How the swindler O. Henry and his friend the raider after prison became famous writer and actor

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

On March 25, 1898, prisoner number 30664 appeared in the Ohio State Convict Prison. William Sidney Porter was indeed a swindler and a rogue. Having tried a lot of professions and ways to get rich, he ended up in one of the scariest places in America. Here Porter met his old friend, with whom he was hiding in Honduras a couple of years ago. Al Jennings was a train robber and hijacker. After serving the due date, the friends began an honest life. Porter, who published short stories from prison, became famous all over the world under the name O. Henry, and Jennings became a silent film star and wrote the novel With O. Henry at the Bottom.

If William Porter had been born in the Renaissance, he could probably rival Leonardo da Vinci himself in terms of talent. In his stormy life, this man tried many professions, and in each he showed a fair amount of talent: pharmacist, cowboy, accountant and cashier, draftsman, writer; he also published his own humorous newspaper, and in his free time he sang with pleasure in the church choir, participated in theatrical performances, played the guitar and mandolin and amused his friends with witty stories, mostly invented.

Perhaps the most stable of all this diversity has been the attempts at writing. They gradually recognized the young author and began to publish, but Porter could not concentrate on his favorite pastime - he had to feed his family, and then he had to hide from the law for a large embezzlement. While working as a cashier and accountant at a bank, the future writer seems to have actually embezzled a large sum of money.

After living in Honduras for six months, Porter coined the term "banana republic" and wrote, sitting in a small hotel, the story "Kings and Cabbage." In the same place, fate brought him together with another cheerful guy, Al Jennings. His life was no less interesting: he began his career as a lawyer in a family business, along with his brothers, but then, according to all sources, in a shootout with a rival lawyer, two of his brothers were killed, and Al was forced to wander (apparently, America it really was a fun place in the 19th century).

Wanderings led Jennings into a gang, with whom he began robberies. To such a turn of fate the young man was led by an offense at the injustice of the judicial system. He decided that he would take whatever he wanted from life. However, the bandit had a kind of "code of honor": he never robbed women and preachers.

Not all of the Jennings' gang raids were successful, sometimes the robbers only got a bunch of bananas and a bottle of whiskey, and often the safes did not want to be opened. Jennings would later write in his autobiography that the law often accused him of crimes that he did not commit, but the name of the robber became more famous, and in the end, in 1897, the criminal was wounded and arrested. The robber was sentenced to life imprisonment, but then one of the brothers, who continued his career as a lawyer, saved the "lost sheep", filed an appeal and was able to reduce the term to five years. The prison became a place for Jennings to rethink his life.

The friends got out of prison with a difference of a year and began a peaceful life. Porter in prison came up with the pseudonym O. Henry. There are at least five versions of the origin of this name. One of them associates it with the name of the prison: Ohio Penitentiary. And a faithful friend Jennings in his book says that the pseudonym is taken from a famous cowboy song, which contains the following lines: “The beloved returned at 12 o'clock. Tell me, O Henry, what is the verdict? By the way, it is possible that it was the former robber who pushed the writer to work in dungeons.

After their release, both Porter and Jennings achieved great success. The first became a famous author, as he was finally able to concentrate on his main passion, and the second became involved in politics. He tried to be elected to the post of prosecutor, even put forward his candidacy for the post of governor of Oklahoma and did not quite reach the high chair. The former robber made honesty the main weapon in the election campaigns: he spoke about his past without concealment. Voters, it seems, were sympathetic to the "fighting youth" of the popular politician.

Already in years, Al Jennings moved to California and took up the film business. He started as a technical consultant (who, if not a former bandit, could know everything about Westerns). Then he tried himself in front of the camera and even became a movie star. For more than twenty years, he starred in action movies about cowboys, and by the end of his life he became an itinerant preacher - he traveled around the country and warned young people against mistakes that led him to prison and almost ruined him.

A faithful friend grieved over the death of O. Henry. The writer died at the age of 47 from illness and intemperance to alcohol, having managed to create a huge legacy - about 250 stories (according to other sources, almost 400). Jennings himself lived to be 98 years old, by the end of his life he was a very famous and wealthy person.

Under the name O. Henry, the former adventurer became a classic of American literature. Many famous writers are known to us under pseudonyms, which everyone considers their real names and surnames.