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Authors focus on Jim Tully, Kent's forgotten literary light

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April 17, 2011

 

By Ben Wolford | Staff Writer

If you don’t know who Jim Tully is, keep reading.

He was an early 20th Century hobo, nationally known author, confidant to Charlie Chaplin, circus hand, journalist, chain maker and professional boxer.

Oh, and Tully once lived in Kent, where he worked for Davey Tree Expert Co. and wanted to marry a Kent librarian.

So why is it that most people don’t know about Jim Tully?

That’s what Kent used and rare book dealer Paul Bauer and Plain Dealer film critic Mark Dawidziak wanted to find out 19 years ago when they first learned of him. All these years later, their pioneering Tully biography, “Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler,” went on sale last week.

“Have you ever heard of Jim Tully?” Bauer asked Dawidziak one day in the summer of 1992.

A customer was asking for a copy of “The Bruiser,” a book about boxing, Tully’s 12th publication out of 14. None of that rang a bell for Bauer. Dawidziak neither.

For a rare book dealer, “to be this stumped really rankled (Bauer),” Dawidziak said.

Tully was born in St. Marys, a small city in western Ohio. His mother died and his father didn’t want to care for him, so Tully lived in a Cincinnati orphanage until 1898. Then he skipped town, catching a train to become a hobo. He was 12.

Tully lived on the road, working dinky circuses and hanging around libraries, gaining experience for future writings.

He drifted for six years. Then he stopped, settled down (for a little while) and got a job making chains in Kent, where Seneca Chain Co. was located.

“Kent was one of the first towns with chainworks,” Dawidziak said. “He also launches his boxing career in Kent.”

When the chainworks burned down in 1909, Tully landed a job at Davey Tree as a tree surgeon. He traveled around the country and sent reports back to headquarters. The reports were so good, Davey Tree published them in their newsletter — Tully’s first published work.

His first professionally published work was a poem in The Plain Dealer. It was called “On Keats’ Grave” and June 27, 1911.

He also fell in love in Kent. He also was smitten with Nellie Dingley, the well-dressed Ashtabula native who ran the Kent Free Library. Tully proposed to her there, but she said no.

Tully married Kentite Florence Bushnell instead.

“I think it’s fair to say that for the rest of his life, he held more of a connection with Kent than he did with St. Marys,” Dawidziak said.

It wasn’t long before Tully divorced Bushnell, moved to California, wrote PR for Charlie Chaplin and became famous for his book, “Beggars of Life,” which was turned into a film.

In one larger-than-life but entirely true anecdote, Tully knocked out heartthrob film actor John Gilbert with one punch. Critics, including the Baltimore Sun’s H.L. Mencken, were comparing him to Sinclair Lewis and Theadore Dreiser.

“How does somebody be that big and disappear?” Dawidziak said.

As he and Bauer found, there were a few reasons: He got sick and World War II distracted the public from literature. Tully died in 1947.

“Once you get into the ‘60s, Tully is pretty much gone,” Dawidziak said.

The two biographers even had trouble finding a publisher for their book. Tully’s story is interesting enough, they’d say, but they’d have trouble marketing it; nobody’s ever heard of him.

Will Underwood at Kent State University Press couldn’t pass it up but recognized the same obstacle.

“The hurdle for this book is answering the question: Who the hell is Jim Tully?” Underwood said.

They hope the publication of the biography and the KSU Press reprints of four Tully books will re-energize interest. Bauer says their 19 years of off-and-on research into his life already has.

“There are a lot of people after him now,” Bauer said. “Dealers like to look for the next old, big thing, and I think Tully might be it.”

 




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