‘The finest epigrammist of the present day’: fan-magazine writing and the queer craft of Herbert How

Williams, Michael (2024) ‘The finest epigrammist of the present day’: fan-magazine writing and the queer craft of Herbert How. 12th BAFTSS Conference: Labour and Screen Media, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom. 03 - 05 Apr 2024.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

When Photoplay magazine commissioned its lead writers, Adela Rogers St. Johns and Herbert Howe to create analytical sketches of each other in November 1923, the former described Howe as ‘the finest epigrammist of the present day’, praising his entertaining wit and insight and acknowledging the advantage that he ‘knows everybody’. Born in South Dakota in 1893, Howe handled publicity for the Triangle and Vitagraph companies and became a popular figure among New York critics, establishing himself as a leading writer for Photoplay in 1922. His queerness, and ‘penchant for Hispanic leading men’ was noted by Slide (2010), and Chávez (2011) explored the publicist’s relationship with his best-known star client and alleged lover, Ramón Novarro. However, Howe’s wider fan-magazine writing, and his work on the periphery of the film industry in producing a queer identity on the page, hidden in plain sight, deserves greater critical attention.

This paper explores Howe’s writing style, already distinct in the late 1910s and characterised by an acerbic and often self-mocking wit, vivid characterisations, and a breezy campness and homoeroticism that is unabashed but carefully articulated for its mainstream context. His work also reveals glimpses of wider contemporary queer networks though his detailed and gossipy tales of Hollywood and New York clubs frequented by industry figures, celebrities and wider society figures.

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