Daniel Pratt Mannix IV (October 27, 1911 – January 29, 1997) was an American writer, journalist, photographer, sideshow performer, stage magician, animal trainer, and filmmaker. One of his two best-known works is the 1958 book Those About to Die (republished in 2001 as The Way of the Gladiator), which was inspiration for the Ridley Scott film Gladiator in 2000 and the TV drama Those About to Die on Peacock. The other is the 1967 novel The Fox and the Hound, which was loosely adapted into an animated feature film by Walt Disney Productions in 1981.
Early life The Mannix family had a long history of service in the U.S. Navy, and Mannix' father, Daniel P. Mannix, III, was an American naval officer.The Old Navy by Rear Admiral Daniel P. Mannix, 3rd, as edited by Daniel P. Mannix 4th, Macmillan, 1983. His mother would often join her husband on his postings, and the Mannix children would stay at their grandparents' farm outside Philadelphia. The young Mannix was an avid reader of books in his grandparents' library. He commented that "On rainy days, I sat in the library and read. During their 200-year residence in Pennsylvania, my family had built up a library containing at least one volume devoted to any conceivable subject". It was there that Mannix also began to keep and raise various wild animals. He wrote fictionalized stories about his animals (supposedly to cover the cost of feeding them)Daniel P. Mannix, The Back-Yard Zoo, p. 33. in his first two books, The Back-Yard Zoo, and More Back-Yard Zoo. The Back-Yard Zoo was published in 1934, while he was a senior in college.
Following family tradition, Mannix had enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy in 1930, but he could not adjust to the rigorous training. Finally, the commandant wrote a letter to his father saying that "he is definitely not officer material" and he left the academy. In recounting this experience, Mannix wrote that after leaving, he was so worn down that spent the next two months in bed. However, the following year he was accepted by the University of Pennsylvania where he earned a degree in journalism which he took up after failing zoology.
Mannix married Jule Junker in 1939 and she became a partner in his adventures. Their family was listed in the Philadelphia Social Register. A writer and friend of the family wrote: "Families like the Mannix family are also referred to as being from 'old money', although if economic circumstances changed, they might become known as 'fallen aristocracy'".
Career Mannix served as a naval lieutenant with the Photo-Science Laboratory in Washington, D.C. during World War II, where he was tasked with creating training films. His civilian career could briefly be described as engaging in various adventurous activities which he filmed for lectures or wrote about in magazines and books. The latter were often enhanced with illustrations by accomplished artists or by his own photographs. He also kept a small menagerie of wild and domestic animals which allowed him to study their behavior and then feature them in print and film. His interest in unsavory, even horrifying, human behavior and attitudes was also featured in some of his books. However, he was also interested in gentler topics such as L. Frank Baum and his books about the land of Oz.
Carnival life
Mannix joined a traveling carnival after college where he learned to be a sword swallower, fire eater, stage magician, escape artist, mind reader, and lock picker, performing under the stage name The Great Zadma. His magazine articles about these experiences, with his wife Jule Junker Mannix, proved popular and were 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 claimed that he held the record for many years for swallowing the longest sword (26 inches) although there is no documented proof of that.
At the conclusion of Step Right Up, Mannix stated that while still in the carnival (and still single) he borrowed a typewriter from the carnival manager and submitted the manuscript of his first article, How to Swallow a Sword to Colliers magazine and that shortly before he left the carnival, he received notice that it had been accepted. His dream of becoming a freelance writer seemed to be becoming a reality. In the final lines of the book, he wrote "I made up my mind. That night I packed my suitcase, left a note for the Impossible [stage name of his mentor at the Carnival] and started east in my car. In my inside pocket was the letter from Colliers asking for a series of articles based on carnival life. And on the seat beside me was a second-hand typewriter I'd purchased from the carnival manager."
The Colliers articles were published from 1944 to 1947. These dates appear inconsistent with the Step Right Up account (i.e.: artistic license was taken in the book), since they were years after his marriage to Jule Mannix in 1939. In any event, most of them were published under the by-line, The Great Zadma as told to Jule Junker Mannix. How to Swallow a Sword, 1944, the first in the series, was printed in condensed form in the Reader's Digest in 1945.
A review in The New Yorker magazine described Step Right Up as "A sympathetic and funny account of life with a carnival by a young man who impulsively joined up with one, mastered the elements of fire-eating and sword-swallowing in record time, and then rose, Horatio Alger-like, into the rarefied company of neon-bulb swallower, a coterie whose prestige is offset by a phenomenally high mortality rate." Another review noted that "Step Right Up is not merely Mannix's story but the story of the people he lived with [in the carnival] — how they thought, acted and felt". There's Krinko, the human pincushion who drives a nail through his tongue; Jolly Daisy, the 700-pound fat woman who describes how she feels about her role in life; skinny May who manages huge snakes; Bronko, the cowboy, who can't ride a horse; etc. One of the weirdest in the reviewer's opinion was "the Human Ostrich – He swallowed any and everything he could stuff into his mouth. 'Any object I swallow I regurgitate afterward. The rats are never hurt, neither are the frogs. Before swallowing a frog I always drink a quart of water to give the little fellows something to land in as frogs have feelings just like anyone else' ".
In an author's note, Mannix said that he worked "under canvas" for nearly three years and although sideshow feats (such as swallowing neon lightbulbs or swallowing live rats and frogs and bringing them back up again) might seem incredible to most people, he "either performed or saw performed all the stunts I tell about in this book". He added, "Except for combining the events of chronologically separated occasions into one summer, I've told the story of a traveling American carnival as I experienced it—only changing the names of the people with whom I worked".
The dustjacket illustration by Leo Hershfield (illustrator, cartoonist, and courtroom artist) for the 1951 hardcover edition of Step Right Up conveys the tongue-and-cheek style of the writing. He also did the black and white sketches at the beginning of each chapter.
Hunting, safaris and films
As illustrated in a cover art montage by Adolph LeMoult for his book, A Sporting Chance, Mannix engaged in various ancient/traditional forms of hunting, i.e. with a blowgun, boomerang, bow and arrow, and trained hawks and hounds. He also hunted with a trained cheetah, otter, cormorants and more. In addition, he collaborated on books with J. A. Hunter, a big game hunter in East Africa and , a collector of large animals for zoos and circuses.
One of the Mannix's most memorable hunting experiences was hunting iguanas on horseback with an eagle near Taxco, Mexico. Universal Studios took an interest after an account was published in a magazine article. He and his wife then restaged the hunt for a Universal camera crew, and it was released as a two-reel featurette film, Eagle Versus Dragon, in 1944. It was shot with a 16 mm camera for economic reasons and converted to 32 mm so it could be shown in movie theaters where it was advertised as "Eagle vs. Dragon! The Thrilling Story of a Giant American Eagle Battling Prehistoric Monsters".Mannix, Jule (1954). Adventure Happy, pp. 78 & 158 A reviewer commented, "The short, photographed in Mexico, shows the huge bird landing gracefully on the arm of good-looking Jewel [sic] Mannix in some of the most beautiful real-life filming on record".
His skills as a falconer and bird trainer were also 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. The film was made in collaboration with John Hamlet, coauthor of Birds of Prey of the World, mentor to Jim Fowler, and who at one time maintained an exhibit of over 100 living raptor species at an attraction near Ocala, Florida.
In a related undertaking, he wrote the screen play for an Oscar nominated short film, The Boy and the Eagle, (1949) starring and narrated by Dicky Moore about a crippled boy and a wounded eagle that he nursed back to health. The eagle later saves the boy from a rattlesnake and in the excitement, the boy discovers he can walk. While the film has a story arc, its main focus is on the training of the eagle, so much so that it takes on the aspect of a training film on falconry. The film was directed and produced by a friend and fellow falconer, William R. Lasky, son of Jesse L. Lasky, founder of Paramount Studios. He used Mannix's eagle to play that part.
The couple also filmed hunting coyotes with their cheetah in the American West, fishermen harpooning manta rays in Mexico, and big game in Kenya. The last of these was filmed with J.A. Hunter and includes a scene of a rhinoceros charging their vehicle, only to turn away when Hunter and a guide shouted and waved their arms. His picture of a wounded manta ray leaping from the water was published in Life magazine. The films were used in lecture tours around the United States.Mannix, Jule (1954). Adventure Happy, pp. 123, 225 & 258.
Small menagerie
Mannix was a keen observer of animal behavior and incorporated his observations into his writing. For example, in his book All Creatures Great and Small, Mannix described how as a boy he stayed at his grandparents' country house and kept a variety of wild animals including a porcupine, armadillo, crow, even an alligator. Among the more surprising of these were skunks with intact anal glands fully capable of spraying anyone disturbing them. The protagonist in his book, The Outcasts, is a young city boy, who similar to Mannix's experience, is now living in a country house and has adopted a skunk family. It's a fun children's book. As one review put it: "this is good fiction and, face it, there is nothing funnier than a full skunk in brisk action at this age level". The book was illustrated by Leonard Shortall, the children's book illustrator known for his artwork for the then popular Encyclopedia Brown series and other children's books. The boy on the cover could be imagined as a young Mannix.