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Anne Austin (1895?-1975), journalist, newspaper/magazine editor, writer of fiction (including romance, crime, mystery)

This page lists some findings about this writer, today known (if at all) for her crime fiction and as the mother of a child prodigy. Her own life as a single mother; a professional writer and editor seemingly always on the move to new settings; and what appears to be a feminist and progressive attitude, interest me now.
      She brings to mind Hettie Fithian Cattell (1887-1976), another peripatetic writer/editor and mother; treated at asfaltics 2573b.

Contents subject to revision and additions, and currently organized in three sections :

  1. life (links, incidental findings, ongoing notes toward a fuller timeline)
  2. Elizabeth Benson (daughter)
  3. Frank Spector (Elizabeth’s husband, Communist labor organizer)

bar at left returns to top of page.
 

  1. wikipedia (gives birth year as 1895): link
  2. profile in Who’s Who in America (1936) : 202
    borrowable at archive.org : link

    AUSTIN, Anne, author; b. Waco, Tex., September 13, 1895; d. William Henry and Lula Alford (Ratliff) Reamy; student Baylor (Texas) Academy 1910-11, Baylor University, 1912-14; m. Charles A. Benson, of Waco, Tex., Aug. 14, 1912 (divorced); 1 daughter, Ellen Elizabeth (Mrs. Harold S. Leach); m. 2d, Stewart Edmund Book, of Los Angeles, California, October 22, 1922 (divorced). Stenographer, 1909; highsch. teacher, Marfa, Tex., 1914-15, Moody, Tex., 1916-17; feature and fiction writer and dramatic critic, Waco Morning News, 1917, Kansas City Post, 1918-19; editor People’s Popular Monthly, Des Moines, Ia., 1919; newspaper writer, Beaumont and Austin, Tex., 1919-22; mng. editor Screenland and Real Life, 1922-24; fiction writer N.E.A. Service, New York, 1926-30. Mem. Authors’ League America, Screen Writers’ Guild. Democrat. Episcopalian. Clubs: Hollvwood Bridge, Calif. Bridge (Los Angeles). Author: Jackson Street, 1927; The Black Pigeon, 1929; Daughters of Midas, 1929; The Penny Princess, 1929; Rival Wives, 1929; Girl Alone, 1929; The Avenging Parrot, 1930; Murder Backstairs, 1930; Murder at Bridge, 1931; One Drop of Blood, 1932; A Wicked Woman, 1933 (pub. in 8 foreign langs.). Writer of adaptations and original screen stories, 1933. Home: 8439 Fountain Av., Hollywood, Calif.

  3. Anne Austin at findagrave : link
    gives birth year as 1893
  4. Austin’s Jackson Street (1927) appears to be informed by her own life.

    It was reviewed in The New York Times (November 20, 1927) : link (paywall)
    from which this passage —
    “Jackson Street” carries Mary Carey along from the slums of a small Texas city to college, early and unwise marriage, motherhood, freedom again and success as a newspaper woman, with promise of poetic achievement. Then love once more. But Mary Carey, dreading marriage, will only agree to live with her lover. She refuses to marry him, fearing a repetition of her earlier unhappiness. There comes the day when her lover bids her farewell, assuring her that a man desires to be bound, to settle down into the prosaic humdrum of being a husband that he may get his mind on other things than being a lover...

  5. Jackson Street is dedicated to Madeleine Skinner Ruthven (1893-1978), screenwriter (and later poet), blacklisted as a Communist in the 1950s.
    wikipedia : link

    Ruthven seems to have lived in/around the Santa Monica Mountains; see the (wonderful) profile by Suzanne Guldimann, “Madeleine Ruthven : Poet of the Mountains” at The Malibu Post (July 3, 2016) : link

  6. “Mrs. Willie Reamy Benson, who writes under the pen name, Anne Austin, is now editor of People’s Popular Monthly, Des Moines, Iowa.” in The Baylor Bulletin (“Ex-student Number,” February 1919): link
  7. Mother’s Day
     
    Mother’s Day ! How much I ought to show
    Fidelity, Faith, Love, Gratitude;
    One day is far to brief, I know,
    To recognize that high beatitude.
    All these — and more — I bring, oh, mother mine,
    My sacred duty, and thy right divine.
                                        — Willie Reamy Benson

    in Sheaf of Baylor Verse, Compiled by Flora Eleanor Wells, in The Baylor Bulletin No. 4 (Waco, Texas; July 1, 1919) : link

  8. Editor of Peoples’ Popular Monthly (Des Moines, Iowa), then The Beaumont Journal (Beaumont, Texas), which “uses practically all syndicate material.” (The Editor, August 2, 1920) : link
  9. a trade advertisement for The Peoples’ Popular Monthly, featuring a portrait of Anne Austin, editor, appears in Judicious Advertising (February 1919) : link
  10. Editor of Real Life Stories (Screenland, Inc.) ca 1924 (The Authors’ League Bulletin, June 1924) : link
  11. 1928, illness
    The Birmingham [Alabama] Post (February 2, 1928) : 11 : link (newspapers.com promotional snippet)

    Anne Austin in Hospital
          Anne Austin, one of the best known newspaper serial writers in the country and author of the much new novel, “Jackson Street,” is in a New York hospital recovering from a serious spinal operation.
    ...Miss the last year and In addition, to “Jackson Street” a half has written “Saint and Sinner,” “Daughters of Midas,” “The Penny Princess,” and the unpublished “[Girl] Alone.” The latter she insisted on completing before going to the hospital, despite the knowledge that the operation was “Girl Alone” will be released by NEA Service, with whom Miss Austin is under contract, in March. Her next work will be a sequel to her immensely popular “Saint and Sinner” is now appearing in the Pos[t]...
     

    The following instances are speculative; they certainly need more work. Anne Austin had some health issues (spine), and so might eventually have taken on more passive editorial roles. Also, it seems likely to me that she was politically liberal — perhaps not to the degree as her Communist-organizer daughter — and that she may well have gravitated to publications with a leftist (albeit Christian) bent.
          I may be completely mistaken; but noting clues as I find them.

  12. An Anne Austin is assistant to the editor of Social Action ca 1950-51, edited by Kenneth Underwood; see for example masthead for issue 17:2 (February 15, 1951): link,
    “published monthly, except July and August, by the Council for Social Action of the Congregational Christian Churches and by the Commission on Christian Social Action of the Evangelical and Reformed Church”
    Underwood is associated with the Danforth Study of Campus Ministries, entitled >The Church, the University, and Social Policy, which was published by Wesleyan University Press in 1969. The Danforth Study of Campus Ministries, sponsored by the Danforth Foundation beginning in 1963, was directed by Kenneth Underwood. Through questionnaires, studies, and analysis, the project documented the state of religious awareness and commitment on American university and college campuses.
    this from the Danforth Study of Campus Ministries records, Yale Divinity School, RG 62 : link
    Underwood died in 1968
  13. “Where Do New Ideas Come From? Conformity grips the campus. Speak Up!”
    “This article is based on a radio script prepared for ‘Religion at the News Desk,’ a weekly commentary over station WELI in New Haven, Connecticut. Each script is the product of group journalism. Credit for this story goes to Robert Lynn and Carl Siebel, researchers, William Miller, writer, and Anne Austin, editor for publication.”
    Motive (“the magazine of the Methodist Student Movement”) 12:8 (May 1952) : 10-12 (10) : link
     

  14. Austin’s daughter Elizabeth Benson (1913-94) was a celebrated child prodigy of her time, and at the age of 13 (a Barnard student) authored The Younger Generation, introduction by Frank Crowninshield (1927)
    U Virginia copy/scan (via hathitrust) :
    link

    reviewed in The New York Times (November 20, 1927) : link (paywalled)

    Elizabeth Benson at findagrave : link

    Anne Austin wrote a series of six articles on bringing up her daughter for the NEA syndicate; the articles appeared in the Indianapolis Times (and presumably elsewhere) on June 2 through 8, 1926.
          Transcriptions of these are provided at putterings 558b

  15. Greg Daugherty, “The Child Prodigies Who Became 20th-Century Celebrities,” Smithsonian Magazine (June 24, 2013) : link
    Benson is one of four people profiled. It discusses her activity as a Communist organizer (in Texas!), and later in the movie industry in Los Angeles. She earns a law degree, teaches real estate law and practices as a labor organizer. No mention is made of her husband Frank E. Spector.
  16. An Elizabeth B. Spector, atty, is listed in the Los Angeles telephone directory (June 1974), at 3325 Wilshire (380-1900). A cursory search suggests this Elizabeth B. Spector specialized in labor issues (typically on the union or worker side).
     

    Elizabeth’s second (or even fourth?) husband was Frank E. Spector (1895-1982), a Communist Party leader, and labor organizer in California agriculture.

  17. Frank Spector authored Story of the Imperial Valley (ILD Pamphlet No. 3, issued by International Labor Defense) (1930); also
    “Imperial Valley Fights” in Labor Defender. Vol. 5 No. 7. July, 1930.
    link
  18. see also Rudy Martinez, “RED BOYLE HEIGHTS: Raids and Riots on Brooklyn Avenue” at Boyle Heights History Blog (May 6, 2024) : link
  19. The New York Times ran an AP obituary on October 7, 1982 : “Frank Spector, 87, a Leader in Communist Party on Coast” : link
     

22 September 2025