Our Own Hall of Fame
LLOYD C. DOUGLAS
EX-SPRINGFIELD REPORTER
Lloyd C. Douglas Treatise Became First Best Seller
DAYTON DAILY NEWS MARCH 22, 1961
BY MARY ELLEN LYNCH
Daily News Staff Writer
A treatise originally called “Personality Expansion Through Private Philanthropy” became one of the best selling novels in history and transformed a 52-year-old Lutheran minister into possibly the most successful writer of his generation.
The book was “Magnificant Obsession.” The author, Lloyd C. Douglas.
At his death 19 years later, Douglas’ 11 strongly moralistic novels had sold a total of 7,380,000 copies not counting foreign sales.
THE SON of a country parson, Douglas was born in Columbia City, Ind., but he had deep roots in Springfield. It was there that he spent two years preparing for college, four years at Wittenberg and three more at Hamma Divinity school where he was ordained a Lutheran minister in 1903.
He also cut his writing teeth in Springfield, working two summers as a police and sports reporter on the old Press-Republic.
FOR THE NEXT 26 years Douglas and his wife, a minister’s daughter, served churches throughout the United States and Canada.
The aspiring clergyman-author published his first volume of essays at his own expense. Nobody bought it but, undaunted, Douglas followed up with three more collections that enjoyed mild success.
He was half way through the fifth when he decided it might be more fun to make his point by telling a story.
THAT’S HOW “Magnificant Obsession” was born. It was published (first edition: 2,500 copies) in 1929 by a small religious house that had no facilities for advertising or promotion.
But the book gradually caught on by word of mouth and hit the best seller lists in 1932.
An amazed Douglas followed up with another success called ”Forgive Us Our Trespasses” and left the pulpit to concentrate fulltime on his “nationwide parish of novel readers.”
“MAGNIFICANT Obsession” became a hit movie and the book sold nearly 1.5 million copies.
Critics attacked Douglas, deploring his clichés, calling his people puppets and his action melodramatic.
He answered: “I do not know anything about writing novels, but I am learning.”
In the course of his education he turned out such best sellers as “Green Light” (1935), “White Banners” (1936), “Disputed Passage” and “Dr. Hudson’s Secret Journal” (1939).
“THE ROBE” appeared in 1942, was translated into 12 languages and sold more than two million copies in the next 10 years. “The Big Fisherman” (1948) was his last novel.
A big, balding man running to fat, Douglas was a methodical workman (with a rule that the opening paragraph of each book must contain exactly two and a quarter lines) who turned out 3,000 words a day.
HE TYPED his own manuscripts—sitting at a small pine table scarred with cigarette burns—while he played Mozart and Chopin records.
Douglas was frankly more concerned with healing bruised spirits than winning critical acclaim.
Douglas died from a heart ailment in Los Angeles in 1951. He was 73.
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