Peter Bernard Kyne

Background

Peter Bernard Kyne was born on October 12, 1880 in San Francisco, California, United States. He was the son of John Kyne, a farmer and cattle dealer, and Mary Cresham.

Education

With the exception of a six-month course at a business college, Kyne received all of his formal education in a one-room country school. He left school at fifteen to work on his father's farm.

Career

Kyne took a job as a store clerk in a nearby town. He left this job, which paid $7 a week, for one in a lumber and shipping firm that paid $30 a month. Finding that he liked working as a salesman, he later became a lumber broker.

At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Kyne, although not yet eighteen, enlisted in the army. He was assigned to the Fourteenth Infantry and saw action in the Philippines, fighting insurrectionists commanded by Emilio Aguinaldo. This experience and his service in World War I as a captain in the 144th Field Artillery provided material for his war stories.

His first significant publication came in the year of his marriage, when "A Little Matter of Salvage, " a story written while he was out of a job and ill with pneumonia, was accepted by the Saturday Evening Post. It was the first of more than sixty stories to be published by the Post. He then wrote several sea and western stories for Sunset magazine and, in 1913, the first of his twenty-five novels, Three Godfathers, was published. A dozen of his novels sold well over 100, 000 copies each. They included The Valley of the Giants (1918), a tale of the California timber region, which was made into a motion picture starring Wallace Reid; Pride of Palomar (1921), a story of romance and adventure stressing the "menace" of Japanese immigrants in California; and Enchanted Hill (1924), which portrayed life on a ranch in New Mexico.

In 1916, Kyne published Cappy Ricks, a collection of stories about a shrewd, waspish, but kindhearted old sea captain who owned a coastal shipping line and a lumber company.

Kyne, who had worked around 1905 for a time as a reporter on the San Francisco Morning Call, knew the waterfront well. Cappy Ricks, with his muttonchop whiskers and black string tie, was one of the few complex fictional characters Kyne created. He eventually joined the group of popular characters that included Clarence Budington Kelland's Scattergood Baines and William Hazlett Upson's Alexander Botts. Cappy Ricks, whose favorite pastime was beating his son-in-law, Matt Peaslee, in business deals, was modeled, to a large extent, on Captain Robert Dollar, a chin-whiskered Scotsman who founded the Dollar Steamship Lines and owned extensive western lumber interests. Ricks and his adventures were the subject of two novels, more than fifty short stories, and an unsuccessful play. Kyne tended to create characters that are radical or national stereotypes based upon the theory, as Carl Bode put it, that "what is purebred and Aryan is good and what is hybrid or pigmented is bad. " Kyne expressed this racist theory explicitly in Never the Twain Shall Meet (1923). For the most part he wrote about people he knew and understood: lumbermen, miners, ranchers, seamen, and businessmen, the last of whom he especially admired. The Go-Getter (1922), a tale of a canny businessman, was widely used by commercial organizations as a gospel of successful selling. Kyne's aim was to reach the largest possible audience, and he was shrewd in tailoring his writing to popular taste. "When an editor buys a story from me for a good price, " Kyne wrote, "he expects it to help his circulation. If I sell him a product which is not a good story or a serial with not as much pull as I can give it, I'm not an honest business man. "

Kyne had no literary pretensions, and his work was largely ignored by critics. Yet he sometimes wrote with a freshness and sincerity that made one forget the banality of his theme. He also wrote with great speed. ("At times I have written over 13, 000 words in twelve hours. ") The large income from his writing and from motion pictures was invested heavily (and often unprofitably) in a number of business ventures, including gold mines, oil wells, cattle ranches, and race horses.

In the early 1930's, Kyne's health began to fail. Changes in reading tastes and financial problems in the publishing business also caused difficulties for him. In 1939 a $30, 000 judgment was rendered against him for failure to pay income tax. His 1940 novel Dude Woman did not sell well, and two novels written in his last years were never published. An occasional short story or magazine article appeared in the late 1940's. Although Kyne traveled widely, he maintained his home in San Francisco, where he died. "I dwell there, " he once said, "for much the same reason a cat eats liver. I love it. "

Achievements

• More than 100 films were adapted from his works between 1914 and 1952.

Works

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  • The Three Godfathers

    (The story is already beloved by film buffs thanks to the ...)

  • Jim the Conqueror

    ("The romance of Don Jaime Miguel Higuenes, rancher, and R...)

  • The Long Chance

    (A classic Western about a gambler in a sun-baked desert t...)

  • The Go-Getter: A Story That Tells You How To Be One

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • Dude Woman

    (First edition bound in tan cloth with black lettering. A ...)

  • Cappy Ricks

    (Cappy Ricks Peter B. Kyne "You're pretty much of a child ...)

  • The Complete Works of Peter B. Kyne (illustrated): (Seven Books And 12 Illustrations Included)

    (Peter B. Kyne (October 12, 1880 – November 25, 1957) was ...)

Connections

On February 2, 1910 Kyne married Helene Catherine Johnston; they had no children.

Father:

John Kyne

farmer, cattle dealer

Mother:

Mary Cresham

Spouse:

Helene Catherine Johnston