An article by Claude van den Cloggenhoffen‘Claude, get in here!’ was the greeting I got on my first day at H&O. My bosses were sitting around in their office, eating gyozas and throwing paper aeroplanes out the window.
Slumped in his armchair, the editor known only as xtn looks like a beaten martial arts warrior. Eyes half-closed, cheeks drained of colour. James Benjamin, the self-proclaimed ‘Rebel with a clause’, is more lively but his bloodshot eyes betray his façade.
It’s 7:30 in the morning.
I would learn that this is how every day begins at H&O. The day normally ends with a visit from Mr Gin and Mr Scotch. Then repeat.
Now it all makes sense, right?
It wasn’t always like this though. Before that fateful night when xtn and Benjamin won the ownership of the publishing company in a pool game at Chatswood RSL, H&O had been many things over many years.
It all began humbly, as most beginnings do, in 1921 when immigrants Christos Harmanovic and Jakob Obrienstein left their menial jobs at Maximillion Piper’s Three Ring Circus to establish the H&O Publishing Co. in a small office on 74 Cherry Lane, Jacksonville NC in the good old U.S of A.
They published small volume fiction periodicals, featuring their own stories and those of several young writers in the area. After five years of barely keeping afloat, the two literary pioneers finally made a breakthrough with a triad of new serials which proved wildly popular to the mainstream.
The Adventures of Wonky Willy and the House of Lollies were tales of mystery and intrigue set in the magical factory of an eccentric candy maker.
War in the Stars was a science fiction adventure, featuring Duke Landrunner and his fight for freedom against the Evil Galactic Kingdom.
The Caribbean Pirate King was high adventure in the seven seas, starring Captain Johnny Deepwater.
These stories eventually got the attention of famous local folk musician Ryan Allans, who would become a primary financial benefactor in their rise to the big time.
Obrienstein and Harmanovic, with benefactor Ryan AllansWith Allans’ backing, H&O moved their office to New York City and, by 1930, had a 250-strong staff. H&O publications reached far and wide and achieved a constant growth for the next ten years, becoming the top fiction periodical publishers in America. Their titles even were shipped to other countries and translated into five languages. These were their glory years.
The H&O Building in New York City, 1930The Forties proved to be difficult times, however, as the comic strip medium began to take attention away from the pulps. In desperation, not being able to compete and lacking the creative resources to produce comics, H&O tried their hand at smut. This was the beginning of the end. In 1943, they released
An Afternoon in Paris, a racy romance about a down and out hack and a young and beautiful hotel heiress. The title sold relatively well but successive new titles in the genre failed to impress the masses and effectively destroyed the company’s good reputation.
With the company spiralling towards bankruptcy, Harmanovic took to alcoholism and Obrienstein became a recluse and reportedly never left his mansion for months on end. Allans, who managed to remain relatively sane in all the mess, convinced the two to start afresh elsewhere and so, in 1947, H&O closed their New York office and moved down under to Australia, where the pulp market was still far healthier. Allans wrote and released a hit song about the ordeal called
Come pick yourselves up.
So now what happened between 1947 and the company’s internet relaunch in 2005?
Those stories are for another time…
