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The Jerry Todd / Poppy Ott Books: Leo Edward's Celebration of
American Boyhood
Sometime back in 19143, when I was eleven years old, I came across my first Leo Edwards book in our school library. Appropriately enough it was Jerry Todd and the Whispering Mummy, the first volume of the once highly popular Jerry Todd series. At the time, I was caught up in the cycle of Mummy horror movies produced by Universal studios, so naturally the title of this book captured my immediate attention. After reading it, I knew I was hooked on something else, too-the Leo Edwards manner of telling a story. In marked contrast to the creators of romanticized boy heroes like Frank Merriwell, Tom Swift, and Don Sturdy. Edwards portrayed believable, down-to earth juvenile characters who became innocently involved in adventures and mysteries which usually took them no further than the general vicinity of their hometown. The genius of Leo Edwards lay in his ability to draw on this familiar setting repeatedly over the course of 25 books (including nine in the interrelated Poppy Ott series) to write fresh, entertaining, and wholesomely appealing stories that attracted a legion of followers during these books' heyday-the 1920-30s. By 1943, though, the Edwards books were out of print, and after I had read the one Todd and three Ott books shelved in the school library, I was unable to locate any others. Undaunted, I must have re-read the Whispering Mummy at least three or four times. Ultimately, the three Otts received a similar going over, especially one titled Poppy Ott and the Freckled Goldfish. This was the story which inspired Edwards to organize a fan club in 1928 that he called the Secret and Mysterious Order of the Freckled Goldfish. In his own clever way, Edwards was probably poking fun at adult secret societies, lodges, and clubs, but his readers didn't seem to mind as thousands joined up to receive the membership card, pin, and lodge ritual offered by the author. To disseminate club news, Edwards presided over "Our Chatter-Box," a column which appeared in ensuing editions of the Todd/Ott books. Whether members or not, all readers were encouraged to submit letters and poems for publication in this periodic feature, which was quite unique for series books. Ironically enough, after I had outgrown my initial enthusiasm for the Edwards canon, a generous lady, ridding her household of a grown son's boyhood diversions, presented me with his entire collection of the books. This was a collector's dream, of course, but coming as it did in the more sophisticated years of high school, proved anticlimactic as far as my interest in the books was then concerned. So I packed them away as memorabilia from a more innocent time in my life. Only recently, when I discovered 1984 to be the centennial year of Leo Edwards' birth, did I realize the time might be right for another look at this author1s most successful output, not just to pay homage to his achievement as one of America's best writers of juvenile series fiction, but to assess some of the reasons for a popularity which, at its height in the Thirties, drew 10,000 letters a year from his youthful audience. "Leo Edwards" was actually the pen name of Edward Edson Lee (1884-1944), who grew up in the small, middle-American town of Utica, Illinois. Then, after a move to Beloit, Wisconsin, in his early teens, his life began to read like the scenario of an Horatio Alger novel. To help support a widowed mother, he had to quit school and take a job in a machine works. Imbued with the same self-made traits of an Alger character, though, Lee moved right on up the ladder of success and by 1920 was making his mark in the burgeoning field of commercial advertising, having worked for companies in Detroit and Ohio. Paradoxically, Lee the businessman was more motivated to succeed as a fiction writer than as an advertising executive. But only when he started producing for the rapidly expanding juvenile market of the time, did he find his niche. After selling a number of stories to popular magazines like American Boy, Lee departed the advertising business for a fulltime writing career and in 1922 produced his first hardcover book-Andy Blake in Advertising, a collection of stories based on his days in the business world. Finally, in 1924, with the inception of the Jerry Todd series and a contract with the New York publishing house of Grosset & Dunlap, Edward Edson Lee became "Leo Edwards," and success and popularity were imminent. Although he was nearly 40 years old, he went on to turn out four different series comprising 39 books over the next sixteen years, of which the most popular were the Todd/Ott series. Edwards' experience in the advertising field obviously taught him a great deal about how to charm an audience through special writing techniques, for much of the appeal of a Jerry Todd story lies in the manner of its telling; that is, as it is told from Jerry's personal point of view. In an era when Frank Merriwell athletic types and resourceful boy adventurers were still very much the heroic model, to center on an ordinary boy as the narrator of his stories was a masterly stroke on Edwards's part. This was a device that not only humanized the action, it drew the reader directly into the flow of the story itself. Among the many things we learn through Jerry's special "voice" is that he and his pals lead the normal life of most middle-class American boys, even when they are involved in a mystery. To pursue their common interests, Jerry's hometown of Tutter, Illinois, is obviously the best place in the world to live, where opportunities abound for swimming, boating, camping, making money, or just chumming around. But whatever activity the boys identify with, it is continually being expanded upon by Jerry's fanciful imagination, which, more than anything else, precipitates the problems, scrapes, and mysterious goings-on in which he and his pals find themselves frequently involved. Although Jerry's hypersensitivity played as much a part in an Edwards plot as any other ingredient, it was hardly a deterrent to most readers, who by a story's end were eager to follow up on Jerry's personal invitation to read the next book in the series-usually described in either a brief introduction or in the last paragraph of the book. Typically, then, the plot of a Todd, and (later) an Ott, book develops around a "mystery" which Jerry's free-wheeling outlook magnifies into something more fearsome and complicated than it actually is. The first Todd book will serve to illustrate the narrative mode common to practically all the books. A mysterious old man dupes Jerry and his pals into buying badges which identify them as specially appointed "Juvenile Jupiter Detectives." Then one night on a side trip to the Tutter College museum, the fellows are sure they hear the mummy displayed there actually speak, an incident which ultimately draws them into a mystery surrounding the mummy's disappearance. However, in attempting to solve their first case, Jerry's gang becomes mixed up in a series of frightening but comical events, due largely to their bungling detective work. Not until the last chapter do the Yellows realize that much of what has happened to them has been the result of their over-heated imaginations. And fittingly, the old man they met at the beginning of the story (a prototype for the eccentric, senile characters of the later books) supplies the solution to the mystery of the missing mummy. According to Eugene Lee, the author's son, the Whispering Mummy was "based on a true incident," as were many of the other books. Edwards, who grew prosperous enough to winter in Florida, also owned a summer cottage on Lake Ripley, Wisconsin, where the ideas for many of his books were conceived. His son has revealed that the cottage was "a Mecca for the kids from Cambridge, Ripley, and the surrounding farms. Our doors were never locked. We were all busy doing things, and soon we discovered that some of our many activities became basic plots for short stories and books." The kids may have discovered, too, that they were being portrayed as actual characters in some of the stories, for Edwards himself has said that Jerry and his chums were modeled after real-life boys he had known. Perhaps this is the main reason each member of the group is characterized by a distinct personality. There is Scoop Ellery who, as the leader of the gang, is especially talented at planning and organizing projects for either fun or profit. (As such, he is a forerunner of the Poppy Ott character.) Nevertheless, Scoop's very human side is often evident when some of his well-laid plans happen to go awry. The physically endowed Peg Shaw is the unassuming athlete of the group, a key person in any fictional boys' coterie, even though organized sports are never dwelled on in Edwards' stories, a refreshing trait in a period deluged by boys' sports series. While there is a humorous side to each of these characters, the member of the group who supplies the most comic relief is Red Meyers, whose freckles, red hair, and gluttonous appetite make him a natural for comic portrayal. In spite of the humorous atmosphere which pervades the Todd/Ott books, though, Jerry's "voice" keeps reminding the reader of a serious side to himself and each of his pals, expressed mainly through their intense loyalty to each other and their families as well as an overall commitment to the American way. Thus, through portraying the diverse but complementary personalities of his ingratiating boy characters, Leo Edwards proved himself to be not only a keen observer of human nature but a fervent believer in the values of the American system. Willis Potthoff of St. Louis is a dedicated collector who owns an extensive repository of information and memorabilia about Edwards' life and career. Having read the Edwards books when he was a boy, Potthoff, now in his seventies, became fascinated with the writer and started acquiring everything he could find on him. As a result he has on display in his home a complete, dust-jacketed set of all the books Edwards wrote, along with a number of personally-built models of objects and scenes inspired by the books' intriguing titles. Although he admits to nostalgia as the prime motivator for his efforts, Potthoff contends that in his time, Edwards "filled a need with a type of writing that was not matched." Essentially, he says, Edwards' stories were about average, ordinary kids who are not so serious that they can't have some fun in the process of getting ahead in life. To stage his personal insights into his version of the American success ethic, Edwards created appropriately dramatic foils for Jerry and his level-headed, goal-oriented pals. In addition to a recurring intent to satirize skinflint bankers, lawyers, landlords, and any form of pomposity, there are spoiled rich kids who, after holding the upper hand at first, get their comeuppance in the end; and, of course, the Stricker gang, a bunch of ill-intentioned ne'er-do-wells from Zulutown on the other side of Tutter's tracks. When Jerry's group is not being pestered by wealthy snobs, it seems the Strickers have a special knack for showing up at critical times to engage the fellows in some insulting repartee and even an occasional rotten tomato fight. Evidently, Edwards' dramatic intent in playing off authority figures, spoiled cads, and shiftless types against Jerry and his well-meaning companions had an underlying serious purpose: to compare disparate social backgrounds and suggest the worth of a wholesome family environment to a boy's outlook on life. Fortunately, Jerry' s colleagues always had the advantage of his "voice" to assess and compare their scale of values against the obvious shortcomings of their adversaries. An additional feature of these stories' characterization technique was their author's special flair for depicting conventional types like the town marshall Bill Hadley, old Doc Leland-clearly modeled after the smalltown doctor whose clientele happens to be everybody in town-and Cap'n Tinkertop, a salty old sailor with a wooden leg. These characters show up in many of the books, but as dominant a character as any one person is the town of Tutter itself. The end pieces of the Jerry Todd books displayed a town map which highlighted many of the places that appeared in the stories-Happy Hollow, Main Street, the boys' homes, the way to Pirate's Bend, and, of course, the Canal, which played an important role in the Oak Island episodes of the Todd books. Many collectors and fans feel that in the town of Tutter, Edwards re-created his boyhood home of Utica with few embellishments. Regardless, Leo Edwards' Tutter stands out as both a real place and a nostalgic reminder of what it was like to live in a small town in an earlier America. Another appealing feature of both the Todd and Ott books was afforded by Bert Salg's whimsical illustrations, which spotlighted the humorous episodes described in Edwards' text Also, the zany, cartoon-like style of Salg's dust-jackets seemed to look ahead to the colorful, action-cluttered comic-book covers which became so popular during the late Thirties. Undoubtedly, Salg's unique talent contributed a great deal toward the selling power of these books. That Edwards was aware of this important contribution is attested to in a 1927 letter from author to artist, excerpted as follows:
Edwards soon discovered he was capable of writing at least four books a year, and in 1926, a separate series of books built around an appealing character called Poppy Ott began to appear on the heels of Jerry Todd's success. These stories also drew on the town of Tutter for their background, while Jerry Todd continued as the central voice through whose eyes the action unfolds. As a result, the atmosphere of the Ott books is essentially the same as that of the Todds. The major difference between the two series lies in the characterization of Poppy Ott, in whose development we can see something of the influence of Mark Twain on Edwards' imagination. Whereas the socially-minded Jerry functions as the Tom Sawyer of the newer series, the boldly imaginative though practically-oriented Poppy comes across as an updated version of Huckleberry Finn, and like their prototypes, the two serve to offset each other in their respective dramatic roles. For example, in the initial book of the series, Poppy Ott and the Stuttering Parrot, Poppy is brought on stage as an individual who vividly contrasts with Jerry's middle-class social standing. Actually, he is a boy tramp who has been compelled to wander about the country with his shiftless father. Compared to Jerry's gullible nature and average intelligence, though, Poppy is possessed of a naturally inquisitive mind, an exceptionally industrious manner, and a strong inner drive to get ahead in life, provided, of course, he can ever settle his vagabond parent down. When the inevitable mystery develops, Poppy is presented an excellent opportunity to impress Jerry & Company and become a leader in his own right, which, of course, he does before the story ends. In the creation of Poppy Ott, Edwards drew on both his poverty-ridden youth and innate business acumen to express his philosophy of getting ahead in life. And in all the Ott books which followed, he depicted Poppy as an enterprising but personable go-getter, way ahead of his companions in dreaming up money-making projects, organizing their plans, and seeing to it that they come to fruition. Poppy's unique capabilities are most representatively dramatized in Poppy Ott's Seven-League Stilts, when he successfully establishes a stilt factory and appoints his dad as manager. In this capacity, Mr. Ott at last becomes a productive member of society. Actually, Leo Edwards never left the advertising world, for the business philosophy he learned from it permeated all his books. Basically, it had to do with the kind of American knowhow it takes to come up with a good product and successfully market it. Over the course of the Poppy Ott series, the energetic title character was always introducing various plans and projects to make money, but throughout he never overlooked his creator's insistence on the importance of creative advertising. Indeed, Edwards himself used this technique to good advantage to sell his most successful product-his books. At the close of The Stuttering Parrot, for example, Jerry says:
Today's supposedly sophisticated juvenile audience, conditioned by the more immediately compelling visual effects of movies and television, may find this come-on less than inviting. But I know for a fact that to one eleven-year-old boy in 1943, such an invitation was simply irresistible! |
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