I have always loved to read. I always loved writing--and hoped someday to be a novelist. Some time in the early 2000s, I was living in the Bay Area. At that moment in time, having read all of the James Bond novels (the Ian Fleming originals and all of the others written by other authors), I was on a kick tracking down the Bond knockoff novels. There were scores of them. There were the Matt Helm books and the MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. series, of course, but there were other, more obscure secret agent adventures---and I wanted to track them all down.
I initially searched for the MAN FROM O.R.G.Y. books. (I remember my grandmother had read them back in the day, but I found them to be sophomoric trash.) There were so many others I got wind of and hunted down. There was the COXEMAN, the BARONESS, the MISS FROM S.I.S, and even a stand alone something called THE MAN FROM AVON. There were the I SPY titles, MODESTY BLAISE, the Jewish James Bond spoofs (with titles like LOXFINGER, MATZOHBALL, and YOU ONLY LIVE UNTIL YOU DIE.) There was even a string of GET SMART novels. Other books like the 0008 series were just crazy hard to find. And then I heard about yet another Bond knockoff. It was THE MAN FROM C.A.M.P. series by someone named Don Holliday. Hmm.
The thing about THE MAN FROM C.A.M.P. was that its main character, multimillionaire super spy Jackie Holmes, is a homosexual. The first novel in the series debuted at the height of Bond and Batman mania in 1966. The Robert Bonfils cover art was a major enticement, so very go-go pop mid-60s. The C.A.M.P. series (There are nine books in the series, with four spin-offs.) was also very elusive, expensive, and hard to track down.
EBay was a big help in my quest for these various Bond rip-offs. I would also frequently visit various used book stores in my search. There is a bookstore, Bolerium Books, on Mission Street in San Francisco. Before visiting them, I called to make sure they might have old pulp novels for sale. The guy on the phone was odd. He said they did have old pulps, but in order to get into the store I would need the password. Huh? The password for the day was "Swordfish," he said. Uh, okay...
I went to the bookstore. To gain entrance, you had to push a button and talk into a little speaker thing...before being buzzed up. I did that and used the code word. The guy at the other end seemed...amused.
I looked through their books. It was a big shop and there were pulps, but none that I was looking for. So I asked if they had any of the 0008 or MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E or MAN FROM C.A.M.P. books. He did have one C.A.M.P. book (pricey!). He asked if I knew the creator of the C.A.M.P. series. No, I didn't. He then said he came to the store all of the time and asked if I would like to have the book autographed by him.
Uh, hello? YES!
I want to say he called him then and there, but I'm not sure.
He asked for my contact information. I gave him my email address, only slightly hesitantly. Was this, like the Swordfish thing, just another gag? But in return, he gave me an email address that he said belonged to the author. Could it really be?
I sent a gushing fan boy-style note, even though I don't believe at that point I had ever read anything by the C.A.M.P. author. He was just a real, live writer/published author. I was ecstatic. Several days later, I did receive an email from someone claiming to be Victor Banis, the man behind the pseudonym "Don Holliday" (Well, at least one of them, any way. There were a lot of books attributed to "Don Holiday," all written by several different authors.)
"Dear Shawn," he wrote. "It was great to hear from you and to know that you are so interested in my work. I confess it is a bit strange to me to have become a cult figure in my advancing years.
"Of course I would be happy to autograph any books. You can mail them to me or if you are coming into the city sometime soon, maybe we could have lunch."
He had included his address and his telephone number. This was back in late December of 2003, just a few days before Christmas.
I don't remember when it happened exactly (I have stupidly deleted most of our old email correspondence.), but a few days later we did meet for lunch at some unexciting cafe somewhere in San Francisco. I don't recall where.
I was there on time (well, early, actually), but he was running late--nearly a half hour late. I still thought this could all be some elaborate joke, but there I stood with a backpack containing several of his books for him to sign.
He showed up, amazingly. It hadn’t been some elaborate, cruel gag. We said quick, awkward hellos to each other, went in to the cafe, and found a table.
There was that initial odd silence between us, while we both were thinking of what to say to each other. It gave me a moment to look him over a bit. Although he wasn’t a short man, he wasn’t very tall either. He was wearing, as I recall, a coral-colored, polo-style style shirt. There was a chain holding a large medallion around his neck. He also smelled of moth balls somewhat, like he’d been keeping himself in storage.
Keeping himself in storage may have been an accurate analogy, as the well-known writer had last published a book (SAN ANTONE) in the early 1980s...twenty years or so before.
We chatted for a long while, an hour and a half or so...maybe longer. We seemed to hit it off, which I was thrilled about. I paid for lunch, as I had told him I would before we met. (It was totally a treat to have met with him.) He still seemed surprised by the gesture. We said we’d stay in touch...which I didn’t expect at all. But we did.
Not long after our meeting and a few other emails back and forth, Mr. B (That’s what I called him. Although he asked me to call him “Victor,” I just couldn’t. “Mr Banis” was too formal. “Mr. B” seemed right.) invited me to attend this celebration of his work that admirers (important people in the literature world, but I don’t know who they were now) of his writing were organizing in San Francisco. Mr B would also be speaking. I was excited to go. Mr B, I think, was a bit nervous and glad to have a friendly face in the audience.
I brought more books of his for him to sign...especially after learning that he had written so many under pseudonyms other than “Don Holliday.” It was a very nice commemoration and honoring of his career. I, myself, felt very honored to have been invited. I got a photo taken with Mr. B then—the only one we ever got together—at the event. He later, kindly, used it in his autobiography, SPINE INTACT, SOME CREASES. I was identified in the photo by name, but also as “a fan”—but I became more than that. I genuinely believe I was also a friend.
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| The US version of Mr. B’s autobiography. |
We kept in contact. Somewhere in 2004 or 2005 (earlier?) he moved back east to West Virginia. Initially he lived with a friend who had promised him a place to stay for the rest of his life. That friend developed Alzheimer’s or some other neurological disease, and forgot who Mr B was. Things got ugly, so Mr B moved out.
He moved to an apartment over a florist shop. I remember him telling me that he would occasionally help out at the florist in between the writing of his new novels and the re-writing of his earlier work (for the digital market). I remember several times (after winning an award at work, getting accepted into nursing school, graduating from nursing school, landing a nursing job, etc.) that flowers would show up at my house. They were always from him. What an amazing, delightful, and sweet surprise.
One of the biggest surprises ever was in his 2007 novel, AVALON. He never said anything, just insisted several times that I read it. I got a copy and plunged in. I’m a slow reader and originally I thought he wanted me to read the book because the story (about three young women who meet on a beach on Catalina Island and become life-long friends) was similar—in a way— to one of my favorite (bad) movies and books, VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. But that wasn’t the case.
Mr. B had quite the career as a writer, one that I didn’t even fully realize when I met him all of those years ago. He was a person who kept re-inventing himself. After having a short story and a poem published, he turned his hand to writing a book. He opted to write a tawdry (for its day) pulp novel, THE AFFAIRS OF GLORIA, that was quickly purchased and printed by a tawdry pulp publisher, Brandon House, in 1964.
The book was published under the name of “Victor Jay” (his middle name being Jerome), the first of many aliases.
Despite his early success at becoming a published novelist, THE AFFAIRS OF GLORIA landed him and the publishers in hot water with the authorities. The book was deemed obscene and pornographic. While others involved in the publishing/distribution of the book did jail time, Mr. B was acquitted. Soon after, he became a frequent fixture in the pulp world, pumping out several books a year, including the MAN FROM C.A.M.P. series.
In the early 70’s, as obscenity laws changed and pulps became blatant pornography, Mr. B left the world of pulp fiction and jumped into that of gothic romances. Under the pen names of Jan Alexander and Lynn Benedict, he wrote a variety of books that sold well.
I remember him telling me (possibly at that first lunch we had together) that he remembered going to a meeting at the romance publisher’s...and there were all of the other authors—Dorothy Daniels, among many others. He had to laugh as all of these “women” novelists were actually men like himself.
I don’t know why he retired in the early 80s. I know for a while he had been living the good life. I remember tales of him being at the Playboy mansion (or perhaps I am just thinking of his memoir?) and, at one time, he lived in Hollywood and had a sporty car. I don’t know why he gave it all up and ended up as a rather obscure apartment manager until his “rediscovery.”
He only (ONLY!?! Ha! His output was amazing.) wrote about 15 or 20 more novels and stories over the next ten years or so. He had very little money and focused most of his attention to the many, many books he had written in the 1960s-1980s, retyping them and making them available to the digital market. Eventually, when I asked, he told me he couldn’t write any more. He was having some sort of cognitive issues that prevented him from doing it any further.
Not long after starting my nursing career, I was able to send him just a little bit of money for a few months. I wanted to help him out. But once I moved back in to my house and had a mortgage to pay (The house had been rented out.), utilities, etcetera, I had to discontinue that reluctantly.
He got very active on social media—which I am sure was a great joy to him as he was able to reach out and meet many fans, both old and new. I was never a big social media (save for my blogs) person myself, so I missed out on all that he had to offer there. Although I was busy with my new nursing career and he with digital rewrites and social media chores, we still kept in contact with the occasional email.
I had sent him a postcard from Europe in the spring of 2019 and was going to send him another from a trip to San Diego later that year. I hadn’t heard from him in a while—but he was so involved with Facebook and his rewrites, it was not uncommon to not hear from him for a few months. However, when I went to get his address for the postcard from San Diego, instead of looking it up on my phone, I accidentally Googled him. That’s when I discovered he had died in February of that year.
Mr. B had problems with his lungs the last few years of his life. He always dreaded the coming of winter in West Virginia because of it. That had me worried about him every year as well. If I remember correctly, he was planning on moving somewhere closer to his family. I don’t know if that happened or not. What I do know—-and was stunned to find out—is that he died of liver cancer. He never uttered a word about his condition to me. Ever.
He was 81.
We were not “great friends,” but I do think we were good friends. We celebrated each other’s triumphs and lent a sympathetic ear to one another’s woes. I only physically met the man in person twice, but our friendship (via email, Christmas cards, letters, and postcards) endured nearly two decades. I never got to say goodbye—and that was hard on me. I don’t know how the rest of the world saw him, but, to me, he was a wonderful, gentle and kind individual. I miss him.
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