As his 90th anniversary of publishing juvenile or children’s literature fast approaches June 1, author Franklin W. Dixon remains indefatigable. Mind you that could be because Franklin W. Dixon is a pseudonym for the many Franklin W. Dixons there have been over the last nine decades writing Hardy Boys books.
The Hardy Boys series, published by Grosset & Dunlap, began on June 1, 1927, with three titles by ghostwriter Leslie McFarlane, writing under the pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon: The Tower Treasure, The House on the Cliff and The Secret of the Old Mill. McFarlane, a Canadian-born journalist, wrote the first 15 or so volumes of the series, establishing the writing style that made the books so successful. Early volumes were published in a cloth hardcover format with colour dust jackets. In 1962, the series switched to a newer cover format with the cover art printed directly on the cover and no dust jacket. In 1979, Simon & Schuster acquired the rights for all new Hardy Boys books.
The son of a school principal, McFarlane was raised in Haileybury, Ontario, located on the northwest shore of Lake Timiskaming, 150 kilometres north of North Bay, and established and named after his English alma mater, Haileybury College, by Charles C. Farr, who had come to the area six years earlier as an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
McFarlane became a freelance writer shortly after high school. He and his family moved to Whitby, Ontario, right next door to where I grew up in Oshawa, in 1936. In fact, McFarlane died in Oshawa in September 1977, at the age of 74. Before his Hardy Boys non-fame, McFarlane worked as a newspaper reporter in Sudbury, Ontario, Toronto, and briefly in the mid-1920s, in Springfield, Massachusetts as a staff reporter at the Springfield Republican.
Leslie McFarlane is the father of Brian McFarlane, who has written many books himself, and is best remembered as a commentator on CBC Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts between 1964 and 1991, and as an author of almost 100 hockey books, selling more than 1.3 million copies. Leslie McFarlane started writing the Hardy Boys books when his son Brian was around four-years-old.
It was while living in the United States that he replied to an advertisement placed by the Stratemeyer Syndicate for a children’s book ghostwriter. That children’s book would be the Hardy Boys series, which continues to be published. While it’s not altogether clear whether Bayport, said to be located on Barmet Bay, a horseshoe-shaped inlet three miles from the Atlantic Ocean, and the fictional home of youthful sleuths Frank and Joe Hardy, and their parents, Fenton Hardy, a private investigator and retired New York City Police Department (NYPD) detective-lieutenant, who worked in the 71st precinct, and their stay-at-home, Laura, is supposed to be further located in the State of New York (the most likely choice) or New Jersey, or perhaps the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, it is clear the series has an enduring resilience and lasting popularity, not tied to its statehood or who Franklin W. Dixon is this book. The books have been translated into 50 languages.
In 1905, Edward Stratemeyer, a prolific writer in his own right, had founded a network of freelance writers and editors, after realizing he had far more ideas for stories and series than he could write on his own. Writers signed away their rights to royalties and bylines in exchange for a flat fee. Stratemeyer Syndicate’s central aim was to produce a very large number of books at the lowest possible cost.
“The industry that churns out children’s books has changed surprisingly little in the last century,” Daniel A. Gross, a Boston-based writer and public radio producer, argued in a piece for The Atlantic, “The Mystery of the Hardy Boys and the Invisible Authors” (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/05/hardy-boys-nancy-drew-ghostwriters/394022/), published two years ago in May 2015.
“The secret behind the longevity of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys is simple,” Gross wrote. “They are still here because their creators found a way to minimize cost, maximize output, and standardize creativity. The solution was an assembly line that made millions by turning writers into anonymous freelancers, a business model that is central to the Internet age.”
Having signed away any royalties without regret, McFarlane was paid a flat fee of $100 per book for most of his Hardy Boys books, which he was churning out in prodigious numbers during the 1930s in the midst of the Great Depression, although still wondering when his agent would be able to send another cheque so he might buy more coal for the furnace. A well-preserved Hardy Boys first edition is now worth about $1,500.
McFarlane eventually moved back to Canada from the United States, working as a writer, producer and director for the National Film Board (NFB) in Montreal, the CBC and, for a time, after moving to Toronto, where he was a friend of actor Lorne Greene, working as a scriptwriter on the 1960s TV hit, Bonanza. As part of the National Film Board in Montreal, he wrote and directed documentaries and short dramas, including the 1951 documentary Royal Journey, Here’s Hockey, a 1953 documentary featuring Montreal Canadiens’ star Jean Beliveau. He also wrote the documentary titled Herring Hunt, nominated for an Academy Award in 1953 for Live Action Short Film.
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