1936 brought a few ruffles to the Kline-Howard relationship,
beginning with a letter from Howard to agent August Lenniger, dated 27 December
1935:
I have received your letter of the
17th, and read it with much interest, together with the literature that
accompanied it. Mr. Otis Adelbert Kline handles most of my work, and I have no
reason to be dissatisfied with him. However, there’s no harm in having more
than one string to a bow, as in the case of my friend, Ed Price, who does
business with both yourself and Mr. Kline, and seems to be doing very well
indeed. I notice that in your ad in the December issue of the [Author & Journalist] you state that,
in the case of a professional who has sold $1,000 worth of stuff within the
last year, you will waive reading fees and handle his work on straight
commission. Well, I sold considerably more than a thousand dollars worth of
stories. If you are willing to handle my work on a straight commission basis,
I’ll be glad to send you some yarns and let you see what you can do with them.
Of your ability as an agent there is of course no question. As to my yarns, I
write westerns, adventure, fantasy, sport, and occasionally detective. I have
been a contributor to Weird Tales for
eleven years, and a 70,000 word novel, The
Hour of the Dragon is at present running in that magazine as a serial. Action Stories is running a series of
humorous western shorts, one of these stories having appeared in every issues
of the magazine for about two years now. In the past few months I have made
three new markets, Western Aces,
Thrilling Mystery and Spicy
Adventures. In addition to the magazines above mentioned my work has
appeared in Ghost Stories, Argosy, Fight
Stories, Oriental Stories, Sport Stories, Thrilling Adventures, Texaco Star,
The Ring, Strange Detective, Super-Detective, Strange Tales, Frontier Times
and Jack Dempsey’s Fight Magazine. (CL 3.395-396)
 |
| Western Aces October 1935 |
Gus Lenniger was, strictly speaking, Kline’s competition,
although the two were on friendly terms, and by unusual circumstances shared a
client in E. Hoffmann Price, whose situation combined with the non-exclusive
nature of Howard’s agreement with Kline probably precipitated the confusion. As
Price tells it, he had Lenniger as his agent, but wasn’t getting sales, so:
I wrote Otis, and sent him a novelette
with which Lenniger had no luck whatsoever. All I expected, in my ignorance,
was some advice which I could utilize. After all, Otis and I had drunk from the
same barrel. He suggested a revision, and a second revision, and then, a
substantial cut. It was only then that I learned about his agency business. As
a friend, he was giving me a hand. He was not looking for another client. He
never once suggested that I dump August Lenniger. He took my much revised
script, sold it, and also, a short story which had got nowhere. Each salvage
operation was in the crime field. And then, August Lenniger got his stride. I
had never had any cause for complaint. That it had taken him awhile to express
himself in terms meaningful to me was natural. [...] Stories for Kline went to
him as “Hamlin Daly” yarns. My “official” agent got E. Hoffmann Price stuff.
Oddly, each sold to publishers which the other was not selling. An arrangement
of this sort could not, and of course, should not last long. It did not. (BOD 33)
Kline had a slightly different take on events, in a letter
to Otto Binder dated 14 May 1936:
I really gave Price his start in the
detective story field. When he wanted to branch out he came to me, and at that
time I told him I was busy with my own writing and didn’t want to take on
anymore clients. I recommended Lenniger. He sent him four or five novelettes
and a bunch of shorts, and Lenniger didn’t sell a damn thing for him over a
period of six months. He then asked me if I would check up and see what was
wrong for him. I agreed to do so, and he wrote Lenniger for a couple of the
novelettes. He revised them under my directions, and I sould them right off the
bat to Dell for 1 ¼ ¢ a word. He then wrote for some more, and during that six
months period I sold, all told, five novelettes which Lenniger had been unable
to sell because he didn’t demand revisions, and three or four short stories.
With all all of these sales editors began to notice Price’s name, and Lenniger
began to sit up and take notice. He sold a short story for Price, and started
going around to editorial offices trying to get assignments. Then he sold a
novelette, and some other stuff, and kept getting Price more assignments. In
spite of that fact, I solde twice as much for Price over the period of a year
as did Lenniger. I continued this record for another year. [...] Lenniger, however, kept boring in, using the assignment
method. He kept contacting new editors, asking for assignments for Price. Then
he would wire or airmail Price, and naturally he wouldn’t turn down any orders
for stories if he could possibly dill them, on the “bird in the hand” theory.
This ran down my stock of Price stories, and of course ran down my sales. I got
him the Pawang Ali assignment from Tremain, and if I had been in New York
regularly could have gotten him a lot of others and beaten Lenniger at his own
game. As it is, he is cashing in on a man I trained for the work, and the only
way I can beat him is through the New York end. (OAK 16.6-7)
Howard had also dealt with Lenniger briefly in 1933, when
Lenniger, Price, and Kirk Mashburn had the idea for an anthology that never
materialized. (CL2.240; 3.14, 41) The
extent to which Howard intended to use Lenniger as an agent isn’t clear, but
the issue was further complicated by a letter from Howard to William Kofoed,
dated 8 Jan 1936:
