Ross Lockridge, Jr. (US, 1914-48)


Figure 1.--The photograph shows Ross at the tender age of 8 in 1922. He is wearing dress-up clothes--a sailor suit with wide white collar and dickey, knee pants, long black stockings, and hightop shoes. He seems to be playing with a piece of rope..

Ross Lockridge, Jr. was the famous and tragic author of the novel, "Raintree County." When the book was published in 1948, it instantly became a best-seller and was hailed as the "great American novel". Up to this point, Lockridge was a virtual unknown although he had nurtured ambitions to be a writer from his childhood. The book is set in Indiana, Lockridge's home state, during the American Civil War and has sometimes been compared to "Gone With the Wind" in its panormanic portrait of the culture of the period.

Parents

Ross Jr. was born in Bloomington, Indiana of intellectual parents. His father, Ross Lockridge senior, was a historian while his mother, Elsie Shockley, was a psychologist.

Childhood

Ross was born in 1914. His family moved to Indianpolis and then to Fort Wayne while he was still a small boy, but the family returned to Bloomington in 1924 when Ross Jr. was only 10 years old to be near Indiana University. The boy sometimes accompanied his father, known popularly as "Mr. Indiana," on his excursions throughout the state. Ross Sr. would go to historic sites in Indiana where he would give public speeches and historical recitals of an oratorical nature.

Childhood Clothing

The photograph shows Ross at the tender age of 8 in 1922. He is wearing dress-up clothes--a sailor suit with wide white collar and dickey, knee pants, long black stockings, and hightop shoes. Note the dickey and kneepants match. I'm not sure if he had a sailor cap as well. Nor do I know what color the suit was, but note that he is wearing it with black long stockings. Black stockings were still very common in the early 1q920s, although some children were beginning to wear the tan/brown cilors that were becoming popular. Ross seems to be playing with a piece of rope.

Education

Ross entered Indiana University in 1931, spending his Junior year in France at the Sorbonne, taking highest honors among the foreign students in Paris. He graduated from Indiana University a year later with the highest academic average ever earned by an undergraduate at the state university.

Career

Lockridge was the famous and tragic author of the novel, "Raintree County." As a graduate student in the English Department at Indiana University he composed a long narrative poem entitled "The Dream of the Flesh of Iron." The poem remains unpublished. In 1940, he accepted a scholarship to Harvard, intending to write a doctoral dissertaion on Walt Whitman. Instead he began writing a long novel based partly on his mother's family history and set in Civil War times. By 1946, Ross Jr. had become the father of four children. It was in this year also that he carried the bulky manuscript of his novel, "Raintree County," to Houghton Mifflin's offices in a shabby suitcase. The book was accepted for publication within a few weeks, and before it came out in book form, was published in excerpts in Life magazine. The film company, MGM, awarded him a huge prize for the novel and a contract to turn it into a movie. "Raintree County" became the main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. He visited Hollywood with his wife in late 1947, having revised the book in a lake cottage in Manistee, Michigan. But he again moved back to Bloomington, the town of his birth. When the book was published in 1948, it instantly became a best-seller and was hailed as the "great American novel". Up to this point, Lockridge was a virtual unknown although he had nurtured ambitions to be a writer from his childhood. The book is set in Indiana, Lockridge's home state, during the American Civil War and has sometimes been compared to "Gone With the Wind" in its panormanic portrait of the culture of the period. An unsuccessful film was made from the book in 1957 starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, but the major male star was recovering from a bad car accident that had badily mutilated his face, and his performance was lifeless because he was in considerable pain during the filming (his jaw was wired together and he necessarily mumbled).

Family

Lockridge in 1937 married Vernice Baker, his high school sweetheart. They had four children. His son Larry wrote an informative biography.

Tragic Death

Ross Lockridge, who lived in Bloomington, Indiana, when the novel was written suffered from profound depression and committed suicide the same year his novel was published. He was only 34. Although the novel received rave reviews upon its publication in 1948, Ross Jr. was already profoundly depressed, his illness however going largely unrecognized at the time. Only 2 months after the book had reached print, he went into his garage, turned on the car engine, and asphyxiated himself by carbon monoxide. His obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times.

Sources

Lockridge, Larry. Shade of the Raintree: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr., Author of `Raintree County (New York: Viking, 1994).






HBC






Navigate Related Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site Pages:
[American 1920s sailor suits] [American 1920s long stocking colors]


Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Return to the Main biography page]
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Chronology] [Cloth and textiles] [Clothing styles] [Countries] [Topics]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Images] [Satellite sites] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]



Created: 5:58 PM 4/13/2006
Last updated: 7:07 PM 4/14/2006