power of Self-Hypnosis (New York: Harper Collins, 1991): “Through Dr. Fisher’s self-hypnosis, I am able to revitalize myself as often as I need during the day by short restful breaks.”
29. Mark Uris interview.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Marilynn Pysher interview.
33. Mark Uris interview.
34. Irving Wallace received the largest advance in the history of Bantam Books: $2.3 million in April 1972, although it was for a three-book deal. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann became the fastest-selling novel in history: Bantam printed 4 million paperbackcopies the first week of publication in July 1967, and 4 million more by the end of the year. In 1973, it surpassed Peyton Place as the novel with the highest sales: the total was 15.8 million. Louis L’Amour, however, was Bantam’s all-time best-selling author: in twenty years, the publisher sold some 42 million copies of his titles. See Clarence Petersen, The Bantam Story, 2nd ed. (New York: Bantam, 1975), 24, 28, 32.
35. The leading new historian in Israel is Benny Morris, whose The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (1998) and 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War (2008) initiated the reassessment of the Israeli narrative.
36. The phrase “moral memory palace” is from Tony Judt, Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century (New York: Penguin, 2008), 4.
37. Uris complained to the president of Bantam Books when Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth appeared, berating the self-indulgent fantasies of the hero and the wastefulenergy of the author in writing the book (Oscar Dystel, interview by the author, 20 May 2005, New York City).
38. See Alan Furst, Dark Star; Louis de Bernières, Corelli’s Mandolin; William T. Vollmann, Europe Central; and Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones (Les Bienveillantes).
39. William T. Vollmann, Europe Central (New York: Viking, 2005), 5.
40. Ibid., 9.
41. Dan Wakefield, “Israel’s Need for Fiction”; Leon Uris to William Uris, 10 July 1957 (box 137, folder 8, Uris Archive). Uris might have agreed with Mickey Spillane’s claim that “I don’t have readers, I have customers” (quoted in Larry Orenstein, “Even More Satisfied Customers,” review of The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown, Toronto Globe and Mail, 19 September 2009).
42. Vollmann, Europe Central, 10.
1. Evelyn Englander, interview by the author, 5 May 2004, U.S. Marine Corps Historical Center, Naval Yard, Washington, D.C.
2. See http://www.cem.va.gov/cems/nchp/quantico.asp (accessed 14 January 2010).
3. Herschel Blumberg, interview by the author, 7 May 2004, Chevy Chase, Maryland.