Jack Schaefer Biography and List of Works

American writer and journalist, who's best-known novel Shane (1949) has been considered the ultimate achievement in creating a mythical western hero with a shady past. The story follows the pattern of a classical Greek tragedy, in which there is no escape from Fate. Schaefer's novel was adapted onto screen in 1953, directed by George Stevens and starring Alan Ladd.

"Little Joey is merely one of many characters, and Alan Ladd is too much a gentleman, far more civilized than the edgy character in the novel seems to be. Whereas the novel focuses on character, the film focuses more on action. What the film misses is the mediation of character and events that the novel presents from Bob's perspective, but the older Bob has a better (though incomplete) understanding of the events than his less mature counterpart Joey in the film."
(from Novels into Films by John C. Tibbets and James M. Welsh, 1999)

Jack Schaefer was born in Cleveland the son of Carl Walter Schaefer, attorney, and Minnie (Hively) Schaefer. He was educated at Oberlin College, Ohio, receiving his A.B. in English in 1929. In 1929-30 he studied at Columbia University, New York, but left his studies when the faculty denied him permission to prepare a master's thesis on the development of motion pictures.

Schaefer worked as a reporter for the United Press in New Haven, Connecticut. Between 1931 and 1938 he was an assistant director of education at Connecticut State Reformatory in Cheshire. Schaefer's journalistic career spanned nearly 20 years. He was an associate editor and then editor at Journal Courier (1939-42), an editorial writer for the Baltimore Sun (1942-44), an associate editor at Norfolk Virginia Pilot (1944-48), and an associate at Lindsay Advertising Company (1949). In New Haven he was an editor and publisher of Theatre News (1935-40), The Movies (1939-41), and Shoreliner (1949).

As a writer Schaefer made his breakthrough with Shane (1949), a tale of a gunman's involvement with a homesteading family in Wyoming. Schaefer had never been west of Cleveland, but his vision of the West was so clear cut, that his work was honoured in 1985 by the Western Writers of America as the best Western novel ever written. It inspired George Stevens's classical western with the same title. The story was set in 1889 and tells the tale from the point of view of a young boy, Bob Starrett. "He rode into our valley in the summer of '89, a slim man, dressed in black. 'Call me Shane,' he said. He never told us more." Shane is the embodiment of the Lone Hero, someone who shares the values of society but has the destructive skills of the outlaws. Shane works as Joe Starrett's farm hand. A powerful rancher, Luke Fletcher, wants to run homesteaders off the range. He hires a gunfighter, Stark Wilson, to complete the task. Wilson kills Ernie Wright. Shane understands that Joe, who has become his friend, is no match for Wilson. He kills both Wilson and Fletcher. "A man is what he is, Bob, and there's no breaking the mould." After settling the conflict in favour of the community, he must hang up his guns,(as does the hero of Owen Wister's The Virginian), or ride out of the town.

Schaefer sold his farm near Waterbury in the mid-1950s, and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. From the late 1960s he devoted himself to writing about mankind's effect upon the western environment. In 1961 Schaefer had already declared the Western genre dead. In Mavericks (1967) the author draws a portrait of an old ranch-hand, Jake Hanlon, a dying cowboy, who discovers that he has contributed to the destruction of the west that he loves. Schaefer's favourite novel was The Canyon (1953), in which the protagonist is a lone Cheyenne, Little Beaver, who must chose between the customs of his tribe, nature, and the necessity of community.

"'Too bad,' he said. He raised his right hand and the gun in it bucked with the shot and the driver rose upright off the seat arching his back in sudden agony and fell sideways over the footboard to strike on the wagon tongue and bounce to the ground between the harness tugs and with the roar of the shot the horses were rearing and they plunged ahead and the wheels crunched over the driver's body as they rolled forward along the road."
(from 'One Man's Honour', 1956)

Although Schaefer never deliberately wrote stories for children, his novels were increasingly popular with young readers. In Old Ramon (1960), illustrated by Harold West, Schaefer explores the theme of growing up. Ramon, an aged Mexican sheepherder, initiates a young boy, the owner's son, into understanding independence and responsibility. Shabby Pringle's Christmas (1964), illustrated by Lorence Bjorkman, is a tale about a cowpoke that substitutes for Santa Claus.

In 1975 Schaefer received the Western Literature Association Distinguished Achievement award. He died on January 24, 1991. Schaefer was twice married, to Eugenia Hammond Ives in 1931; they divorced in 1948, and to Louise Wilhide Deans in 1949.

Shane (1953) - dir. by George Stevens, starring Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, Brandon de Wilde, Jack Palance. The movie blends a realistic approach to the Wyoming range wars with a distillation of many of the most potent myths that characterize the Western film. A.B. Guthrie Jr., whose novel The Way West won a Pulitzer Prize in 1949, wrote the screenplay adaptation. The film was shot in the Jackson Hole Valley, flanked by the Grand Teton Mountains. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards: best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay, and best supporting actor (Brandon de Wilde) and best cinematography - and Loyal Griggs took an Oscar for his cinematography.

A former gunslinger (Alan Ladd), dressed in buckskins, becomes a hired hand and friend of a Wyoming homesteader (Van Heflin), and shares an understood but unspoken love with his wife (Jean Arthur). Their young son Joey (Brandon de Wilde) is torn between his admiration for the blond haired guardian angel and his love for his parents. Shane has a past he cannot escape, and he sees it in the black-clad hit-man (Jack Palance), who even drinks his black coffee from a blackened pot. He would like to give up gun fighting, knowing that if he uses his gun he has no future in the civilized West. However, he is the only one who can stand against his diabolical doppelganger, hired by two violent rancher brothers. After the final shootout Shane rides through a graveyard to disappear into mythology. The boy calls him with the words "Shane! Shane. Come back! Thank you." - In one of the memorable scenes from the book Shane and the farmer spend all day together to chop down a stubborn tree trunk. Stevens made sure that clothing and even haircuts were true to the period. The film also contains a classical funeral scene, which can be compared to those in The Searchers and Red River. The people are grouped artfully; in the background stands the wall of the Grand Teton mountains: According to Stevens, the arrangement symbolizes continuity between life and death. - Quote: "A gun is a tool, no better, no worse, than any other tool, an axe, a shovel, or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it." "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do."

For further reading: West of Everything by Jane Tompkins (1992); Critical Essays on the Western American Novel, ed. by William T. Pilkington (1980); Western Movies, ed. by William T. Pilkington and Don Graham (1979); Jack Schaefer by Gerald W. Haslam (1975); The American Western Novel by James K. Folsom (1966)

Shane, (1949)
First Blood and Other Stories, (1988)