Reviewed in Journalism History

Growing up, I eagerly read every Hardy Boys book and remember the anticipation of a new title, much like today’s generation awaits the arrival of a new Harry Potter tome.

Marilyn Greenwald, a journalism professor at Ohio University, has vividly told the story of the ghostwriter who wrote twenty of the first twenty-four books in the Hardy Boys series. It is not a romantic tale of an author leisurely puffing on a pipe while concocting a new Baytown adventure for Joe and Frank Hardy and their always-hungry friend Chet Morton. Instead, Les McFarlane would dash out a new book in only a few weeks-purely for the $100 or so per book that the Stratemeyer publishing syndicate paid him-while focusing on the more-serious work for which he longed to be remembered. His legacy, however, became the quick-read Hardy Boys books that he wrote under the fictitious name of Franklin W. Dixon.

Poring through letters and diaries conducting family interviews, Greenwald pieced together a human tale of a rural Canadian who loved to write. McFarlane became a newspaper reporter and then a freelance writer who was often on the edge of financial catastrophe. Writing the Hardy Boys books became a financial addiction, and his contract with the Stratemeyer Syndicate was for a flat fee with no royalties.

The Hardy Boys became one of the top-selling juvenile series of the twentieth century, selling more than 50 million copies. Greenwald credits the success to McFarlane, who took the formulaic plot outlines provided by the syndicate and gave the characters a human dimension. For instance, Joe and Frank had an irreverent attitude toward authority figures, Chet supplied comic relief (in the Hidden Harbor Mystery, he buys three candy bars, six oranges, a bottle of soda, and a bag of peanuts “to fight off famine until lunch time”), and crusty Aunt Gertrude always predicted a violent and tragic ending to the boys’ adventures. While Joe and Frank never bled, they were always getting tied up, tumbling down cliffs, or falling through trap doors. McFarlane inserted allusions to the works of Shakespeare and Dickens, and he used a more challenging vocabulary (for example, prosaic, ostensibly, and ambling) than other adventure books of the day.

Entrepreneur Edward Stratemeyer (who also published the Tom Swift, Bobbsey Twins, and Nancy Drew series) invited McFarlane to write the first Hardy Boys book in 1926 after McFarlane produced six Dave Fearless adventure books for the syndicate at $100 apiece. In his diary in 1933, he referred to writing books for kids “a cursed nightmare,” yet when he realized after fourteen Hardy Boys books that someone else would write the next one titled “The Sinister Signpost”, he changed his mind and wrote that one, too, although in his diary he savaged the plot and referred “the obnoxious Hardy brats.” In keeping with the confidentiality clause of his contract, he admitted his authorship to no one, not even his children, although he told his son the truth years later and eventually became publicly known as the ghost of the Hardy Boys.

After twenty years and 2 million words for the syndicate, he wrote his final Hardy Boys book (“The Phantom Freighter”) in 1946 while in motel rooms in Nova Scotia, where he was directing a project for the National Film Board of Canada. McFarlane had moved into radio at a propitious time and the joined the film board primarily to write documentary scripts. His work was highly recognized in Canada, he worked for a time in television in Hollywood (including writing the script for “Bonanza”), and retired with some financial stability. He died in 1977 at the age of seventy-four.

Greenwald says McFarlane was hurt in his later years when he realized the syndicate had rewritten and shortened his books in a modernization effort. He did not mind roadsters becoming cars, but he thought the purge of whole chapters had robbed the “new” Hardy Boys series of their personality. For instance, the wonderful celebratory feast at the end of “The Tower treasure”, where Chet finally admits that he is full, was eliminated. So were many of the sophisticated words that he believed drove young readers to the dictionary.

Greenwald says McFarlane came to peace with his authorship of the Hardy Boys after he saw what his work meant to millions of children. He knew the books were not great literature, but he came to see himself as a good storyteller who helped children to enjoy reading. Greenwald is a good storyteller, too, and this book illuminates the behind-the-scenes activity of ghostwriters and the foremost children’s publishing syndicate of that era.

Journalism History
30.3
Fall 2004