Sprinkled With Ruby Dust by H.N. Swanson (1989)
Introduction:  A Few Remarks About That Man by Elmore Leonard

“Whenever I am asked what kind of writing is the most lucrative, I have to say, ransom notes.” 
H.N. Swanson

  Everyone in the motion-picture business and the publishing field knows him as Swanie.  They say, “Sure… Swanie, a very dear friend of mine, known him for years.”  Then they smile and shake their heads with a faraway look in their eyes - or is it a faintly glazed expression? - remembering the times that they went a few negotiating rounds with him.  “The toughest agent I’ve ever dealt with,” a publisher tells me and pauses, and there is the faint smile, within it the reflection of an experience he will never forget.

  In the more than thirty years that H.N. Swanson has been selling the things I write, the only less-than-friendly reference to him that I can recall was made by a New York agent who represented me during a brief period in 1969.  He referred to the legendary agent from Hollywood as “that Swede counter-jumper.”  If the charge was not motivated entirely by sour grapes, it was at least based loosely on conflicting attitudes as to how my work should be marketed.

  The East Coast agent’s method was to plan his approach in the quiet, deep cushioned confines of his club, with a martini or more, believing that there was no great urgency in offering a book manuscript; the publishers would always be there.  Meanwhile, on the other coast, Swanie would be lunching with a film producer at Chasen’s or the Brown Derby, intent on pitching a story, convinced that nine out of ten times the best way to sell the goods was when they were fresh out of the oven, still hot, and for as much as could get up front.  Anything else, such as profit participation in lieu of hard cash, might sound enticing but was mere pie in the sky - unless you could get points, as well as a sizable payment.

  At last, after a manuscript of mine had languished in the New York agent’s office for for an entire month before he knew it was there, I determined that Swanie would be my sole agent of record from that time on.

(continued)

(continued)

  Before this - going back to the mid-fifties, when I was writing westerns - Swanie had handled the negotiations for my first three movie deals for Marguerite Harper, who was my New York agent at the time.  In August 1966, I finished my first novel with a contemporary setting:  it was called MOTHER, THIS IS JACK RYAN.  Marguerite Harper liked it, saw film possibilities in it, and immediately sent the manuscript to Swanie.  (Shortly afterward, because of illness, she asked him to handle the book sale as well.  Early the following year, Marguerite passed away.)

  Then one morning in mid-September, the phone rang it I spoke to H.N. Swanson for the first time.  Hie asked if I had actually written this offbeat novel about a guy named Jack Ryan - surprised, I suppose, because it wasn’t a Western.  I convinced him that I was the author, and Swanie’s next line was one I will remember for as long as I live:  “Well, kiddo, I’m going to make you rich.”

  I know for a fact that I believed him, because it gave my confidence a shot I can still feel today.

  Even when the book drew dozens of rejections from publishers and film producers, Swanie and I knew it would eventually sell - once I rewrote it, added a stronger plot, and changed the title to THE BIG BOUNCE (though I still prefer MOTHER, THIS IS JACK RYAN).  That I didn’t do, sailing now on Swanie-inspired confidence, was to take the advice of numerous editors and turn the book into a formula story.

  “Don’t lose your nerve now,” Swanie said in a letter he wrote me in July 1967.  “We have a tiger by the tail.  I would suggest that you do what you’re planning to do to it (the manuscript), but do it fast.”

(continued)

(continued)

  By the time I was into my next book, I felt that I should have an agent in New York as well as Swanie in Hollywood - someone to replace Marguerite Harper and deal with publishers directly.  All Swanie said was, “Why?  I have a phone.”  He didn’t press the matter, and it wasn’t long before I learned that Swanie’s phone was more effective in the publishing marketplace that the interim agent’s living presence.  And that was that.

  My first trip to Hollywood was in 1943, before going into the Navy.  I hitched a ride out with a couple of high-school buddies, and we hung around Hollywood and Vine most of the time, looking for movie stars.  We spotted Tyrone Power and Annabella, Helmunt Dantine, Richard Whorf; visited Twentieth Century Fox and watched Betty Grable loop a number for PIN-UP GIRL; rode the Santa Monica bus past Ciro’s and The Mocambo on our way to the beach - past the Swanson Building too, on Sunset Strip, but failed to notice it.

  When finally I did visit Swanie’s offices twenty-five years later, it was just as though I had stepped off that Santa Monica bus back in the forties.  I climbed the stairs of the Swanson Building to Swanie’s second-floor office of dark wood, wall sconces, venetian blinds, and a thousand books.  A silver-haired gentleman in a double-breasted, pin-striped suit, a carnation in the buttonhole, said, “Well, kiddo, welcome to Hollywood.”  And there was no doubt in my mind but that I was there.

  On that first trip, Swanie took me to the major studios in his black Cadillac and introduced me to many producers.  “So they can take a look at you.  They like to see what they’re buying,” he told me.  He drove past his three-acre, walled estate in Beverly Hills, pointing out that the way to find his home was to “look for the only house on the street without a mortgage.”

  A few years later (I think it was in 1973), we drove past the house again.  Neighbors over the years - Dean Martin, Kenny Rogers, Pia Zadora, Linda Evans, and Frank Sinatra a couple blocks over - come and go.  Swanie, with his beautiful flower gardens and dozen orange trees, has been there longer than any of them.

(continued)

  Quite unexpectedly, in January 1984, my wife Joan and I were invited to Swanie’s home, to actually walk inside for the first time.  On other occasions, Joan and Swanie had usually discussed investments or gardening, or argued about titles.  This time they talked about movie stars who had been invited there to parties, Swanie showing us the patio where Scott and Zelda had danced.  Finally I happened to mention that in the thirty years Swanie had been representing me, he had driven me past the house twice but this was the first time I had ever been inside.  Swanie chuckled and said, “Well, you weren’t making any real money till lately.”

  There was a feeling that this was a special occasion, not one to simply commemorate our first visit.  In due time, Swanie announced, “I almost forgot to tell you, Norma and I got married yesterday.”  Swanie’s first wife of fifty-two years had passed away two or three years previously.  Norma had long been a friend of the family.  An attractive redhead for the silver-haired lion, Norma has style and she’s fun; their marriage was the best thing that could have happened to Swanie.

  Still, I had to ask. “Are you telling us that you took time off from work yesterday to get married?”

  Swanie growled, but with a gleam in his eye:  “Of course not.  Norma picked me up at four o’clock.”

  During the football season, the man will tolerate a weekend away from business.  But anything that threatens to keep him from the office longer than that - a national holiday popping up unexpectedly, for instance - will bring forth a grumbling sound from deep within.  A few years ago, following a brief illness, he wrote to say:  “I’m back in the saddle and riding hard.  If I never told you before, I will tell you now:  nothing in this world can take the place of work.  It’s the best companion you will ever have.  It will never upset your lifestyle, and there is always the chance it will make you rich as well as famous.”

(continued)

  There are times when I seriously believe that he would like to see me chained to my typewriter.  Once when I fractured an ankle playing tennis, his response was:  “Painful enough it is, I feel the accident to your leg is the best thing that happened to your career in a long time.  It means you can’t be out chasing those dangerous tennis balls and will have to sit still and write all the time.”

  On another occasion he explained, as though I didn’t know:  “The purpose of this letter is to put a burr under your saddle.  I hope you are drinking large quantities of black coffee and getting that new story licked into shape.”

  Work, work, work.

  “Hope you can finish up the job for C.F. so we can get you something else in a hurry.”  And there’s this one:  “Keep me in daily touch and stop these delightful holiday trips.”

  Swanie tries to motivate me whenever he sends me a check:  “You should be able to live on this for two and a half years, which would free your mind of earthly cars, giving you all this time for writing.”

  He offers me sound financial advice.  Here are just a few of his admonitions:

  *  Remember, the trick is to be highly solvent at all times.  Preserve capital.

  *  Capital is a nervous rabbit ducking from under a bush to another at the slightest smell of movement anywhere.  Capital is almost always in motion, so go with the flow.

  *  Don’t follow the prices [of stocks] in the paper, because when you see a paper profit, you’re likely to want to sell, and that is wrong nine times out of ten.

  *  If you need money, turn to your trade.  You work all your life at it, and the time you give it now will raise more money for you than anything else I can think of.
 
  *  Loan no money to friends.  It will get around that you are writing for movie stars, and they will come at you from all angles.

  *  Protect capital!  When times get rough, as they always do, loan yourself money.  If you have anything left out of this check, buy your wife a pretty little hat and for yourself a pair of stylish but sturdy boots.  Then back to your trade.

  *  The Swanson Market Letter of last week omitted a favorite of mine, Texas Oil and Gas. . . .”

(continued)

  Although Swanie has long been enamored of the movie business, he once warned me:  “I know I don’t have to tell you to avoid having anything to do with putting money in motion pictures and TV.  They are probably the most hazardous things open to any sucker in this country at the moment.”

  He was the major studios during a tight-money, low-production period as “big wet birds sitting on a telephone line trying to keep each other warm.”

  He continues to urge that I write stronger roles for women, adding at the bottom of a letter:  “Before you go to sleep every night, I hope you review the day’s writing and are pleased that the girl in the book has so much to do.”

  Or he may finish his letter on a note that’s apropos of nothing:

  *  Keep all doors locked.  Help is on the way.

  *  Take your swine-flu shot and two shots of Jack Daniels.

  *  We have some very good suits under $35.00 and wide selection from which to choose.

  *  Whenever I am asked what kind of writing is the most lucrative, I have to say, ransom notes.  (My favorite.)

  In a letter to a publisher with whom he has been negotiating a contract, he adds a postscript that wonders, “Were you ever a district attorney?”

  A publisher complains in outrage that Swanie is asking an unreasonable amount of money for one of my books.  He won

(final)

  “The boy” witnesses another negotiating session wherein Swanie advises the publisher that the advance on a book already under contract would have to be increased by a considerable amount.  The publisher protests, “But that’s not fair.  We have an agreement.”  And Swanie. with some surprise, counters with, “Fair?  I never said I was fair.  Do you want the boy or not?”

  The fact that “the boy” is twenty years older than the publisher, and by now an old hand at the business, is beside the point.  By listening to his agent, “the boy” has the feeling that his is just beginning to show what he can do.

  God love him.  Swanie gives you confidence to stay with your work and to continue trying to make it better.  He will tell you that it’s like playing a game:  though you’re out to win, you don’t want to take it too seriously.  If it isn’t fun, it isn’t worth doing.

  To know Swanie as a friend, and to have had him represent my work for so many years, has been one of the great pleasures of my life.

Elmore Leonard
Birmingham, Michigan
September 8, 1988

Chapter 20 in this book is called “Dutch” and it has some nice things to say about the legend, Elmore Leonard.

MORE ON H. N. SWANSON

What’s it gonna take to get a little bit of Chapter 20, then?
Full retail?

I just love all these little tidbits and articles you keep coming up with, Robb.
Kudos to you, as well, for taking some of the slack off our fearless leader and site administrator Mr. (don’t call me Neil) Sutter.