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Heinrich BellamannAmerican writer, poet and music educator
Date of Birth: 28.04.1882
Country:  USA |
Content:
- Henry Bellamann: American Author, Poet, and Music Educator
- Musical Career
- Literary Career
- "Kings Row" and Its Legacy
- "Kings Row" on Film
- Later Life and Legacy
Henry Bellamann: American Author, Poet, and Music Educator
Early Life and EducationHenry Hauer Bellamann was born on April 28, 1882, in Fulton, Missouri, to George Heurich and Caroline Bellamann. After graduating from Fulton High School, he briefly attended Westminster College before moving to Colorado in 1901. Bellamann studied piano at the University of Denver, graduating in 1904.
Musical Career
Following his graduation, Bellamann taught music at various girls' schools. He met his future wife, Katherine McKee Jones, while they both taught at a school in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. They married on September 3, 1907.
During his summer vacations between 1908 and 1913, Bellamann traveled to Europe to further his piano and organ studies under Charles-Marie Widor and Isidor Philipp. From 1907 to 1932, while pursuing his literary career, he held various administrative and teaching positions at institutions including the Juilliard School of Music, the Curtis Institute of Music, and Vassar College.
Literary Career
With his wife's encouragement, Bellamann embarked on a writing career. His first of three volumes of poetry, "A Music Teacher's Notebook," was published in 1920. The other two, "Cups of Illusion" and "The Upward Pass," appeared in 1923 and 1928, respectively. Though now largely forgotten as a poet, Bellamann received recognition in his own time, with David Perkins in his 1976 "History of Modern Poetry" classifying him as a "serious minor poet" who "adopted the conventions" of the imagists.
In addition to his novels, Bellamann also served as editor of the music journal "Overtones" and wrote a weekly literary column in which he championed the work of DuBose Heyward and Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Peterkin. Bellamann's first novel, "Petenera's Daughter," was published in 1926. It was followed by "Crescendo" in 1928, "The Richest Woman in Town" in 1928, and "The Gray Man Walks" in 1938. His most famous and controversial work was still to come.
"Kings Row" and Its Legacy
Bellamann's most acclaimed novel, "Kings Row," follows the coming-of-age of Drake McHugh and his best friend, Parris Mitchell, in a sleepy Midwestern town in the 1890s. Exposing the hypocrisy and secrets of the small-town society, "Kings Row" delves into themes of mental illness, incest, homosexuality, suicide, female sexual agency, and sadistic revenge—all of which were largely taboo in American literature of the early 20th century.
The most controversial aspect of the novel, as well as its subsequent film adaptation, was the setting. It took little time for the citizens of Fulton, Missouri, to realize that the fictional town in the book was a thinly veiled "re-imagining" of their own. The "Abercrombie College" in the novel was seen as a stand-in for the real-life Westminster College, while the hospital described in the bestseller bore a striking resemblance to the Fulton State Hospital.
Local doctors who were less than flatteringly portrayed in the novel reacted with outrage, with one editor of the local newspaper writing that Bellamann "evidently intended to disgrace Fulton." For many years, "Kings Row" was met with hostility in Fulton, and at one point, the book was removed from the city library's shelves. In 1981, while researching the introduction to a new edition of "Kings Row," Westminster College English professor Jay Miles Carr discovered private notes by Bellamann that included the words "novel about Fulton." According to Carr, growing up in Fulton had left young Bellamann "psychologically scarred," a trauma that he sought to exorcise decades later through his writing.
Bellamann had often felt alienated in his hometown due to his German heritage and family reputation, which had been tarnished by rumors that George Heurich was not Henry's biological father. Interviews with some of the author's childhood friends confirmed Bellamann's outsider status in Fulton.
"Kings Row" on Film
Following the novel's success as a bestseller, it was adapted into a 1942 film starring Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, and Ronald Reagan. While the film toned down some of the more controversial elements of the source material in accordance with the Hays Code, it nevertheless went on to critical and commercial success. Although Reagan's performance was considered one of the best of his career, it was also one of his most personal, as he identified with the character of Drake McHugh, whose leg had been amputated. Reagan even titled his 1965 autobiography "Where's the Rest of Me?" after one of McHugh's key lines in the film.
Later Life and Legacy
Following the success of "Kings Row," Bellamann published the novels "Floods of Spring" and "Victoria Grandolet." He was working on a sequel to "Kings Row" when he died of a heart attack on June 16, 1945, at his home in New York City. His wife completed the sequel, which was published in 1948 as "Parris Mitchell of Kings Row."
Katherine McKee Bellamann survived her husband by eleven years, passing away in 1956. The couple had no children.
