Charles Portis: 'True Grit' author worked at The Commercial Appeal

Memphis readers of Charles Portis' 1968 comic masterpiece of a Western novel, "True Grit," may be surprised to encounter, in its final chapter, a reference to the city's venerable daily newspaper, The Commercial Appeal.

That allusion is swiftly followed with a reference to "the Memphis Chicks' baseball park."

A page or so later, the book reveals that federal marshal Rooster Cogburn — the one-eyed "scourge of Territorial outlaws and Texas cattle thieves," played by John Wayne and then Jeff Bridges in the movie adaptations of the book — is in Memphis, his unclaimed body buried in a Confederate cemetery, "though his home was out of Osceola, Missouri."

The Commercial Appeal has employed some talented wordsmiths during its 180 years or so of existence. But I don't think any of its scribes, past or present, would take offense if I say that the most talented writer ever to draw a regular paycheck from "Old Reliable" was almost certainly Charles Portis.

Portis, who started his professional writing career in 1958 as a reporter with The Commercial Appeal, died Monday in Arkansas, the state where he was born 86 years and two months earlier. (He was born in El Dorado, and he died in a hospice in Little Rock; he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's some six years previous.)

Portis — whose Memphis newspaper assignments included the funeral of Elvis' 46-year-old mother, Gladys Presley — shunned the limelight and was hardly prolific. He published only five novels, from "Norwood" in 1966 (made into a film in 1970 that reunited "True Grit" cast members Glen Campbell and Kim Darby) to "Gringos" in 1991.

Maybe that's why The New York Times obituary described Portis as "possibly the nation's best unknown writer" — a claim that seemed to be contradicted by the outpouring of affection and admiration that followed the news of the writer's death. The encomia from peers and fans began arriving on social media almost immediately, with many readers posting photographs of entire paragraphs or even pages from Portis' books, like museumgoers sharing images of masterpieces.

"The funniest novelist since Mark Twain," tweeted writer Kaleb Horton. "It took a brilliant mind to be so damn funny," added Oxford, Mississippi-based mystery novelist Ace Atkins. "Please read his novels," contributed film critic Bill Ryan. "Your life will be better."

David Simon, creator of the television crime drama, "The Wire," called Portis "a great American voice," while Jeff Bridges called Portis "an incredible author." (Bridges was nominated for Best Actor for his performance as Cogburn in the Coen Brothers' 2010 version of "True Grit"; of course, John Wayne won the Oscar for playing the character in the 1969 film.)

Before he returned to the South, Charles McColl Portis — the former Marine and Korean War veteran was known as "Buddy" to longtime Arkansas friends — worked as a reporter for The New York Herald Tribune, which made him its London bureau chief. He was on set for at least some of the shooting of "True Grit" with John Wayne. He was certainly well traveled, yet he preferred to remain in Arkansas after he quit newspapers in 1964 to pursue fiction full time.

Inspired by the success of "True Grit," a 1968 profile of Portis in The Commercial Appeal was perhaps this newspaper's most expansive tribute to its newly celebrated former cub reporter.

In the story, reporter John Knott describes Portis as "a lean, quiet-spoken, deliberate, young bachelor" (in fact, Portis never married), flush with a $300,000 payment from Paramount for the movie rights to the novel.

Portis worked at The Commercial Appeal for six months, following his graduation, with a journalism degree, from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. His most notable story during his time here ran under the headline: "Elvis Presley Tells Mother, 'Goodby, Darling,' at Grave." The story ran on Aug. 16, 1958 — 19 years to the day before Elvis died.

Demonstrating a talent that would serve him well as a novelist, Portis the journalist grips the reader with his first sentence, writing: "Singer Elvis Presley, shaken and limp with grief, almost collapsed several times yesterday afternoon during the funeral services and burial of his mother.

"After the brief graveside rites at Forest Hill, Elvis leaned on the casket and said, 'Oh God, everything I have is gone. Goodby, darling, goodby, goodby...'"

In a bit of editorial observation, Portis adds: "Most of the crowd at the service, and later at the cemetery, seemed more interested in the singer than the funeral."

Portis also wrote stories chronicling Gladys Presley's illness and Elvis' return to Memphis — on "emergency leave" from the Army — to visit his dying mother. "There were tears in his eyes as he spoke of his mother in a subdued manner," wrote Portis (who was only two years older than Elvis), after reporters met Presley at Methodist Hospital, following the singer's first visit with the ailing Mrs. Presley.

After another hospital interview, Portis wrote that Elvis "reflected moodily on the family's pre-Cadillac days. 'I like to do what I can for my folks. We didn't have nothin' before, nothin' but a hard way to go.'"

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In the 1968 Portis profile in The Commercial Appeal, the author said he didn't read "a lot of fiction," other than detective novels by Ross Macdonald, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett — authors whose prose was, like Portis', economical, witty, propulsive, eccentric, and rich with borrowed and invented American vernacular.

Portis characterized writing as "drudgery. It's just a matter of sitting down with your typewriter and your cigarettes and facing it." He said he smoked two or three packs of cigarettes a day while working on a novel at his Arkansas "fishing shack" hideaway. As for meals, "I eat when I get hungry."

The profile appeared while the movie "True Grit" was in pre-production, before Kim Darby had been cast in the key role of the novel's flinty 14-year-old narrator, precocious Mattie Ross, whose larval-schoolmarm persona strikes comic sparks when it rubs against the drunken vainglorious vulgarity of Rooster Cogburn.

"I did sort of have in mind George C. Scott as the old marshal," Portis told The Commercial Appeal. "He's such a fine actor. But who's going to complain about John Wayne? And the girl, well I don't want some nubile, drugstore babe in the role."

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Charles Portis: 'True Grit' author worked at The Commercial Appeal