9.9.1900 Leigh (Lancashire) - 
20.12.1956 Long Beach, California

Biographisches (aus dem Nachwort von Jahr um Jahr, München: Desch 1956) James Hilton wurde im Jahre 1900 in der englischen Industriestadt Lancashire geboren. Schon während seiner Studentenzeit am Christ-College in Cambridge schrieb er seinen ersten Roman und gewann schon früh Ansehen als literarischer Mitarbeiter bedeutender englischer Zeitungen. Nach Beendigung des Studiums widmete er sich in London literarischen Arbeiten, von denen er selbst später sagte, daß »sie die Themse nicht in Flammen setzten«. Im Frühjahr 1933 gewann er über Nacht [das stimmt nicht ganz, siehe weiter unten] mit seinem Roman Lost Horizon, der ein Jahr später mit dem Hawthornden-Preis ausgezeichnet wurde, literarischen Weltruhm. Die Zeitschrift »The British Weekly« gab ihm einige Monate später für die Weihnachtsnummer eine längere Novelle in Auftrag; die Frist betrug vierzehn Tage. Nachdem die halbe Frist verstrichen war, setzte Hilton sich an einem regnerischen Morgen an den Schreibtisch und schrieb dann in vier Tagen Goodbye Mr. Chips, ein Buch, das sehr schnell ein Bestseller im anglo-amerikanischen Sprachraum wurde. Mit dreiunddreißig Jahren war James Hilton einer der bekanntesten Autoren Englands geworden.    Seit 1935 lebte er mit einigen Unterbrechungen in Südkalifornien als Autor erfolgreicher Bücher und Filme. In Hollywood zeichnete er sich dadurch aus, daß er - als typischer Engländer - durch nichts zu erschüttern war. Seine besondere Zuneigung galt der Musik; lange wollte er Pianist werden. Früh schon entwickelte er sich beim wiederholten Besuch der Schweiz zu einem passionierten Bergsteiger, der er bis zu seinem Tode geblieben ist.

Seine Buchveröffentlichungen sind: UK Title Alternative US title German Title Catherine Herself (1920) Storm Passage (1922) The Passionate Year (1923? 24?) The Dawn of Reckoning (1925) Rage in Heaven (1932) The Meadows of the Moon (1926) Terry (1927?) The Silver Flame (1928 - 1936?) Three Loves Had Margaret And Now Good-Bye (1931) Ein Abschied (?) Murder At School (1931) as Glen Trevor Was It Murder? Contango (1932) Ill Wind Nine Short Stories  (in Avon Modern Short Story Monthly No. 5) Rage in Heaven (1932) Lost Horizon (1933) Irgendwo in Tibet Der verlorene Horizont Good-Bye Mr. Chips (1933/34) Leb Wohl, Mister Chips Knight Without Armour (1933) Without Armor We Are Not Alone (1937) Wir sind nicht allein To You, Mr. Chips (1938) Random Harvest (1941) Gefundene Jahre (?) The Story of Dr Wassell (1944) So Well Remembered (1945) George Boswells Geschick Nothing So Strange (1947) Morning Journey (1951) Der Regisseur (?) Time And Time Again (1953) Jahr um Jahr   Twilight of the Wise (London 1949) - a very short (59 p.) personal narrative of World War I 1914-1918 The Duke of Edinburgh (London 1956) (biography/non-fiction) Die deutschen Titel habe ich nur angegeben, soweit sie mir bekannt waren. Bei einigen deutschen Titeln weiß ich, dass sie existieren, aber nicht, zu welchem Buch sie gehören; diesen Titeln habe ich ein Fragezeichen beigegeben. Ich gehe davon aus, dass noch weitere Bücher übersetzt worden sind; zumindest eines ist noch als Gewitterwind erschienen. Filme: Drehbücher von James Hilton (alle US): 1936 Camille (dt. Die Kameliendame) mit Zoe Atkins und Frances Marion 1939 We Are Not Alone (dt. Ihr seid nicht allein) 1940 Foreign Correspondent (dt. Mord) mit Charles Bennett, Joan Harrison und Robert Benchley 1942 Mrs. Miniver mit Arthur Wimperis und George Froeschel 1943 Forever and a Day (dt. Auf ewig und drei Tage) Episodenfilm, 7 Regisseure, 21 Autoren, darunter Hilton 1944 The Story of Dr Wassell (Dr. Wassells Flucht aus Java) mit Alan LeMay und Charles Bennett Also fast alles zusammen mit anderen Autoren, fast alle Filme mit britischem Hintergrund. Verfilmungen seiner Romane: 1937 GB Knight Without Armour 1937 US Lost Horizon 1939 GB Goodbye Mr Chips 1939 US We Are Not Alone 1942 US Random Harvest 1944 US The Story of Dr Wassell 1947 US So Well Remembered 1969 GB Goodbye Mr Chips (Musical) 1973 US Lost Horizon (Musical) Hörspielfassung seiner Romane: James Hilton präsentierte unter anderem die Hörspielreihe Hallmark Playhouse (1948-53) (später, ohne Hilton, The Hallmark Hall of Fame, 1953-1955) und wählte auch die Buchvorlagen für die Reihe aus. Unter anderem waren das: Lost Horizon (Dec 30, 1948) Random Harvest (Feb 17, 1949) Goodbye Mr. Chips (Sep 16, 1948 & Feb 1, 1951). Die Reihe Lux Radio Theater brachte an aktuelle Verfilmungen angelehnte Radiofassungen, häufig mit denselben Schauspieler wie im Film: Goodbye Mr. Chips (Nov 20, 1939) Lost Horizon (Sep 15, 1941) Random Harvest (Jan 31, 1944 & Apr 19, 1948). Academy Award Theater präsentierte: Lost Horizon (Nov 27, 1946) Orson Welles zeigte in The Campbell Playhouse (ursprünglich Campbell Theater): Lost Horizon (?) (Dec 3 1939)

Zur Publikations- und persönlichen Geschichte Hiltons: Seinen ersten Roman, Catherine Herself, schrieb er als junger Student (undergraduate) mit 17 Jahren, zwei Jahre später wurde er veröffentlicht. Im Anschluss daran schrieb er einige Jahre lang für den Irish Independent eine zweimal pro Woche erscheinende Kolumne, seine Haupteinnahmequelle. 1921 beendete er sein Studium in Cambridge (Christ College; honours in English and a history degree). Daneben schrieb er weiter Romane, Beiträge für Zeitungen, Kritiken und unterrichte in Cambridge. Erstes literarisches Lob holte er sich 1931 mit And Now Good-Bye, finanziell war aber erst Good-bye Mr. Chips (1933) ein Erfolg. Dessen Bekanntheit trug dann auch zu besseren Verkaufszahlen des eines halben Jahr zuvor erschienenen Lost Horizon bei, das zu einem der bekanntesten Bücher der Epoche wurde. Hilton bekam den Hawthornden Prize als vielversprechendster junger Autor; Lost Horizon wurde zum ersten Buch, das je als Paperback veröffentlicht wurde (je nachdem zumindest, wie man Paperback definiert - es war jedenfalls No.1 der Reihe Pocket Book); Franklin Roosevelt nannte seinen Sommersitz in Maryland "Shangri-La" (das heutige Camp David), es wurde zu einem Theaterstück, einem Film, einem Musical, einem Fernsehfilm. 1935 zog Hilton nach Kalifornien. Er schrieb weiter Romane, Artikel, Kritiken und daneben Drehbücher; er hielt Vorträge, auch im Radio. Hilton wehrte sich gegen die Wiederveröffentlichung seiner Werke vor Lost Horizon und Good-bye Mr Chips. Die einzigen Ausgaben, die ich kenne, sind amerikanische oder kanadische Taschenbuchausgaben aus den 40er Jahren. Viele seiner Bücher tragen unterschiedliche britische und amerikanische Titel. Er blieb, was seine Schauplätze und Personen betrifft, eigentlich immer ein britischer Autor, der aber in Amerika lebte und schrieb und veröffentlichte. 1951 sagte er über sich selbst: "I dislike organized games, swimming pools, fashionable resorts, night clubs, music in restaurants and political manifestos; I enjoy driving from coast to coastm good food and drink,a few friends, dogs, the theatre, long walksm mmusic (except grand opera) and free conversation. I read a dozen so so [sic] books a week (if I can find that many I want to read). I spend three or four hours a week in radio listening and an hour or so with television." (Zitiert nach: Lost Horizon. Notes [Coles Notes 991]. Toronto et al.: Coles 1965)

1. What I Found Interesting I think there is a clue, or a key, to reading James Hilton.   With Hilton, you often have characters with a much richer inner life than their surroundings suspect.   You often have a) an outside world that is aware only the surface appearance of a set of events, and b) stories in a what-really-happened-mode that are known to a very few characters only (two, one, or sometimes even none at all). I'll call these stories inner stories. For example: In Lost Horizon there is the story of what really happened to Conway. For some time, not even Conway himself is aware of his inner story (while he is suffering from amnesia). After his full recovery he confides in Rutherford, who then - in the frame story - tells it to the unnamed narrator, but only after they have got rid of the third member of their party, Wyland. "I don't much care for Wyland", Rutherford says. Conway's inner story is not for everyone to hear. (An additional point is that there is no certainty that Conway's story is the true at all. At the end of the book, the narrator and Rutherford discuss the arguments for and against the truth of the story. Maybe we have not got the real inner story after all.) In Random Harvest, Charles Rainier is also suffering from amnesia. Twice. As a shell-shocked officer in World War I, having no memories of his former life, he escapes from an asylum and marries a singer and is idyllically happy. Years later, another shock erases his memories of this life and he returns to his former life, even remarrying. At the time of the beginning of the novel he suspects that he has lost something terribly important. Here, his inner story is hidden not only from his family and colleagues, but also from himself. Until he remembers. In Knight Without Armour, Fothergill, a British diplomat, rescues a very young Russian princess during the Russian Revolution 1917 (I don't remember exactly - was it Anastasia herself?) and arranges for her to be brought up in America. Years later, when she is a young woman, middle-aged Fothergill traces her and makes her acquaintance. He does not reveal himself and for a long time does not tell her who she really is, finally even burning the papers that would have proven her identity. That night, they climb a mountain. He tells her: "I'd rather wanted to have a particular talk with you about something" but the climb has proven too strenuous. He has a weak heart. They decide he will tell her the following morning, but we are not certain just what he is going to tell her. He dies during the night. In We Are Not Alone, a young doctor is accused of murdering his wife, sentenced to death and executed. The main witness at the trial was a young boy. Now, as an adult, he has doubts. He discovers that the doctor's son (who had not been present at the trial) had inadvertently been responsible for his mother's death. (That is, if the doctor's son is to be believed. As a child, he was fond of telling tall stories.) But since they cannot prove anything, and since it all happened so long ago anyway, they don't see any point in telling anybody. My favourite example is And Now Good-Bye. In the summer of 1989, I found a copy of this book in a British youth hostel, a bound copy too. Sigh. Anyway, I read the prologue (with Hilton, almost inevitable) and was hooked. I did not pinch the book, but it took me ten years to find another copy and read it (in 1998 I found the book, read it in 1999). The prologue contained the following (this is a summary, not a quotation): Howat Freemantle, a British clergyman, is highly praised by the British press, by his wife and daughter, by the people of the small town he lives in, for a heroic deed. Travelling from London by train, he was in a serious rail accident, 14 dead. More people would have lost their lives if it hadn't been for him, desparately trying to get people out of the burning carriages. His action was the more laudable as he did not even know any of the other passengers. Ah yes, and among the charred bodies were two unaccounted for, both of women. Throughout the prologue we never hear Freemantle himself, who seems to have grown very quiet after the accident. And from the first paragraph you realize that there is something the public does not know about Howat Freemantle, about his trying to save people from the burning carriage, and about the unidentified bodies. The main part of the novel consists of the events leading up to that accident. In the epilogue, only one person gets to hear Freemantle's story, and he tells him better to forget it. Nothing So Strange takes its title from a quotation, chosen as the book's motto: "There is nothing so powerful as truth - and often nothing so strange." (Daniel Webster). Since it has been quite a while that I read the book, I don't remember all that much, so I'll just quote from the very first page: "Yes, I knew him," I said, "but it was years ago - in England...." You can make things sound very simple when you are answering questions on oath [...] And all the time, behind the facts as you truthfully state them, there's the real truth that you remember slowly [...] That, of course, isn't the kind of truth you've promised to tell, but it probably shows in your eyes and makes you look as if you were hiding something. Which, in a sense, you are. Morning Journey Same here; I have forgotten a lot. At the end of the prologue, George and Randolph are having a telephone conversation about actress Carey Arundel and director Paul Saffron: "Personally, I can't understand it. Not only throwing away a career but for God's sake what can she see in Saffron? What on earth did she see? Don't suppose we'll ever get the whole truth about that." [...] "She must have had an interesting life, Randy. Born in Ireland, she told me - on a farm. ...I wonder how she ever..." But there were so many things he wondered. Hilton takes us back in time and space to Ireland, in order to tell the whole story. Murder at School is a mystery novel, and therefore carries by definiton an inner story with it that, again by definition, is discovered at the end. Everybody gets to know the true story, for a change. Then there is Hilton's one foray into short stories, as it were. Contango (or Ill Wind consists of nine short stories with a common thread. The main character of one story becomes a minor character in the next, and so on. This time, not a single character is aware of how their lives are interacting and interconnected, and how a hat blowing off at the beginning of the first episode ultimately influences the fate of a British minister of state in the last story. (An illustration of chaotic systems.) Incidentally, several of the stories on their own contain variations of the inner story theme: - In the first story, a British diplomat gets all the blame, while he in fact has only tried to be fair and just (coupled with some fatal indecisiveness, though). He is made out to be incapable of doing his job, and nobody wants to hear how everything really happened. - The second story features a case of mistaken identity, where a character dreams up a secret inner story for another character, just to have it pierced at the end. - Three: An impostor, which we realize only in the next story. - Four: The same impostor, in a different role this time. - Five: Three corpses in the aftermath of an earthquake. They died through a misunderstanding, one of them realizes with his dying thoughts. He is the only one who has seen through the misunderstanding (not that he can tell anybody). - Sixth story: A journalist is the only one who has discovered a corpse's identity (US film celebrity) after an earthquake in South America, but fails to reach civilization and tell. - Seven: The journalist is living as a madman in the jungle, under unusual circumstances. The men who discover this don't tell his surviving relatives, as the true story would be too cruel, they couldn't get the strange details across anyway. - Eight: A former aristocrat and survivor of the Russian revolution works as a chambermaid in a Swiss hotel and gets to know and even like a Russian diplomat. She never tells him her story. (Actually, she shoots him at the end of the story, for complicated reasons.) Summing up: In many of Hilton's stories, there is a secret, more exciting, story that the public never learns about. This explains the narrative structure of many of Hilton's books: Frequently there is a prologue (and an epilogue), constituting a frame for the story. Rarely the story is told in chronological order, flashbacks are frequent. We often get first the outside view of a character, and then go back into the past to the hidden story. Often we know the outcome of a story (the end of the novel, as it were) before we get told the events that led to it. (Lost Horizon, Knight Without Armour, And Now Good-Bye, Morning Journey, Random Harvest, We Are Not Alone, Nothing So Strange). Typically, this takes the form of knowing at the beginning that somebody is going to die at the end, so you can't avoid a sense of doom while you watch the love affair unfold. This is just a list of themes or motives that seem to appear often in Hilton. It serves as a reminder to myself to work on this at some later stage; I haven't had the time yet to go through my Hilton books again, so this is mostly from memory. Ireland (Morning Journey, Knight Without Armor) Piano/Chopin (Lost Horizon, And Now Good-Bye) Mountains (Lost Horizon, Knight Without Armour, Random Harvest, Ill Wind [Florence Faulkner]) Doctors (We Are Not Alone, And Now Good-Bye) Clergymen (And Now Good-Bye) Amnesia (Random Harvest, Lost Horizon) Courtroom scenes (Ill Wind [Gathergood], Nothing So Strange) Diplomats (Ill Wind [Gathergood], Time and Time Again, Ill Wind [Henry Elliot]t) Middle-Aged Man with Young Woman (Knight Without Armour, We Are Not Alone, And Now Good-Bye, Morning Journey [Hare and Arundel]) Knowing the ending of a story at the beginning (Lost Horizon, Knight Without Armour, And Now Good-Bye, Morning Journey, Random Harvest [partly]) Russia (Ill Wind [Paula Courvier], Knight Without Armour) Murder (We Are Not Alone, Murder at School)

2. James Hilton and Mediocrity Lost Horizon, which won the Hawthornden Prize in 1933 for the most promising young novelist, is Hilton's best book. It is prophetic that as "Glory" Conway never fulfilled the promise of his early brilliance, so Hilton did not go on to write a great novel. He was content to turn out pleasant stories rather than serious works. Perhaps he had found his own private Shangri-La, and that satisfied his inner needs. Lost Horizon. Notes (Coles Notes 991). Toronto et al.: Coles 1965 There is very little on James Hilton on the web. There is one highly critical review of Lost Horizon by James Schellenberg. It is quite a damning review, actually, but not unfairly so. While I do not agree with some of the minor points, I can see the point in accusing Lost Horizon of championing mediocrity, a claim that is supported by the relevant entry in the Kindler, Germany's major (4 ft.) encyclopedia of world literature.   Schellenberg accuses Conway, the hero of Lost Horizon, of exhibiting "a lethal (to the reader's interest, that is) mix of indecision and introspection."   In my opinion, this is also valid, even characteristic, for other Hilton heroes. Compare: "Brown was a likeable and even interesting personality, but he wore an almost constant air of observing life rather than participating in it" (Ill Wind). Many of Hilton's characters have, as I have tried to show above, incredible or moving stories to tell but, for whatever reason, they remain silent. Gathergood's (Ill Wind) career is ruined because he can't or doesn't want to explain his actions. David Newcome (We Are Not Alone) is hanged for a murderer, though he knows that he is innocent. Fothergill (Knight Witout Armour has an incredible story to tell; he doesn't. Carey Arundel and Paul Saffron (Morning Journey) could explain their elopement; they don't. Freemantle (And Now Good-Bye) is suffering in silence instead of telling people that there was somebody he tried to rescue from the burning carriage. These characters seem to be content with the outside world being unaware of the true story. They prefer it that way.   His heroes are not happy in the world they live in, not happy with the part they have taken upon themselves to play (out of a sense of responsibility?). Rather than do anything about it and change their surroundings, they create and live in their own world. "But he was thinking of something else; he was thinking - By God, I believe there is something in me, if it had a chance; I believe what I'm everlastingly seeking for wouldn't always elude." (And Now Good-Bye)   Freemantle will always continue to believe that there is something in him, for he will never get the chance to show it, he will never have to prove it, either to himself or others.   While I agree with Kurt Vonnegut that being talented doesn't put an obligation on you to use your talents, I am suspicious of the feeling of "I too could be brilliant, if the world only knew" I get when reading Hilton. Hilton almost never shows the dangers of being too introspective. It is only in Ill Wind that Charles Gathergood's indecisiveness leads to catastrophe. When a native on an island is accused of murdering a white man (which he is possibly not guilty of), Gathergood waits too long and the native is killed by a lynch mob. This leads to a revolution (of sorts) on the island, and more white people are killed. For once, the narrator's sympathies do not lie with the puzzled main character (although Hilton does not offer any solution for Gathergood's dilemma). Hilton's is a sense of wonder. He looks at all the windows in a street and wonders what strange stories may take place behind them. I find that splendid. But he does not go on and make a statement about appearances and reality. Maybe, if this had been what Hilton wanted to explore, and if he had questioned his indecisive heroes more, he would have been more recognized as an author. As it is, I dearly love him for his stories (sentimental as I am), for his twisted way of telling, for his glimpses under the surface of ordinary-looking people.

Footnote There have been at least two sequels to Lost Horizon. One is Return to Shangri-La by acclaimed British film critic Leslie Halliwell (1987). It's been some time that I read it, and I only remember that I found it uncomfortably conservative (looking back to the good old days when workers wouldn't go on strike all the time), but I may be quite wrong there. The blurb says it is "a tribute to the magical adventure movies of the 1930s". The action takes place 50 years after the publication of Lost Horizon, when "two chance acquaintances in the Californian desert find reason to believe that the celebrated story may have had a basis is truth. A trail of danger, detection and excitement leads them from a flooded canyon in Death Valley back to the London blitz of 1940; from the spurious glamour of Hollywood to a peaceful island off the Pembrokeshire coast; and finally by an obscure Asian route to a discovery which changes their lives and could even affect the future of the world" (blurb again).   The other book is Shangri-La: The Return to the World of Lost Horizon by Eleanor Cooney and Daniel Altieri (1996). I haven't read (or even got) that one yet, but it's only a matter of time. Looks interesting though, from the reviews at amazon.com.

James Hilton