Without the help of Geoff Gehman, these detailed timelines would not AT ALL be possible. Geoff, spent a great deal of time and energy researching the details of both Jere Knight and Eric Knight. Geoff Gehman spent many hours interviewing Jere ( audio to be posted on this site soon ), and became quite close to Jere over the later part of Jere's life. Next to Jere's son Jeffery, there is no one on the Planet that knows more about Jere or Eric Knight. Geoff Gehman's books are extrodinary, and well worth the read for those interested in polished literature.
JERE KNIGHT’S TIMELINE
1907: Born Ruth Frances Brylawski on Nov. 25 in Philadelphia. Nicknamed Jere—short for Jeremiah—after her father reads HYDR to JERE volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Mother helps gives her lifelong love of literature and nature.
1923: Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris; French is one of her four fluent languages.
1928-32: Earns bachelor’s degree in psychology and languages and master’s in political science from University of Pennsylvania. Fences with Olympic junior team. Shows jumping and gaited horses. Serves as secretary for Pennsylvania chapter of League of Nations Association
1931: Meets Eric Knight, movie writer/editor for The Public Ledger, at the Russian Inn in Philadelphia. The Quakers debate the necessity of war, with Jere remaining a dove and Eric remaining a hawk, a natural position for a World War I veteran. He courts her with scores of romantic, poetic letters she compares to hand holding by proxy. In one missive he insists: “You’re like Shakespeare sonnets or Swinburne couplets/You’re a bigger thing than those quintuplets/You’re a flight from coast to coast by Wiley Post/You super superlative girl.”
1932-1934: Marries Knight, who writes a short Ledger article about the event, repeating “Did I tell you the bride was beautiful?” Jere and Eric rent a Valley Forge farm with a menagerie of animals, including collies. They spend many lively days in Chadds Ford with N.C., Andrew and Henriette Wyeth.
1934-1937: Joins Eric in Southern California, where he’s writing for and advising the Fox Film Corporation. Becomes assistant story editor for Selznick International Pictures, new production company run by David O. Selznick. who produced M-G-M’s “David Copperfield” and “A Tale of Two Cities.” Supervises Ring Lardner Jr., future screenwriter of “MASH,” and Budd Schulberg, future screenwriter of “On the Waterfront.” Back on the East Coast becomes Eastern story editor for Selznick, playing a role in the acquisition of screen rights for “Gone with the Wind”
1937: Story magazine publishes Eric’s novella “The Flying Yorkshireman,” the very tall tale of the very impractical Sam Small and his very practical wife, Mully. Jere insists Eric borrowed elements of Mully’s nagging from her constant, blunt but well-intentioned reminders. Jere and Eric move to Finney Farm in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., a property once owned by Horace Greeley, the notorious author and newspaper editor/publisher who coined the command “Go west, young man.”
1939: The Knights buy and begin renovating a run-down 18th-century farmhouse in Pleasant Valley, Springfield Township, Bucks County.
1940: John C. Winston publishes Eric’s novel “Lassie Come-Home,” the best-known, most beloved story about the unshakable, unbreakable bond between dogs and humans. Jere helped teach Eric about collie behavior, which came in handy with the couple’s pet, Toots, the role model and canine consultant for “Lassie.” She also advised him when he read aloud unfinished portions of “Lassie” in after-dinner sessions nicknamed “trying it out on the dog.” It was one of her many roles as his literary, emotional and spiritual consultant, or amanuensis.
1941: Harper & Brothers publishes Eric’s “This Above All,” a best-selling philosophical romance set in England during World War II. Jere declines to play Prudence, a heroic nurse partly based on her, in Life magazine’s large photo essay on the book. She and Eric go to London on assignment for The Saturday Evening Post. His article covers the English-American lend-lease program; hers covers women in British military and industry
1942: Signs up as PR point person for new Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (later Women’s Army Corp, or WAC). Writes speeches for WAC director Oveta Culp Hobby, later first U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Delivers Eric’s anti-Axis speech “They Don’t Want Swamps or Jungles” in French on Canadian radio. She and Eric take tea at the White House with irst Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
1943-1945: Mourns Eric’s death in the explosion of a military plane over Surinam, Dutch Guiana. Receives condolence letters from Walt Disney and President Roosevelt. Consults Canadian Women’s Army Corps as WAC major. Writes speech on logistics for Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. R.R. Smith publishes “Always Room at the Top,” memoir by opera singer and garden matriarch Ganna Walska, which Jere ghost wrote. Jokes that her unwritten memoir would be titled “And Make Me a Good Girl, Amen.”
1946: Marries Frederick Lindtner, Norwegian-born member of U.S. Army Air Force
1948: Gives birth to Jeffrey Lindtner, who will surprise his mother with a long-promised collie pup descended from the first movie Lassie, arrange the publication of a collection of her poetry, and continue to run the family farm in Pleasant Valley as a nature sanctuary.
1950s-1960s: Teaches at Moravian Preparatory School in Bethlehem. Abridges and adapts “Lassie Come-Home” (Wonder Books, 1956) and writes “Lassie’s Long Trip” (Wonder Books, 1957). Serves as research and editorial associate, as well as uncredited editor, for Lehigh University history professor Lawrence Henry Gipson’s 15-volume series on the British Empire’s 28 years before the American Revolution; the 1763-1766 book wins 1962 Pulitzer Prize for History. Serves as executrix of the literary estate of e.e. cummings, poet, novelist and Eric comrade.
1967: The Globe-Times publishes book-length supplement of her history of the Lehigh Valley’s economy, which wins Pennsylvania NEAP award for feature article.
1970: Performance of her libretto for the opera “Helen in Egypt,” based on epic poem by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), born and buried in Bethlehem.
1972: The Globe-Times runs her stories from Sweden on the United Nations’ first global conference on the human environment.
1970s-1990s: Serves on boards of United Friends School, Bucks County Mental Health Society and Friends of the Lehigh University Libraries; the latter hosts her talk on cummings. Uses her dogs to teach “Lassie” and collie behavior, earning her the title “Mrs. Lassie.” Lobbies state of Pennsylvania to protect Cooks Creek, which runs through Durham and Springfield townships, as a vital conservation area. Lobbies U.S. Postal Service to issue Eric Knight stamp, extending her never-ending mission as her first husband’s relict, or widow
1981: Heritage Conservancy applies her name to nature trail by Springfield Township portion of Cooks Creek that runs by her home.
1984: Peace trip to Nicaragua inspires her to translate poetry by Central American women published in 1987 Granite Press anthology.
1990: Attends exhibit marking 50th anniversary of “Lassie Come-Home” at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, primary repository of Eric Knight papers. Discusses “Lassie” on “Good Morning America” from England, primary setting of novel and Eric’s homeland.
1993: Petoskey Stone Press publishes her poetry collection “The Uphill View.”
1994: Becomes Springfield Township supervisors’ first community quality-of-life honoree for being a pioneer conservationist and a citizen of the world. “As long as I’m around this community,” she proclaims, “I’m going to yak.”
1995: Lehigh University awards her honorary degree in humane letters, which she jokingly proposes donating to a humane society.
1996: Attends dedication of Eric Berg’s bronze sculpture of Lassie at the Michener Museum of Art in Doylestown. Dies on June 29 at Pennswood Village in Newtown, Bucks County. Laid to rest in Richland Friends Meeting Burial Ground in Quakertown.
1998: Co-star and dedicatee of Geoff Gehman’s book “Down But Not Quite Out in Hollow-weird: A Documentary In Letters of Eric Knight”(Scarecrow Press). Dedication reads: “She spoke to thy condition.”
1907: Born Ruth Frances Brylawski on Nov. 25 in Philadelphia. Nicknamed Jere—short for Jeremiah—after her father reads HYDR to JERE volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Mother helps gives her lifelong love of literature and nature.
1923: Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris; French is one of her four fluent languages.
1928-32: Earns bachelor’s degree in psychology and languages and master’s in political science from University of Pennsylvania. Fences with Olympic junior team. Shows jumping and gaited horses. Serves as secretary for Pennsylvania chapter of League of Nations Association
1931: Meets Eric Knight, movie writer/editor for The Public Ledger, at the Russian Inn in Philadelphia. The Quakers debate the necessity of war, with Jere remaining a dove and Eric remaining a hawk, a natural position for a World War I veteran. He courts her with scores of romantic, poetic letters she compares to hand holding by proxy. In one missive he insists: “You’re like Shakespeare sonnets or Swinburne couplets/You’re a bigger thing than those quintuplets/You’re a flight from coast to coast by Wiley Post/You super superlative girl.”
1932-1934: Marries Knight, who writes a short Ledger article about the event, repeating “Did I tell you the bride was beautiful?” Jere and Eric rent a Valley Forge farm with a menagerie of animals, including collies. They spend many lively days in Chadds Ford with N.C., Andrew and Henriette Wyeth.
1934-1937: Joins Eric in Southern California, where he’s writing for and advising the Fox Film Corporation. Becomes assistant story editor for Selznick International Pictures, new production company run by David O. Selznick. who produced M-G-M’s “David Copperfield” and “A Tale of Two Cities.” Supervises Ring Lardner Jr., future screenwriter of “MASH,” and Budd Schulberg, future screenwriter of “On the Waterfront.” Back on the East Coast becomes Eastern story editor for Selznick, playing a role in the acquisition of screen rights for “Gone with the Wind”
1937: Story magazine publishes Eric’s novella “The Flying Yorkshireman,” the very tall tale of the very impractical Sam Small and his very practical wife, Mully. Jere insists Eric borrowed elements of Mully’s nagging from her constant, blunt but well-intentioned reminders. Jere and Eric move to Finney Farm in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., a property once owned by Horace Greeley, the notorious author and newspaper editor/publisher who coined the command “Go west, young man.”
1939: The Knights buy and begin renovating a run-down 18th-century farmhouse in Pleasant Valley, Springfield Township, Bucks County.
1940: John C. Winston publishes Eric’s novel “Lassie Come-Home,” the best-known, most beloved story about the unshakable, unbreakable bond between dogs and humans. Jere helped teach Eric about collie behavior, which came in handy with the couple’s pet, Toots, the role model and canine consultant for “Lassie.” She also advised him when he read aloud unfinished portions of “Lassie” in after-dinner sessions nicknamed “trying it out on the dog.” It was one of her many roles as his literary, emotional and spiritual consultant, or amanuensis.
1941: Harper & Brothers publishes Eric’s “This Above All,” a best-selling philosophical romance set in England during World War II. Jere declines to play Prudence, a heroic nurse partly based on her, in Life magazine’s large photo essay on the book. She and Eric go to London on assignment for The Saturday Evening Post. His article covers the English-American lend-lease program; hers covers women in British military and industry
1942: Signs up as PR point person for new Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (later Women’s Army Corp, or WAC). Writes speeches for WAC director Oveta Culp Hobby, later first U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Delivers Eric’s anti-Axis speech “They Don’t Want Swamps or Jungles” in French on Canadian radio. She and Eric take tea at the White House with irst Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
1943-1945: Mourns Eric’s death in the explosion of a military plane over Surinam, Dutch Guiana. Receives condolence letters from Walt Disney and President Roosevelt. Consults Canadian Women’s Army Corps as WAC major. Writes speech on logistics for Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. R.R. Smith publishes “Always Room at the Top,” memoir by opera singer and garden matriarch Ganna Walska, which Jere ghost wrote. Jokes that her unwritten memoir would be titled “And Make Me a Good Girl, Amen.”
1946: Marries Frederick Lindtner, Norwegian-born member of U.S. Army Air Force
1948: Gives birth to Jeffrey Lindtner, who will surprise his mother with a long-promised collie pup descended from the first movie Lassie, arrange the publication of a collection of her poetry, and continue to run the family farm in Pleasant Valley as a nature sanctuary.
1950s-1960s: Teaches at Moravian Preparatory School in Bethlehem. Abridges and adapts “Lassie Come-Home” (Wonder Books, 1956) and writes “Lassie’s Long Trip” (Wonder Books, 1957). Serves as research and editorial associate, as well as uncredited editor, for Lehigh University history professor Lawrence Henry Gipson’s 15-volume series on the British Empire’s 28 years before the American Revolution; the 1763-1766 book wins 1962 Pulitzer Prize for History. Serves as executrix of the literary estate of e.e. cummings, poet, novelist and Eric comrade.
1967: The Globe-Times publishes book-length supplement of her history of the Lehigh Valley’s economy, which wins Pennsylvania NEAP award for feature article.
1970: Performance of her libretto for the opera “Helen in Egypt,” based on epic poem by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), born and buried in Bethlehem.
1972: The Globe-Times runs her stories from Sweden on the United Nations’ first global conference on the human environment.
1970s-1990s: Serves on boards of United Friends School, Bucks County Mental Health Society and Friends of the Lehigh University Libraries; the latter hosts her talk on cummings. Uses her dogs to teach “Lassie” and collie behavior, earning her the title “Mrs. Lassie.” Lobbies state of Pennsylvania to protect Cooks Creek, which runs through Durham and Springfield townships, as a vital conservation area. Lobbies U.S. Postal Service to issue Eric Knight stamp, extending her never-ending mission as her first husband’s relict, or widow
1981: Heritage Conservancy applies her name to nature trail by Springfield Township portion of Cooks Creek that runs by her home.
1984: Peace trip to Nicaragua inspires her to translate poetry by Central American women published in 1987 Granite Press anthology.
1990: Attends exhibit marking 50th anniversary of “Lassie Come-Home” at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, primary repository of Eric Knight papers. Discusses “Lassie” on “Good Morning America” from England, primary setting of novel and Eric’s homeland.
1993: Petoskey Stone Press publishes her poetry collection “The Uphill View.”
1994: Becomes Springfield Township supervisors’ first community quality-of-life honoree for being a pioneer conservationist and a citizen of the world. “As long as I’m around this community,” she proclaims, “I’m going to yak.”
1995: Lehigh University awards her honorary degree in humane letters, which she jokingly proposes donating to a humane society.
1996: Attends dedication of Eric Berg’s bronze sculpture of Lassie at the Michener Museum of Art in Doylestown. Dies on June 29 at Pennswood Village in Newtown, Bucks County. Laid to rest in Richland Friends Meeting Burial Ground in Quakertown.
1998: Co-star and dedicatee of Geoff Gehman’s book “Down But Not Quite Out in Hollow-weird: A Documentary In Letters of Eric Knight”(Scarecrow Press). Dedication reads: “She spoke to thy condition.”
ERIC KNIGHT’S TIMELINE
1897: Born April 10 in Menston, County Yorkshire, England. Jokingly attributes his crazy effervescence to growing up between a mineral-water spa and an insane asylum.
1900: His father, a well-heeled jewelry merchant, disappears to South Africa or Australia, abandoning Eric, his two brothers and their mother, originally hired by the boys’ father to nurse his dying wife. Eric remembers only two things about his dad: the smells of his pipe tobacco and his Russian-leather wallet.
1903-1912: Mother goes to Russia to care for royal children. Eric is shuttled between Yorkshire relatives. His uncle Richard Hallas introduces him to the joys of horses and dogs. His uncle Ned Creasser introduces him to the joys of stories of come-home dogs, trained by sneaky Yorkshiremen to come home after being sold to be sold again. Eric will filter this bit of realistic folklore into the novel “Lassie Come-Home.” Teacher Frederick Leathley introduces him to the joys of reading good books, writing and creative thinking, all of which nurture him while he works half- and full-time in factories that produce glass, wool and copying ink.
1912-1917: Settles in Philadelphia with mother, brothers and stepfather. Works in carpet factory and at newspaper as copy boy and feature writer. Studies at Art Students League in Manhattan and Cambridge (Mass.) Latin School, alma mater of poet e.e. cummings, his future friend. Becomes accomplished at drawing, tennis and piano. Marries Dorothy Hall, another English expat. Volunteers to fight World War I with the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry Brigade, a storied Canadian regiment. Inspired to battle by Ian Hay’s best-selling 1915 novel, “The First Hundred Thousand,” a largely humorous account of a volunteer British unit who remain sane with insane camaraderie. Tragic naivete of young soldiers will be a theme in his novel “This Above All,” set during WWII but shadowed by WWI.
1918: Betty Knight, first of three daughters, is born the day after his brothers Edward and Frederick die on the same day fighting for a U.S. Army division in France. Memorable war encounters include playing piano in a bombed-out French farmhouse and somehow communicating in a trench with a severely wounded German soldier he assumed was dead. Will reference his war experiences in “Lassie Come-Home” in a poor, kind elderly couple who save a dying collie partly because her bravery reminds them of the bravery of their son, who died for England in WWI.
1919-1927: Supports wife and children by writing, editing and cartooning for newspapers in Connecticut, the Bronx and Philadelphia. Hires Val Lewton after he passes Knight’s standard test to write a compelling story about a cemetery, then fires the teen after he invents a story about a truckload of kosher chickens expiring in a heat wave. Lewton will become the legendary writer-producer of “Cat People,” ‘I Walked with a Zombie” and other horror films with low budgets and high values.
1928-1934: Becomes a local celebrity writing about movies, or photoplays, for The Public Ledger, a daily paper in Philadelphia. Ennobles a young medium’s awkward transition from silence to sound by treating it as entertainment, art and business, supporting clubs or experimental ilms and interviewing stars (i.e., Edward G. Robinson) cinematographers and ushers.
1932: Marries Ruth “Jere” Brylawski, Philadelphia native, secretary for Philadelphia chapter of League of Nations Association, equestrian and Olympic-caliber fencer. Writes up their City Hall ceremony in The Public Ledger with comic breathlessness, repeating “Did I tell you the bride was beautiuful?”
1934: Fox Film Corporation brings him to Southern California to write screenplays and help them decide what the public wants on the screen. Labors in vain on vehicles for Spencer Tracy (“Dante’s Inferno”) and Shirley Temple (“Poor Little Rich Girl.” Receives no screen credits, although he submits a lively treatment in which Temple unknowingly spies for a fabled Belgian intelligence unit in World War I, carrying secrets in her doll. Replaces Jere’s pet dog, a wire-haired terrier killed by a car, with a six-week-old collie he buys from a fellow Yorkshireman. Named Toots after a popular song, she’ll serve as role model and canine consultant for “Lassie Come-Home.”
1935-1936: Leaves Fox, insisting his only footprint was denting a desk with his shoe heels. Free-lances treatments for Paramount Pictures. Starts writing fiction full time for the first time on an alfalfa farm in Zelzah, now Northridge. Harper & Brothers publishes his second novel, “Song on Your Bugles,” autobiographical tale of young Yorkshireman struggling to maintain art career while working in factories and coal mines. Larger-than-life, Dickensian art teacher is based on N.C. Wyeth, patriarch of a notable family of painters. Begins nourishing relationship with editor Edward Aswell, editor of Thomas Wolfe’s “You Can’t Go Home Again” and Richard Wright’s “Native Son.”
.
1937: Travels to Manhattan in a train’s baggage car to care for a pregnant Toots. Story magazine publishes novella “The Flying Yorkshireman,” the very tall tale of ale-swilling, self-flummoxing Sam Small, who wills himself to soar to relieve his loneliness in Southern California, where his daughter is trying to be a movie actress. Wins a bet with Story editor Whit Burnett that he can write Americana with Mark Twain’s winking wit. “The Flying Yorkshireman” will become a hot unproduced property for hot movie director/producers Frank Capra, Stanley Kramer and Gene “Star Trek” Roddenberry. Living in a rented home in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., Eric and Jere socialize with Paul Robeson, who sings spirituals while Eric plays accordion.
1938-1939: Publication of novel “You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up,” hard-boiled, noir-ish satire of ’30s Southern California fads--economic, religious and cinematic. Written by “Richard Hallas,” the name of a favorite Yorkshire uncle, it will become a cult favorite for the likes of David Lynch, director of “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet.” Begins teaching creative writing at the nascent University of Iowa Writers Workshop, in the process befriending painter Grant Wood. Travels to Great Britain to research Saturday Evening Post story on distressed industrial areas. Distressed by long-unemployed coal miners forced to sell their prized dogs, he writes a short story about a beloved collie zigzagging 1,000 arduous miles from her new owner’s estate in Scotland to the cottage of a long-unemployed Yorkshire coal miner to reunite with her original humans. Post publishes “Lassie Come-Home” in Dec. 17 issue, then receives letters about dogs whose epic returns home turn Lassie’s odyssey into what Eric calls “a weekend jaunt.” Eric and Jere buy and start renovating a run-down 18th-century farmhouse in Pleasant Valley, Pa., the first home either one of them has owned. .
1940: John C. Winston, a Philadelphia publisher of children’s books and bibles, releases the novel “Lassie Come-Home,” an all-ages, gently autobiographical tribute to the unshakable, unbreakable bond between dogs and humans. Eric insists the book is built on a foundation of faith. “Faith isn’t trusting in probabilities,” he writes. “Faith is the thing that says despite hell, high-water, locks, bolts, bars and absolute improbability, I still believe.”
1941: Harper & Brothers publishes novel “This Above All,” a philosophical romance between an AWOL English soldier and an English nurse, set mainly during the blitzing of London in WW II. Katharine Hepburn attempts to buy movie rights to Eric’s first international best seller. Rights are purchased by Twentieth-Century Fox for $35,000, part of which Eric and Jere use to build wing on their home. Charles MacArthur, co-author of the stage and screen versions of “The Front Page,” attempts to turn Eric’s novel into a play. Eric grants permission for a racehorse to be named after him, jokingly requesting payment of a load of manure. Travels to England to research a Saturday Evening Post story on the English-American lend-lease program. Starts planning a documentary on improving the quality and distribution of food worldwide with his good friend Paul Rotha, English documentarian, film historian and chief Knightian correspondent.
1942: “This Above All” the film stars Tyrone Power and Joan Fontaine. Maj. Frank Capra, celebrated director of “It Happened One Night” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” recruits him to write basic scripts for “Why We Fight,” a ground-breaking series of military propaganda movies. Assignment includes coordinating animated maps at the Disney studios, where he befriends Walt Disney. Visits California set of “Lassie Come-Home,” which features Roddy McDowall and a collie named Pal, a he playing a she. Writes Army pamphlet telling American soldiers how to behave properly with British colleagues (i.e., never discuss pay and never, ever insult the king). Anti-Axis speech, “They Don’t Want Swamps or Jungles,” on Canadian radio yields more than 350,000 requests for copies. Becomes an American citizen. He and Jere take tea at the White House with Eleanor Roosevelt.
1943: Promoted from Colonel to Major. Dies when a military plane bound for Cairo, where he’ll help open an Armed Forces radio station, explodes on Jan. 15-16 over Surinam, Dutch Guiana. Likeliest cause is a bomb carried by a passenger attempting to stop two FBI agents from interviewing an American Nazi ally. Jere receives letters of condolence from Walt Disney and President Roosevelt. Receives posthumous Legion of Merit. “Prelude to War,” first “Why We Fight” film, earns Academy Award. “World of Plenty” premieres at international food conference. “Lassie Come Home” the film debuts at Radio City Music Hall with Eric’s name on the marquee and in a dedicatory prologue
1952: Chapman & Hall publishes “Portrait of a Flying Yorkshireman,” a collection of Eric’s letters to Paul Rotha. Editor Rotha includes photos of Eric talking to Eleanor Roosevelt at Hyde Park and a portrait of Eric by his boon companion Peter Hurd, donated by Jere to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
1998: Scarecrow Press publishes Geoff Gehman’s “Down But Not Quite Out in Hollow-weird: A Documentary in Letters of Eric Knight,” an epistolary biography of Eric’s two frustrating, fascinating terms, or sentences, chasing screen stories for Spencer Tracy, Shirley Temple and Frank Capra. It’s the crazily charming saga of a high-flying dreamer summarized as “a thousand pounds of steam under two hundred pounds of boiler.”
1897: Born April 10 in Menston, County Yorkshire, England. Jokingly attributes his crazy effervescence to growing up between a mineral-water spa and an insane asylum.
1900: His father, a well-heeled jewelry merchant, disappears to South Africa or Australia, abandoning Eric, his two brothers and their mother, originally hired by the boys’ father to nurse his dying wife. Eric remembers only two things about his dad: the smells of his pipe tobacco and his Russian-leather wallet.
1903-1912: Mother goes to Russia to care for royal children. Eric is shuttled between Yorkshire relatives. His uncle Richard Hallas introduces him to the joys of horses and dogs. His uncle Ned Creasser introduces him to the joys of stories of come-home dogs, trained by sneaky Yorkshiremen to come home after being sold to be sold again. Eric will filter this bit of realistic folklore into the novel “Lassie Come-Home.” Teacher Frederick Leathley introduces him to the joys of reading good books, writing and creative thinking, all of which nurture him while he works half- and full-time in factories that produce glass, wool and copying ink.
1912-1917: Settles in Philadelphia with mother, brothers and stepfather. Works in carpet factory and at newspaper as copy boy and feature writer. Studies at Art Students League in Manhattan and Cambridge (Mass.) Latin School, alma mater of poet e.e. cummings, his future friend. Becomes accomplished at drawing, tennis and piano. Marries Dorothy Hall, another English expat. Volunteers to fight World War I with the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry Brigade, a storied Canadian regiment. Inspired to battle by Ian Hay’s best-selling 1915 novel, “The First Hundred Thousand,” a largely humorous account of a volunteer British unit who remain sane with insane camaraderie. Tragic naivete of young soldiers will be a theme in his novel “This Above All,” set during WWII but shadowed by WWI.
1918: Betty Knight, first of three daughters, is born the day after his brothers Edward and Frederick die on the same day fighting for a U.S. Army division in France. Memorable war encounters include playing piano in a bombed-out French farmhouse and somehow communicating in a trench with a severely wounded German soldier he assumed was dead. Will reference his war experiences in “Lassie Come-Home” in a poor, kind elderly couple who save a dying collie partly because her bravery reminds them of the bravery of their son, who died for England in WWI.
1919-1927: Supports wife and children by writing, editing and cartooning for newspapers in Connecticut, the Bronx and Philadelphia. Hires Val Lewton after he passes Knight’s standard test to write a compelling story about a cemetery, then fires the teen after he invents a story about a truckload of kosher chickens expiring in a heat wave. Lewton will become the legendary writer-producer of “Cat People,” ‘I Walked with a Zombie” and other horror films with low budgets and high values.
1928-1934: Becomes a local celebrity writing about movies, or photoplays, for The Public Ledger, a daily paper in Philadelphia. Ennobles a young medium’s awkward transition from silence to sound by treating it as entertainment, art and business, supporting clubs or experimental ilms and interviewing stars (i.e., Edward G. Robinson) cinematographers and ushers.
1932: Marries Ruth “Jere” Brylawski, Philadelphia native, secretary for Philadelphia chapter of League of Nations Association, equestrian and Olympic-caliber fencer. Writes up their City Hall ceremony in The Public Ledger with comic breathlessness, repeating “Did I tell you the bride was beautiuful?”
1934: Fox Film Corporation brings him to Southern California to write screenplays and help them decide what the public wants on the screen. Labors in vain on vehicles for Spencer Tracy (“Dante’s Inferno”) and Shirley Temple (“Poor Little Rich Girl.” Receives no screen credits, although he submits a lively treatment in which Temple unknowingly spies for a fabled Belgian intelligence unit in World War I, carrying secrets in her doll. Replaces Jere’s pet dog, a wire-haired terrier killed by a car, with a six-week-old collie he buys from a fellow Yorkshireman. Named Toots after a popular song, she’ll serve as role model and canine consultant for “Lassie Come-Home.”
1935-1936: Leaves Fox, insisting his only footprint was denting a desk with his shoe heels. Free-lances treatments for Paramount Pictures. Starts writing fiction full time for the first time on an alfalfa farm in Zelzah, now Northridge. Harper & Brothers publishes his second novel, “Song on Your Bugles,” autobiographical tale of young Yorkshireman struggling to maintain art career while working in factories and coal mines. Larger-than-life, Dickensian art teacher is based on N.C. Wyeth, patriarch of a notable family of painters. Begins nourishing relationship with editor Edward Aswell, editor of Thomas Wolfe’s “You Can’t Go Home Again” and Richard Wright’s “Native Son.”
.
1937: Travels to Manhattan in a train’s baggage car to care for a pregnant Toots. Story magazine publishes novella “The Flying Yorkshireman,” the very tall tale of ale-swilling, self-flummoxing Sam Small, who wills himself to soar to relieve his loneliness in Southern California, where his daughter is trying to be a movie actress. Wins a bet with Story editor Whit Burnett that he can write Americana with Mark Twain’s winking wit. “The Flying Yorkshireman” will become a hot unproduced property for hot movie director/producers Frank Capra, Stanley Kramer and Gene “Star Trek” Roddenberry. Living in a rented home in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., Eric and Jere socialize with Paul Robeson, who sings spirituals while Eric plays accordion.
1938-1939: Publication of novel “You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up,” hard-boiled, noir-ish satire of ’30s Southern California fads--economic, religious and cinematic. Written by “Richard Hallas,” the name of a favorite Yorkshire uncle, it will become a cult favorite for the likes of David Lynch, director of “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet.” Begins teaching creative writing at the nascent University of Iowa Writers Workshop, in the process befriending painter Grant Wood. Travels to Great Britain to research Saturday Evening Post story on distressed industrial areas. Distressed by long-unemployed coal miners forced to sell their prized dogs, he writes a short story about a beloved collie zigzagging 1,000 arduous miles from her new owner’s estate in Scotland to the cottage of a long-unemployed Yorkshire coal miner to reunite with her original humans. Post publishes “Lassie Come-Home” in Dec. 17 issue, then receives letters about dogs whose epic returns home turn Lassie’s odyssey into what Eric calls “a weekend jaunt.” Eric and Jere buy and start renovating a run-down 18th-century farmhouse in Pleasant Valley, Pa., the first home either one of them has owned. .
1940: John C. Winston, a Philadelphia publisher of children’s books and bibles, releases the novel “Lassie Come-Home,” an all-ages, gently autobiographical tribute to the unshakable, unbreakable bond between dogs and humans. Eric insists the book is built on a foundation of faith. “Faith isn’t trusting in probabilities,” he writes. “Faith is the thing that says despite hell, high-water, locks, bolts, bars and absolute improbability, I still believe.”
1941: Harper & Brothers publishes novel “This Above All,” a philosophical romance between an AWOL English soldier and an English nurse, set mainly during the blitzing of London in WW II. Katharine Hepburn attempts to buy movie rights to Eric’s first international best seller. Rights are purchased by Twentieth-Century Fox for $35,000, part of which Eric and Jere use to build wing on their home. Charles MacArthur, co-author of the stage and screen versions of “The Front Page,” attempts to turn Eric’s novel into a play. Eric grants permission for a racehorse to be named after him, jokingly requesting payment of a load of manure. Travels to England to research a Saturday Evening Post story on the English-American lend-lease program. Starts planning a documentary on improving the quality and distribution of food worldwide with his good friend Paul Rotha, English documentarian, film historian and chief Knightian correspondent.
1942: “This Above All” the film stars Tyrone Power and Joan Fontaine. Maj. Frank Capra, celebrated director of “It Happened One Night” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” recruits him to write basic scripts for “Why We Fight,” a ground-breaking series of military propaganda movies. Assignment includes coordinating animated maps at the Disney studios, where he befriends Walt Disney. Visits California set of “Lassie Come-Home,” which features Roddy McDowall and a collie named Pal, a he playing a she. Writes Army pamphlet telling American soldiers how to behave properly with British colleagues (i.e., never discuss pay and never, ever insult the king). Anti-Axis speech, “They Don’t Want Swamps or Jungles,” on Canadian radio yields more than 350,000 requests for copies. Becomes an American citizen. He and Jere take tea at the White House with Eleanor Roosevelt.
1943: Promoted from Colonel to Major. Dies when a military plane bound for Cairo, where he’ll help open an Armed Forces radio station, explodes on Jan. 15-16 over Surinam, Dutch Guiana. Likeliest cause is a bomb carried by a passenger attempting to stop two FBI agents from interviewing an American Nazi ally. Jere receives letters of condolence from Walt Disney and President Roosevelt. Receives posthumous Legion of Merit. “Prelude to War,” first “Why We Fight” film, earns Academy Award. “World of Plenty” premieres at international food conference. “Lassie Come Home” the film debuts at Radio City Music Hall with Eric’s name on the marquee and in a dedicatory prologue
1952: Chapman & Hall publishes “Portrait of a Flying Yorkshireman,” a collection of Eric’s letters to Paul Rotha. Editor Rotha includes photos of Eric talking to Eleanor Roosevelt at Hyde Park and a portrait of Eric by his boon companion Peter Hurd, donated by Jere to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
1998: Scarecrow Press publishes Geoff Gehman’s “Down But Not Quite Out in Hollow-weird: A Documentary in Letters of Eric Knight,” an epistolary biography of Eric’s two frustrating, fascinating terms, or sentences, chasing screen stories for Spencer Tracy, Shirley Temple and Frank Capra. It’s the crazily charming saga of a high-flying dreamer summarized as “a thousand pounds of steam under two hundred pounds of boiler.”