Universal Weekly (1933-1935)

1*- UNIVERSAL WEEKLY • ■ = Nov. 30, 1935 He Wrote the Frank Merriwell Stories [Photo by Ben Pinchot) Gilbert Patten, who wrote the “ Frank Merriwell,, stories for eighteen years, under the name of Burt L. Standish. Mr. Patten seems to have had a complex on names. He was born George William Patten and sent his first story to a magazine under the name of William G. Patten. Before he got through with the Merriwell stories, he not only had Frank, but Dick Merriwell, and Frank Merriwell, Jr. in it. By GILBERT PATTEN //pVlD I have a model for Frank Merriwell?" Gilbert Patten smiled. "It's a question everybody asks. The answer is Yes, but not a living model. The model was a mental conception. As nearly as I could, I made Frank the kind of fellow I imagined any decent, self-respecting American boy would like to be — a clean, healthy squareshooter with both physical and moral courage but no sissy. "It wasn't as easy as it sounds," he went on, "for I wanted the approval of parents as well as the boys and girls who would read the stories. Just try that on your typewriter if you ever write a juvenile yarn. It'll make you sweat some not to strike any sour notes. "Frank had to be on the up-and-up and still he couldn't be the sort of a sweet child most well-meaning fathers and mothers would turn little Willie into, give them their The Man who Wrote the Longest and Most Widely Read Series of Juvenile Adventures ever Printed, Answers a Few Questions which Millions of Young and Older Boys and Girls are Anxious to Learn from First-hand, about the Famous Frank Merriwell and how he got that Way. way. He had to be a good mixer and command the respect of the gang. He had to fight but he couldn't carry a chip on his shoulder. He had to be modest and still have plenty of self-assurance and drive. Talk about doing stunts on a tight-rope, that was my job. "But I've always hated liars and double-crossers and cheats of every brand, so it wasn't so hard to have him dislike them also. The hard part of it was not to make him seem too good to be true. So I gave him some weaknesses of his own to fight against and made him tolerant of the natural weaknesses and mistakes of others. I surrounded him with friends who often slipped a cog or two, as well as enemies who were bad actors. That's the set-up in real life as well as fiction. "I made him athletic because I believe in sports of that nature. I made him a winner because more people love a fat man than a loser. And the fellow who lacks the will to win won't get anywhere either in sports or real life. I made him a square winner because a crooked winner is always a cheat, no matter how well he gets away with it. "I wrote the Merriwell stories to please myself — and make a living. When I wrote the first one I was under contract to the publishers to turn out one 20,000-word story a week, with Frank as the hero, for three years. That was something! I didn't believe I'd last that long, but I kept knocking them off regularly every week for almost eighteen years and wrote a dozen cloth-bound juvenile books at the same time, just to keep myself out of mischief. "What surprises me, however, is the way Frank has refused to die. I never dreamed he would hang on so long. If I had — well, no, I guess I couldn't have written the stuff any better and found time to sleep and knock around a little. "But I didn't pound the yarns out myself on a typewriter after the first year or so; I dictated them to an efficient secretary. And she became so efficient that many a story went to the publishers, after she had typed it from her notes, without being read over and corrected by me. I wish I could find another like her. "Something that surprises me still more is the fact that I seldom meet a man today who was not a Merriwell reader in his youth, if he read juvenile fiction at all. And many of them can tell me more about the stories than I can remember myself. They tell me, too, that the influence of Frank Merriwell has had a distinct bearing on their lives.