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In its portrayal of a squalid dance marathon in Depression-era Los Angeles, Horace McCoy's (1897 -- 1955) short 1935 novel, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" evokes a strong sense of futility, meaninglessness, and desperation. The novel is one of the most deeply pessimistic and troubling works in American literature.
The book has a frame story that surrounds the nightmarish marathon. McCoy leaves no doubt about the outcome. A young man, Robert Syverten, has been tried and convicted of first degree murder for the killing of Gloria Beatty. The Judge is in the process of sentencing Robert to death. As the Judge does so, Robert recounts the events which led to his meeting Gloria, to their participation in the marathon, and to her shooting at the end of the story. Robert tells the story throughout in his own voice.
Robert and Gloria are loners and drifters who meet by chance on Hollywood streets after many failed attempts to secure jobs as extras in the movies. Robert begins rather optimistically with goals of becoming a director. Even late in the novel, he is able to articulate a vision of the kind of realistic films he dreams of making:
"Well, like a two-or three-reel short. What a junkman does all day, or the life of an ordinary man -- you know, who makes thirty dollars a week and has to raise kids and buy a home and a car and a radio-- the kind of guy bill collectors are always after. Something different, with camera angles to help tell the story--".
Gloria is a runaway from a hard life in west Texas where she has already attempted suicide. She is harsh, bitter and violent towards people and towards life and towards herself and says she wants to die. Gloria persuades Robert to enter a dance marathon held in an old warehouse on a pier which offers a $1,000 prize.
The marathon becomes a metaphor for futility and for exploitation. The couples, (Robert and Gloria are "no. 22"), are forced to dance 150 minutes followed by 10 minute breaks with short times for sleep. During this time they are fed and housed and a crowd cheers and eggs them on. Days and weeks drag on and the pace is exhausting and brutal. The marathon is tawdry in the extreme as the promoters, for example, arrange a public marriage of one couple for the edification of the spectators. The marathon inexorably attracts violence. One of the contestants is an escaped murderer. During the course of the event, there are several shootings and stabbings as the tension builds. The promoter, a man named Socks, carries a blackjack which he uses freely upon the participants and others. One of Sock's floor manager preys sexually upon the young women in the contest. Every evening the participants are forced to run a long, punishing race called the "derby" for the spectators' amusement which results in illness and exhaustion. Gloria describes the marathon as a "merry go round" which lets its hapless participants off at the same point at which they began. The marathon becomes a symbol of the Depression and even more broadly a symbol of meaningless effort and suffering.
The story builds to show Gloria's desire for death and Robert's role, on a dark lonely pier, which leads to his own conviction and death. The book is powerful and highly disturbing. The impression is one of waste.
Jane Fonda starred in a famous movie adaptation of McCoy's novel. I was reminded of another novel published at about the same time as McCoy's, the "Studs Lonigan" trilogy by James T. Farrell which also includes an extended description of a dance marathon. Farrell's trilogy focuses on the life of a poor boy in the Chicago slums and does not develop the marathon in the same way as does McCoy. "They Shoot Horses, Don't They"? is available in the edition reviewed here on in an excellent collection of noir literature from the 1930's and 40's published by the Library of America. Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s: The Postman Always Rings Twice / They Shoot Horses, Don't They? / Thieves Like Us / The Big Clock / ... a Dead Man (Library of America) (Vol 1) This is an important book with a dark unedifying vision.
Robin Friedman
Christopher W
Aug 14, 2014
A Great Gritty Tale
This is a bleak tale about something I didn't know ever existed. Dance marathons where dirt poor people dance for weeks or months trying to win enough money to keep their meager lives going during the Great Depression. All of this done to attract the folks who still have money to watch them risk their health and lives to keep going. To keep the crowds coming, the organizers come up with new and more humiliating ways to attract the crowds, anything from dance derbies, where they have to dance as fast as they can for as many laps as they can will their nearly broken bodies around, to having one team get married live on the dance floor. We know from the beginning that our main character has murdered his partner, Gloria, and the book tells of the dance marathon leading up to that killing. This is a great book for fans of noir, a story of hopeless darkness where even a small bit of sunlight is to be treasured.
