Lloyd Downs Lewis

Background

Lloyd Downs Lewis was born on May 2, 1891 in Pendleton, Indiana, United States. He was the elder of two children and only son of J. J. ("Jay") Lewis, farmer, teacher, and one-time editor of the Anderson (Indiana) Herald, and Josephine (Downs) Lewis. Both parents were Quakers.

Education

After attending local public schools, Lewis entered Swarthmore College; he graduated with a B. A. degree in 1913.

Career

Lewis became a reporter for the Philadelphia North American, but in 1915 moved to Chicago to join the staff of the Record-Herald. That city, crude but vibrant, captivated him, and he remained there the rest of his life. After the United States entered World War I, Lewis, despite his Quaker heritage, enlisted in the navy and served for one year. Upon his discharge he became a publicity man for the Chicago movie theatre chain of Balaban and Katz and worked in that capacity until 1930. Even in the high-powered world of promotion, Lewis could not put out of his mind recollections of long talks with aging Union veterans in the sleepy town of his youth. Their reminiscences, often contradictory, aroused his interest in Abraham Lincoln and the legends that clustered about his name. In his off hours he gathered material for his first book, Myths after Lincoln, which appeared in 1929. Wise, provocative, at times gently cynical, it was immediately successful.

That same year saw the publication of Chicago: The History of Its Reputation--still the best short history of the city--which Lewis wrote in collaboration with Henry Justin Smith, the scholarly, patrician editor of the Chicago Daily News. The Daily News was traditionally hospitable to serious writers, and in 1930 Lewis joined its staff. He began as a drama critic, moved up to amusement editor, and in 1936 took over the sports section. There, he gave new vitality to sports writing. Recognizing that, in the age of radio, readers already knew the results of baseball games and horse races, he played up the dramatic element in sports. Among other innovations, he transferred news of wrestling, which he knew to be rigged, to the amusement section, and he emphasized colorful personalities like baseball's Dizzy Dean, Satchel Paige, and Casey Stengel.

The Civil War still fascinated him, and he began a biography of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. The task was arduous, compelling him, after a full day, to spend his evenings in research in libraries and then work far into the night at home. Sherman: Fighting Prophet appeared in 1932 and was acclaimed a masterpiece. Lewis collaborated with Sinclair Lewis (no kin) on a Civil War play, Jayhawker, that had a short Broadway run in 1935. He also wrote in 1941 a commissioned biography of John S. Wright, Chicago businessman and publisher of the Prairie Farmer. His historical work received recognition in 1937 when he was given a year's appointment as a visiting lecturer in history at the University of Chicago.

In 1943 Lewis was made managing editor of the Daily News, but he found the supervisory role uncongenial. He resigned in 1945, and although he continued for a time to write a weekly column for the Chicago Sun, he devoted most of the rest of his life to a biography of Ulysses S. Grant. Lewis was also one of Henry Horner's confidential advisors--a service which Horner recognized by appointing Lewis a trustee of the Illinois State Historical Library.

Lewis died of a coronary occlusion at his home near Libertyville, Illinois. Stevenson and Marc Connelly, author of The Green Pastures, were the only speakers at the simple funeral held in Lewis' home, and he was buried in the family lot at Pendleton, Indiana. His biography of Grant, completed to the early summer of 1861, was published posthumously under the title Captain Sam Grant (1950). The historian Bruce Catton later wrote a companion volume, Grant Moves South (1960), covering the rest of Grant's life.

Achievements

• Lewis was a major figure in a remarkable world of arts and letters that flourished in Chicago following World War I. His fame rested chiefly on his highly regarded historical books that includd Myths After Lincoln, Sherman: Fighting Prophet, and Captain Sam Grant.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Myths After Lincoln

    (Excerpt from Myths After Lincoln TO tom peete cross, Pro...)

  • Chicago - The History Of Its Reputation

    (Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating bac...)

  • Captain Sam Grant

    (8, 512 pages, frontispiece (portrait) , cloth.)

  • Sherman, Fighting Prophet

    ( "War is hell," said William Tecumseh Sherman. The Union...)

  • Letters from Lloyd Lewis,: Showing steps in the research for his biography of U.S. Grant

Politics

Lewis took an avid interest in contemporary politics. He was a staunch supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, arguing with conservative friends that the president had saved the free enterprise system. He backed Henry Horner in his successful campaigns for governor of Illinois in 1932 and 1936. He also supported his friend and neighbor Adlai E. Stevenson when he ran for governor in 1948.

Views

Quotations: "All my life I've been a reporter, trying to find out what happened yesterday or a hundred years ago, now I'm supposed to know what events mean. I don't like it a damned bit. "

Personality

Lewis was of medium height and trim build, with a shock of dark hair that refused to turn gray and a small moustache. He was a superb conversationalist. A vocabulary that ranged from imaginative profanity through the full range of Webster's International enabled him to express his ideas and opinions--sometimes iconoclastic, often unconventional, always stimulating--in ways no listener could forget.

Connections

Lewis married Kathryn Dougherty of Chicago on December 30, 1925. They had no children, but took into their home and reared Nancy Anderson, the daughter of a friend.

Father:

J. J. ("Jay") Lewis

farmer, teacher, editor

Mother:

Josephine (Downs) Lewis

Spouse:

Kathryn Dougherty