Vincent Sheean

James Vincent Sheean (born December 5, 1899 in Pana, Illinois , † March 16, 1975 in Arolo , Italy) was an American journalist and author. As a foreign correspondent he reported for example on the march of the fascists on Rome, the war of the Rif - Berbers in Morocco, the Pacific war and the assassination attempt on Gandhi .

Life

Vincent Sheean, 1958 (Photo Carl Van Vechten )

Vincent Sheean was born in 1899 to William Sheean and Susan MacDerrnot in a small town in the American Midwest. He learned German, Italian and French and enrolled at the University of Chicago at the age of 17 . Three and a half years later, his mother's death forced him to drop out. His first job as a journalist with the Chicago Daily News lasted only a few weeks. Sheean then moved to New York and worked for the Daily News tabloid .

In the spring of 1922 he traveled to Paris at his own expense. In the autumn of that year he visited Italy to report on the rising fascists, Mussolini and his march on Rome. Back in Paris in 1923, Sheean became assistant to the Parisian office of the Chicago Tribune and befriended Ernest Hemingway . In 1925 he moved to the North American Newspaper Alliance . In January 1925, Sheean was one of the first journalists to venture through the front line to interview the rebel Abd el-Krim in Morocco. He processed his experiences in his first book An American Among the Riffi . During this time he also reported from Switzerland, the Rhineland, Madrid and London.

At that time, Sheean was often in the places of current world events. In China he met Madam Sun Yatsen at the beginning of the Chinese Revolution. In Russia he reported sympathetically about the spreading Bolshevism . In August 1929 he witnessed the clashes between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem and in 1936 the German reoccupation of the Rhineland . After leaving the Chicago Tribune, Sheean worked as a freelance journalist for newspapers including The Atlantic Monthly , Harper's , Woman's Home Companion , Collier’s , The Century Magazine , Saturday Evening Post , Commonweal , The New Republic, and The Times .

In 1935 Sheean published his experiences of the first 15 years as a journalist in his book Privat History. The book was a great success. In the same year Sheean married Diana Forbes-Robertson , the daughter of the well-known British actor Johnston Forbes-Robertson . Diana accompanied Sheean on some of his international assignments. The two later wrote books together. Sheean visited the theaters of war in the Spanish Civil War at the side of Ernest Hemingway and Robert Capa . In 1938 Sheean was with the German invasion of the Sudetenland . In 1939 Sheean Ève Curies translated Marie Curie's biography into English.

With the start of the German air raids on London, the Sheeans referred English children to alternative families in the USA. Eventually, Sheean brought his wife to safety in New York. He soon returned to England to report for the Saturday Evening Post . He also taught American history to English school children. In 1942 Sheean was drafted and joined the Army Air Corps Secret Service as a Lieutenant Colonel. He took part in the Africa campaign and came to the theaters of war in Sicily and Italy, and eventually in India and China. After being deactivated, he returned to Europe in late 1944 as a war correspondent in General Patton's Third Army .

In 1946, Diana divorced. Sheean processed the breakup in his book This House Against This House . They remarried three years later. The couple had two daughters, one of whom became an actress in London.

After all the violence and unrest before and during World War II, Sheean traveled to India in 1947 and became a disciple of Gandhi . On January 30th, he eyed his murder in New Delhi. His admiration as well as his shock caused Sheean to write several books on Gandhi.

Sheean died of lung cancer in Arolo, Italy in 1975 at the age of 75. 1983 Sheean posthumously received the Leland Stowe Journalism Award of the University of Michigan . Since 1941 he was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Style - Personal History

Sheean stood out for the literary quality of his reports. He cultivated a narrative writing style with which he conveyed his personal impressions to the reader, looked for the deeper meaning of the events and combined commitment and seriousness. Sheean described his conception of journalistic work in his autobiographical book Personal History , which was published in New York in 1935. It reached number four on the bestseller list for non-fiction books. The Nation newspaper , in a review of the book, described Sheean as "a person of exceptional taste and sensitivity who, after 15 years of tumultuous experiences, is primarily interested in moral values". The following books, Not Peace But A Sword , Between the Thunder and the Sun, and This House Against This House, were originally intended to be titled Personal History II through IV. "He never pretended to be an impartial observer and was known for his passionate disdain for social injustice."

Film producer Walter Wanger bought the film rights to Sheean's biography for $ 10,000 in 1935. In order to keep up with political events, the script had to be rewritten several times. After 5 years and 16 authors, the script was exactly as Wanger envisioned it. Finally, the story was implemented in Alfred Hitchcock's film Foreign Correspondent in 1940 (German version 1961: The Foreign Correspondent ). The opening scenes in Holland and the subject of the freelance journalist remained from Sheean's novel.

Books

• 1926: An American Among the Riffi. The Century, New York and London.
• 1927: The anatomy of virtue. The Century, New York and London.
• 1927: The new Persia. The Century, New York and London.
• 1930: Gog and Magog. Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York.
• 1933: The tide (novella), Doubleday, Doran and Co., Inc., New York.
• 1935: Personal History (autobiographical) also under the title In search of history .
• 1936: Sanfelice. A novel. , Doubleday, Doran and Co., Inc., New York. German edition under the title Sanfelice 1954.
• 1937: The Pieces of a Fan. , Doubleday, Doran and Co., Inc., New York.
• 1938: Bird of the Wilderness (novella)
• 1938: A day of battle. , Novella about the Battle of Fontenoy 1745.
• 1939: Not Peace But A Sword , Continuation No. 1 of Personal History . Sheean's observations in Prague, Vienna, Madrid, London, Paris, Berlin in 1938. Under the title The eleventh hour. H. Hamilton, London.
• 1941: Bird of the wilderness. Random House, New York. (Novella)
• 1941: War letters from Britain. GP Putnam's Sons, New York.
• 1943: Between the Thunder and the Sun Continuation No. 2 of Personal History (autobiographical)
• 1946: This House Against This House Continuation No. 3 of Personal History (autobiographical)
• 1947: A certain rich man . Random House, New York.
• 1949: Lead, Kindly Light , Random House, New York. (via Gandhi)
• 1950: Mahatma Gandhi or The Road to Peace , Knopf, New York.
• 1951: The indigo bunting: a memoir of Edna St. Vincent Millay. , Harper, New York. Biography about Edna St. Vincent Millay .
• 1952: Rage of the soul. Random House, New York.
• 1953: Thomas Jefferson, Father of Democracy , Random House, New York. Biography of the American President Thomas Jefferson .
• 1954: Lily. Random House, New York.
• 1955: Live For Today (Original title: Lily )
• 1956: First and last love. Random House, New York.
• 1956: The amazing Oscar Hammerstein I . The life and exploits of an impresario. , Simon and Schuster, New York.
• 1958: Orpheus at eighty. , Random House, New York. Biography of Giuseppe Verdi . Random House, New York.
• 1959: Nehru: The Years of Power. About the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru . Random House, New York.
• 1962: Mahatma Gandhi : A Great Life in Letter. Knopf, New York.
• 1963: Dorothy and Red , Harper, New York. About Sheean's friends Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) and Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951). German edition: The story of Dorothy Thompson and Sinclair Lewis. Droemer, Munich and Zurich 1964.
• 1965: Beware of Caesar. Random House, New York. With biographical essays on Nero, Seneca a. a.
• 1966: King Faisal's First Year.
• 1975: Faisal: The King and His Kingdom (about Faisal ibn Abd al-Aziz (1964–1975), King of Saudi Arabia)

Translations

• 1935: A surgeon's China. by Albert Gervais. From French into English.
• 1938: Madam Curie - A Biography by Eve Curie Biography of Marie Curie . From French into English.

Others

• 1940: An international incident; a play in three acts. Play, first performed at the Ethel Barrymore Theater , April 2, 1940.

literature

• Deborah Woods: Vincent Sheean and the Spanish Civil War. 1971.
• Carl Edward Johnson: A twentieth century seeker: a biography of James Vincent Sheean. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1974.
• Samuel Kliger: Theme and structure in Vincent Sheean's Personal history. Chicago, 1948.
• Howard Good: The journalist as autobiographer. New York, 1993. ISBN 0810826844

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} biography of the journalist Vincent Sheean ( memento of the original from September 23, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (1899-1975) in Traces, We Bring History to Life. 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Dirk Sasse: French, British and Germans in the Rif War 1921-1926 , Munich 2006
3. ^ Paul Preston, "The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge." WW Norton & Company, 2007.
4. ↑ Lodi News-Sentimental, November 20, 1961
5. ^ Eyewitnes to History: The Assassination of Gandhi, 1948
6. ^ "Vincent Sheean Dies," obituary in The Washington Post, March 17, 1975
7. ^ Members: Vincent Sheean. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 26, 2019 . 
8. ↑ John Maxwell Hamilton: Interpret the world  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : Vincent Sheean's Personal History reminds us what foreign coverage once was - and what it might be again.  Entrepreneur 2008. Visited May 11, 2010.
9. ^ Sheean in the Internet Movie Database

Web links

• Literature by and about Vincent Sheean in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography of the journalist Vincent Sheean (1899–1975) in Traces, we bring history to life. Visited May 10, 2010.
• John Maxwell Hamilton: Interpret the world : Vincent Sheean's Personal History reminds us what foreign coverage once was - and what it might be again. Entrepreneur 2008. Visited May 11, 2010.
• Samule Liger: Theme and Structure in Vincent Sheean's "Personal History" , College English, Vol. 9, No. 6 (Mar., 1948), pp. 312-316, National Council of Teachers of English.