Durable Bud

DANGEROUS ANGEL (250 pp.)--Clarence Budington Kelland--Harper ($2.75).

Clarence Budington Kelland, 72, is a prominent U.S. author to whom U.S. literary and critical magazines pay no attention whatever. He is, in the language of book reviewers, a "slick man," a contriver of "adroit hokum," which is hopelessly "fast-moving" and unreclaimably "superficial." The good always wins, the boy always gets the girl, and they are married in a nice church ceremony--just after getting the deed to a nice piece of real estate--while a kindly old homespun philosopher stands snapping his galluses in the background.

Mornings Only. Despite critical frowns, this vigorous brand of optimism has held the affections of three generations of U.S. readers, and netted Author Kelland a fortune. Since his first book in 1913, he has written 38 others, some of them, such as Valley of the Sun (355,000 copies) and Sugarfoot (414,000 copies') runaway bestsellers. Others have made hit movies, e.g., Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. His most famous character, Scattergood Baines, has been the subject of five movies and a durable radio soap opera.

Before they make their way into hard covers, Kelland's stories are tried and tested in the lucrative crucible of the slick-paper magazines, notably the Satevepost. A man who seldom has to raise his head from the typewriter once he begins a story, Kelland can count on a steady out put of 10,000 words a week, working mornings only. This is enough to give the Post one installment of a serial and to give Kelland, at going rates, some $2,000. That leaves the rest of the day for golf, conversation and politics (since 1940, Author Kelland has been Republican National Committeeman for Arizona).

Cloudless Skies. Kelland's stories fall into two general classes: 1) action-filled mystery dramas with big-city atmosphere, 2) more leisurely period pieces, as often as not in Western settings. But the Kelland hero, whether he wears chaps, galluses, or a Brooks Brothers suit, is always a man of gumption and industry. His heroine, similarly, is spunky and assertive, but she always turns out to be loving and feminine once the hero has tamed her.

In Dangerous Angel, Kelland's No. 39, the tamee is one Anneke Villard, a girl with a shrewd business sense who hits San Francisco in the closing years of the Gold Rush era, and swiftly parlays a $20,000 inheritance into something nearing a cool million. Unwittingly, she also falls in love with a handsome Telegraph Hill aristocrat named Juan Parnell, although she fights against it. They make up their lovers' quarrel just in time to outwit two murderous swindlers who have suckered San Francisco financial circles in a colossal confidence game.

At the end of the story, like true Kelland young folk, Anneke (who has lost her interest in money) and Juan (who has forgiven her for it) decide to start life anew together--"a boy and girl, simple, delighting each other, happy under cloudless skies." To keep the clouds away indefinitely they have--from Anneke's mining operations--a handsome financial profit. And so, after magazine rights, bookstore orders and reprint contracts, does durable Clarence Budington Kelland.

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