Daniel P. Mannix

Daniel Pratt Mannix IV (October 27, 1911-January 29, 1997), born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, was an author, journalist, photographer, side-show performer, stage magician, animal trainer, and film-maker. His best-known works are the 1958 book Those About to Die, which remained in continuous print for three decades, and the 1967 novel The Fox and the Hound which in 1981 was adapted into an animated film by Walt Disney Productions.

Childhood

The Mannix family had a long history of service in the United States Navy, and Mannix' father, Daniel P. Mannix, III, was an American naval officer.^[1] His mother would often join her husband on his postings, and the Mannix children would stay at their grandparents' farm outside Philadelphia.^[2] It was there that Mannix began to keep and raise various wild animals. In time, the cost of feeding them led him to write his first book, The Back-Yard Zoo.^[3]

Career

Mannix served as a naval lieutenant with the Photo-Science Laboratory in Washington, D.C. during World War II.^[4] His varied career included time spent as a sword swallower and fire eater in a traveling carnival sideshow, where he performed under the stage name The Great Zadma. His magazine articles about these experiences, co-written with his wife Jule Junker Mannix, proved very popular and were reprinted several times in 1944 and 1945, and later expanded into book form in his 1951 account of carnival life Step Right Up, which in turn was reprinted in 1964 as Memoirs of a Sword Swallower. He was also at times a professional hunter, a collector of wildlife for zoos and circuses, and a bird trainer. The latter skill was showcased in the 1956 short film Universal Color Parade: Parrot Jungle, in which he is credited as the writer, actor, director, producer, photographer, and bird trainer.

Mannix covered a wide variety of subject matter as an author. His books ranged from fictional animal stories for children, the natural history of animals, and adventurous accounts about hunting big game to sensational adult non-fiction topics such as a biography of the occultist Aleister Crowley, sympathetic accounts of carnival performers and sideshow freaks, and works describing, among other things, the Hellfire Club, the Atlantic slave trade, the history of torture, and the Roman games. In 1983, he edited The Old Navy: The Glorious Heritage of the U.S. Navy, Recounted through the Journals of an American Patriot by Rear Admiral Daniel P. Mannix, 3rd, his father's posthumously-published autobiographical account of his life and naval career from the Spanish-American War of 1898 until his retirement in 1928.

In his role as a photo-journalist, Mannix witnessed the death of the famed herpetologist Grace Olive Wiley when she was fatally bitten by a venomous snake. ^[5] On July 20, 1948, Wiley, then 64 years old, invited Mannix to her home in Cypress, California, to photograph her collection of snakes. She posed for him with a venomous Indian cobra she had recently acquired, and the snake bit her on the finger. At her instruction, Mannix put tourniquets on her arm, but unfortunately, in trying to administer her only vial of cobra antivenom he found the needle was rusty, and he accidentally broke the vial. At her request, he took her to Long Beach Municipal Hospital, but the hospital only had antivenom serums for North American snakes. Wiley was placed in an iron lung to assist her breathing, but to no avail; she was pronounced dead less than two hours after being bitten.^[6] Fifteen years later, Mannix wrote an account of the event in his book All Creatures Great and Small, in which he titled Wiley the "Woman Without Fear." ^[7]

Mannix was also a skilled stage magician,^[8] magic historian, and collector of illusions and apparatus. In 1957, he was one of the 16 charter members who co-founded the Munchkin Convention of the International Wizard of Oz Club.^[9] He contributed numerous articles to The Baum Bugle, including on the subject of the 1902 musical extravaganza, The Wizard of Oz.

Personal life

Mannix and his wife and sometime co-author Jule Junker Mannix travelled around the world and raised exotic animals. Jule Mannix wrote the book Married to Adventure in 1954 as an autobiographical account of her adventurous life with Mannix. The couple had a son, Daniel Pratt Mannix, V, and a daughter, Julie Mannix Von Zernick.^[8] From 1950 onward, Daniel and Jule Mannix lived in the same house in East Whiteland, near Malvern, Pennsylvania. Jule Mannix died May 25, 1977. ^[10] Mannix died on January 29, 1997, at the age of 85, and was survived by his son and daughter, three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.^[8]

Literary Influence

According to Martin M Winkler's book, Gladiator: Film and History, Mannix's 1958 non-fiction book Those about to Die (reprinted in 2001 as The Way of the Gladiator) was the inspiration for David Franzoni's screenplay for the 2000 movie Gladiator.^[11]

Bibliography

Books

• The Back-Yard Zoo, Coward-McCann, 1934
• Step Right Up!, Harper & Bros., 1951; reprinted as Memoirs of a Sword Swallower, Ballantine, 1964
• King of the Sky, 1953
• Tales of the African Frontier (with J.A. Hunter), Harper & Bros., 1954
• The Wildest Game (with Peter Ryhiner), J.B. Lippincott, 1958
• Those About to Die, Ballantine, 1958; reprinted as The Way of the Gladiator, 2001
• The Hellfire Club, Ballantine, 1959
• The Beast: The Scandalous Life of Aleister Crowley, Ballantine, 1959
• Black Cargoes; A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1518-1865 (with Malcolm Cowley), Viking Press, 1962
• All Creatures Great and Small, McGraw-Hill, 1963
• The History of Torture, Dell, 1963 (paperback); Hippocrene Books, 1986
• A Sporting Chance: Unusual Methods of Hunting, E.P. Dutton, 1967
• The Fox and the Hound, E.P. Dutton, 1967
• The Last Eagle, 1967
• Troubled Waters: The Story of a Fish, a Stream and a Pond (with Patricia Collins), E P Dutton, 1969
• The Healer, E.P. Dutton, 1971
• Drifter, E.P. Dutton, 1974
• The Secret of the Elms, Crowell, 1975
• Freaks: We Who Are Not As Others, Re/Search Publications, 1976
• The Wolves of Paris, (hardcover) 1978; Avon (paperback), 1979, 1983
• The Old Navy: The Glorious Heritage of the U.S. Navy, Recounted through the Journals of an American Patriot by Rear Admiral Daniel P. Mannix, 3rd, as edited by Daniel P. Mannix 4th, Macmillan, 1983

Magazine articles

(Some of these were co-written with Jule Junker Mannix)

• "Raiders of the Night" in St. Nicholas Magazine, August, 1930
• "Two Texas Goblins" in St. Nicholas Magazine June, 1933)
• "Gladiators of the Gods" in The Saturday Evening Post, May 25, 1935
• "Hunting Dragons with an Eagle" in The Saturday Evening Post, January 18, 1941
• "Death on Swift Wings" in The Saturday Evening Post, November 8, 1941
• "We're in the Money" in The Saturday Evening Post, January 16, 1943
• "How to Swallow a Sword" by The Great Zadma as told to Jule Junker Mannix in Collier's Magazine, July 22, 1994; reprinted in Collier's December 2, 1944; reprinted in Reader's Digest, March 1945
• "Fire-eating is Fun" by The Great Zadma in Pocket Book Weekly, February 3, 1945
• "Tracked by Bloodhounds" in The Saturday Evening Post, April 9, 1949
• "The Father of The Wizard of Oz" in American Heritage, December, 1964

Filmography

• King of the Sky, 1953 (documentary short) (writer, actor, director, producer, bird trainer)
• Universal Color Parade: Parrot Jungle, 1958 (short) (writer, director, producer, photographer, bird trainer)
• Killers of Kilimanjaro, 1959 (book "African Bush Adventures")
• The Fox and the Hound, 1981 (book)
• The Fox and the Hound 2, 2006 (book "The Fox and the Hound" - uncredited)

References

1. ^ The Old Navy by Rear Admiral Daniel P. Mannix, 3rd, as edited by Daniel P. Mannix 4th, Macmillan, 1983
2. ^ Daniel P. Mannix, The Back-Yard Zoo, pp. 15-16.
3. ^ Daniel P. Mannix, The Back-Yard Zoo, p. 33.
4. ^ The Old Navy by Rear Admiral Daniel P. Mannix, 3rd, as edited by Daniel P. Mannix 4th, Macmillan, 1983
5. ^ http://www.cms.acs.ac/tempcol/antho/gracewiley.htm
6. ^ “Creeping Death”. Time. August 2, 1948.
7. ^ Mannix, Daniel P. (1963). "Woman Without Fear". All Creatures Great and Small. New York: McGraw-Hill. OCLC 1435759. http://www.cms.acs.ac/tempcol/antho/gracewiley.htm. Retrieved 2007-09-13. 
8. ^ ^{a b c} "Daniel Mannix, 85, Adventure Writer" New York Times, February 8, 1997
9. ^ International Wizard of Oz Club : Munchkin Convention history
10. ^ Chester County Deed Book N24-585-153
11. ^ Solomon, John (2004). "Gladiator from Screenplay to Screen." In Winkler, Martin M. (Ed.), Gladiator: Film and History, pp. 1–15. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 1-4051-1042-2

External links

• Daniel P. Mannix at the Internet Movie Database

Persondata
Name	Mannix IV, Daniel Pratt
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1911
Place of birth
Date of death	1997
Place of death