James Norman Hall

James Norman Hall
James Norman Hall
Born	(1887-04-22)22 April 1887 Colfax, Iowa
Died	5 July 1951(1951-07-05) (aged 64) Tahiti
Occupation	Novelist, memoirist
Nationality	American
Period	1916–1951
Genre	Adventure fiction
Subject	War memoir
Website
www.jamesnormanhallhome.pf/indexen.html

James Norman Hall (22 April 1887 – 5 July 1951) was an American writer best known for The Bounty Trilogy, a series of historical novels co-authored with Charles Nordhoff: Mutiny on the Bounty (1932), Men Against the Sea (1934), and Pitcairn's Island (1934). During World War I, Hall uniquely served in the armed forces of three Allied nations—Great Britain as an infantryman, and later France and the United States as an aviator. His wartime honors include the Croix de Guerre, the Médaille Militaire, the Légion d'Honneur, and the Distinguished Service Cross. After the war, he settled in Tahiti, where he and Nordhoff wrote a number of successful adventure novels, many of which were adapted into films. He was also the father of Conrad L. Hall, a three-time Academy Award–winning cinematographer.

Biography

Hall in the Lafayette Escadrille, 1917

Hall was born in Colfax, Iowa, where he attended local schools. His early home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. He graduated from Grinnell College in 1910. Hall also wrote the song Sons of Old Grinnell, which remains part of the college songbook.

After graduation, he worked as a social worker in Boston for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children while pursuing a writing career and studying for a master's degree at Harvard University.

Hall was vacationing in the United Kingdom in the summer of 1914, when World War I broke out. Posing as a Canadian, he enlisted in the British Army and served in the Royal Fusiliers as a machine gunner during the Battle of Loos. After his true nationality was discovered, he was discharged and returned to the United States. His first book, Kitchener's Mob (1916), recounts these wartime experiences. It sold moderately well in America, and following a speaking tour to promote it, Hall returned to Europe in 1916 on assignment with The Atlantic Monthly. He was tasked with writing a series of stories about American volunteers in the Lafayette Escadrille, but after spending time with the group, Hall became inspired to enlist in the French Air Service himself. By that time, the original Escadrille had expanded into the Lafayette Flying Corps, which trained American volunteers for service in regular French squadrons.

During his time in French aviation, Hall was awarded the Croix de Guerre with five palms and the Médaille Militaire. When the United States entered the war in 1917, he was commissioned as a captain in the Army Air Service, where he met fellow American pilot Charles Nordhoff. After being shot down over enemy lines on May 7, 1918, Hall spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner of war in Germany. Following his release, he received both the French Légion d'Honneur and the American Distinguished Service Cross.

Hall's office in La Maison James Norman Hall, Arue, French Polynesia

Hall's home and garden, now a historic house museum

After the war, Hall settled in Tahiti, where he reunited with Nordhoff. Together, they co-authored a number of successful adventure novels, most notably their trilogy of novels based on the Bounty mutiny. In addition to the various Bounty films, several of their works were adapted into films, including The Hurricane (1937), which starred Hall’s nephew, Jon Hall; Passage to Marseille (1944), featuring Humphrey Bogart; and Botany Bay (1953), starring Alan Ladd.

In 1940, Hall published a book of poems titled Oh Millersville! under the pseudonym Fern Gravel. Written in the voice of a ten-year-old girl, the poems received critical acclaim. The literary hoax remained undisclosed until 1946, when Hall revealed the truth in his Atlantic Monthly article "Fern Gravel: A Hoax and a Confession.” He explained that the inspiration had come to him in a dream in which a young girl named Fern asked him to write down her poems. Upon waking, he recorded the verses, which offer simple yet vivid depictions of small-town life.

In 1925, Hall married Sarah “Lala” Winchester (born Sarah Marguerite Sophie Teraireia Winchester; 1909–1985), the daughter of a Tahitian mother and an English sea captain, giving her a half-Polynesian heritage. They had two children: the Academy Award–winning cinematographer Conrad Hall (1926–2003), and Nancy Ella Hall Rutgers (1930-2020). Hall died in Tahiti in 1951 and is buried on the hillside above the modest wooden house where he and Lala had lived for many years. His grave bears a line of verse he wrote in Iowa at the age of eleven: "Look to the Northward stranger / Just over the hillside there / Have you ever in your travels seen / A land more passing fair?"

Hall's papers, including manuscripts and wartime correspondence, are housed in the Special Collections and Archives at Grinnell College. His home in Arue, French Polynesia, was restored by the government of Tahiti and now serves as a historic house museum. The museum includes Hall's 3,000-volume library and personal arrifacts on loan from his family. "The house itself is neither large nor prepossessing; it was built for comfort and practicality," wrote author Peter Benchley. "It's what's inside the house that I found most fascinating: paintings, photographs, artifacts and anecdotes from Hall's preliterary life."

Selected works

Edward Penfield poster for Hall's memoir, High Adventure: A Narrative of Air Fighting in France (1918)

The Bounty trilogy, with Charles Nordhoff

• Mutiny on the Bounty (1932)
• Men Against the Sea (1934)
• Pitcairn's Island (1934)
• The Bounty Trilogy (illustrated by N. C. Wyeth) (1940)

Other works

• Kitchener's Mob: The Adventures of an American in the British Army (1916)
• High Adventure: A Narrative of Air Fighting in France (1918)
• History of the Lafayette Flying Corps (with Charles Nordhoff) (1920)
• Faery Lands of the South Seas (with Charles Nordhoff) (1920)
• On the Stream of Travel (1926)
• Mid-Pacific (1928)
• Falcons of France (with Charles Nordhoff) (1929). Nordhoff and Hall's account of their service in the famed Lafayette Escadrille during World War I.
• Flying with Chaucer (1930)
• Mother Goose Land (1930)
• Tale of a Shipwreck (1934). Hall recounts his voyage to Pitcairn's Island and shipwreck at Temoe in 1933. Includes early versions of passages from Pitcairn's Island. This was first published as "From Med to Mum" in the Atlantic Monthly, March through July 1934.
• The Hurricane (with Charles Nordhoff) (1936)
• The Dark River (with Charles Nordhoff) (1938)
• Dictator of the Americas (1938)
• The Friends (1939)
• No More Gas (with Charles Nordhoff) (1940)
• Doctor Dogbody's Leg (1940)
• [as Fern Gravel] Oh Millersville! Muscatine, IA.: The Prairie Press (1940)
• Botany Bay (with Charles Nordhoff) (1941)
• Under a Thatched Roof (essays) (1942)
• Men Without a Country (with Charles Nordhoff) (1942)
• Lost Island (1944)
• The High Barbaree (with Charles Nordhoff) (1945)
• A Word for His Sponsor: A Narrative Poem (1949)
• The Far Lands (1950)
• The Forgotten One and Other True Tales of the South Seas (1952)
• Her Daddy's Best Ice Cream (1952)
• My Island Home: An Autobiography (1952)
• "Sing: A Song of Sixpence" in 125 Years of the Atlantic, pp. 303–313

See also

• The James Norman Hall House in Colfax, Iowa is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
• The James Norman Hall Papers are housed at the Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives.

External links

• James Norman Hall at IMDb
• James Norman Hall's Home, Hall family website
• Works by James Norman Hall at Project Gutenberg
• Works by James Norman Hall at Faded Page (Canada)
• Works by or about James Norman Hall at the Internet Archive
• Works by James Norman Hall at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• James Norman Hall Papers University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections & Archives