Schlesinger Library

Jack Blackis Dead

by Fremont Older

I am sure that my friend Jack Black is dead. More than a month ago he disappeared from his residence at 19 West One Hundred and Third Street, New York and since that time no one has heard of him.

With the readers of The Call Bulletin it is hardly necessary to go deeply into the details about who Jack Black is. When Jack finished his last penitentiary sentance in San Quentin twenty years ago, he came directly to my ranch in Santa Clara County firmly resolved to cut out his old life forever. Every one who knows his story knows how faithfully he has kept his word. From the day he first appeared at the ranch it has been his home. His work in the circulation department of the old bulletin and his subsequent employment as librarian of The Call made it necesary for him to live in the city, but he knew that as long as Mrs. Older and I lived the ranch was his home, and we regarded him as a member of our family.

For years after he came out of prison I tried to prevail upon him to write his life. I had long known that he was a gifted writer, but it was not until 1925 that he wrote that absorbingly interesting story which was first published as a serial in The Call in 1925. Within a month after the story started it was the talk of the town and Jack who was as gifted a talker as he was a writer, was in demand at men's club dinners and luncheons and by social workers and those interested in prison reform.

When the serial was finished the Macmillan Publishing Company of New York in 1926, brought it out in book form under the title of "You Can't Win."

In a short time after its publication it became the most discussed book in America and in London. The Times of that city gave it a page review and declared that Jack Black was a literary artist. It had favorable reviews everywhere, and has since been translated into Russian, Swedish and French.

Shortly after the book was published, Jack collaborated with Bessie Beatty and the book was made into a play, "Salt Chunk Mary," and produced in Los Angeles by Lucille Laverne who assumed the title role. After a long run the play was taken to New York but owing to a disagreement between the author and Lucille La Verne it was not given a New York production.

Meanwhile, Jack had so grown in popularity that he spent his winters in New York and made a comfortable living, lecturing under the auspices of the National Broadcasting Company He delivered many free lectures before women's clubs, in churches and before the student bodies of Harvard and Yale His summers he spent at my ranch.

A very wealthy New York woman offered to finance Jack in a bureau to be established for helping ex-convicts. He wouldn't take a cent of her money, he told me, because he was afraid the bureau would develop into a racket and he would be holding a job just for a salary.

When he came out of prison he had within him the seeds of tuberculosis. He was warned by an expert that his years were limited. He grew weaker each year, but never mentioned it to any one. He left the ranch last September for New York noticeably much weaker than he had ever been bfore. The depression had made it more difficult for him to get lecture engagements. In fact, there were so few that he was compelled to use his small savings for his living expenses.

In November last, his play, under the title, "Jamboree," was produced at Yanderbilt Theater but most of the critics tore into it savagely, and it failed. In his weakened condition, this discouraged him and when Spring came he did not have sufficient money to pay his way to the ranch. Of course to any one of his many friends it would have been a