  John V. Baltadonis, one of the most
active fans of the late 1930s, died of lung cancer in July 1998. He was 77 years
old. John was born in Philadelphia, in February 1921, and resided in that area all
of his life, except for 3½ years in the Army during WWII. Prior to this, he
obtained a degree in Art from Temple University and, after the war, supplemented it
with a Masters in Fine Art from the Tyler School of Art.Johnny and I met in first grade at the
Vaughn School, in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. We lived within a city
block of each other and became the best of friends. This was 1927, during
prohibition, and Johnny's father ran a 'speak easy' where beer and liquor was
dispensed. It was a very large house, and I have fond memories of all the games we
played there.Both of us, apparently, had learned to
read before starting first grade and we soon discovered boys' books. We were
friendly rivals in most things we did from the beginning and thus it was we both
assembled a worthy collection of such titles as The Outdoor Chums, The
Battleship Boys, and The Grammar School Boys. These were the first items
we ever collected and those books meant a lot to both of us.Time went by and soon it was 1930.
Several events of "great importance" occurred. Buck Rogers began to run in January
1930, Tarzan of the Apes appeared in the comics section of The Evening
Bulletin, and a movie was released that shook us to our very foundations --
Just Imagine, starring El Brendel. It was a musical, as were most of the
'talkies' of that early period, but this movie took place in 1980, fifty years in
the future! In reality, we had become science fiction fans already.Johnny was tall, blonde, blue-eyed
and handsome, even as a pre-teenager. And he always had to be first in all our
activities. So, as he was able to obtain money from his parents (which was a rarity
in those days), he had the best boys' book collection, the best chemistry set, the
best set of skates. And when he discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs, he was able to buy
new books from the bookstores! (They cost all of 99 cents each!) But he let me
read them as long as I kept them in perfect condition. I remember that, when reading
those pristine copies, I would always remove the dust wrappers.Then, in early 1931, we discovered S-F
magazines. We were in a local junk shop when Johnny found two copies of Wonder
Stories, with marvelous Frank R. Paul covers on them -- the December 1930 issue,
featuring "The Synthetic Man" by Ed Earl Repp and the April 1931 issue, featuring
"The Man Who Evolved" by Edmond Hamilton. Wow! Were we impressed! But we didn't
know where to get other issues (remember, we were only nine years old) and it wasn't
until the spring of 1933 that we discovered back-date magazines stores and the S-F
magazines. And, beginning with the January 1934 issues, we were able to purchase
them from the newsstands (this was very neatly accomplished by the method known as
"not eating lunch" -- and spending our Junior High School lunch money, 15 cents a
day, on S-F mags). But back issues were only five cents each (six for a quarter) and
we both amassed our early collections in this manner. By this time, Jack Agnew, who
is my cousin, joined us and we became a trio. Jack had no choice but to become an
S-F fan, too.In April of 1934, Hugo Gernsback
started the Science Fiction League in the pages of Wonder Stories. This was
probably the most important event ever to occur from the viewpoint of S-F and,
particularly, S-F fandom. SFL chapters sprang up world-wide. One of these was the
Philadelphia SFL, organized by Milton A. Rothman, with the first meeting occurring
in January 1935. We attempted to contact Rothman but received no answer so we
assumed he felt we were too juvenile. Little did we realize that Rothman was just a
year or so older than us. So, about this same time, we organized the Boys' SF Club,
consisting of John Baltadonis, Jack Agnew, Harvey Greenblatt, and me. And we
actually produced a 'fan mag', as they were called then, titled The Science
Fiction Fan. It was carbon-copied (there were only two or three copies), and
featured some S-F magazine reviews plus a short story, "The Atom Smasher" by Donald
Wandrei, which was copied from a 1934 Astounding Stories. But also featured
were the first illustrations by John Baltadonis. They were acceptable -- I thought
they were excellent -- but they gave no hint of the John's latent talent that would
propel him to the top of the fan field and make him known as 'The Frank R. Paul of
the Fan Artists'.In 1935, John and I both had letters
published in Amazing Stories and this time Rothman contacted us! We
brought our Boys' SF Club to his home and the first reorganizational meeting of the
Philadelphia SFL was held with our group plus Rothman, his fan friend Raymond Peel
Mariella, Oswald Train (who had just moved to Phila-delphia), and a couple of others
who never showed up again.Baltadonis, Agnew, and I had been
working on another carbon-copied fan mag, called Imaginative Fiction. After
attending the first PSFL meeting, we added a couple of pages and Baltadonis did a
remarkable cover (for a 14-year-old). And he had to do it twice, as we made two
copies (there were no Xerox machines then!). The three of us then decided we were
going to publish a printed fan mag, like Fantasy Magazine, to be titled
Fantascience Digest. We actually bought a press, but had no idea how to set
type -- and we didn't have any type, anyway! It had taken all we could beg, borrow,
or steal to buy the press, so getting type would be another day. But all was not
lost; that very week we received in the mail the initial issue of Morris Scott
Dollens' The Science Fiction Collector, certainly one of the most amateurish
fan mags published to that time. It was hand-written -- not even typed -- but it
had illustrations and they were in a blue color! We found out it was done by a
process called hektography.
Baltadonis managed to get some more
money, did a little research, and called Agnew and I to come over one day to observe
his new publishing equipment. We arrived to find that his 'publishing house'
consisted of a pound of gelatine, a large rectangular cake pan, a purple typewriter
ribbon, and a small jar of blue ink. The gelatine was heated until it became liquid,
and was poured into the cake pan and allowed to harden. The typed page was placed
face down on the gelatine and allowed to remain for a few minutes until the gelatine
absorbed the purple ink, and then removed. A sheet of typewriter paper was then very
carefully placed on the gelatine, pressed slightly and pulled off. Eureka! There
was a marvelous reproduction of the purple-typed page. With luck, this could be
repeated about 50 or even 60 times; thus was born the era of the hektographed fan
magazine.Philadelphia's first fan mag (not
counting the carbon-copied ones) was called Fantasy Fiction Telegram; it was
dated October 1936 and was about 20 half-size pages, all in purple, with blue
illustrations, all by Baltadonis, and material by the local group plus an article by
the leading fan of the time, Donald A. Wollheim. The original Baltadonis
hektographed artwork didn't even begin to suggest the prolific talent he would
display in the near future.John made more trips to the store --
the gelatine was called 'Ditto' by the way -- and made an amazing discovery, one that
would ultimately make him an immortal of early fandom: hektographed ink was available
in many colors! From an artistic viewpoint, the possibilities were astounding. The
third issue of FFT appeared in many colors, and Baltadonis received rave
reviews of his artwork (the cover and all interiors). But FFT lasted only
one more issue, the fifth issue never being completed.Morris Dollens published the
Science Fiction Collector for 13 issues, through June 1937 when Dollens
announced that would be the last issue. But it wasn't really the last issue.
A 14th issue (dated July 1937) appeared and what an issue it was! Sam Moskowitz
described it in The Immortal Storm as follows:"In late August of 1937, the first issue of the new Science Fiction Collector appeared under the editorship of Baltadonis and staffed by Train, Madle, and Moskowitz. The result set the fan world agog and unified its struggling remnants. For Baltadonis had done the near-impossible; not only was Collector ahead of the old insofar as quality of material was concerned, but Dollens' hektography had actually been surpassed. Some of the most important names of fandom were contributors, and in the space of one issue, the Science Fiction Collector became the leading representative fan journal." Sam could have added that the
Baltadonis artwork was extremely impressive -- and "all in color for a dime." It
was at this junction that fandom almost universally recognized Baltadonis as the
premier fan artist. Morris Scott Dollens had introduced the varied-colored
hektograph fan mag but Baltadonis perfected it. He was not only outstanding in the
handling of color and the mechanistic aspects of illustrating -- he was also a
master of 'figure study', as the following anecdote shows.Back in 1935, when we graduated from
Penn Treaty Junior High School, we had read a letter in Wonder or
Amazing from Philadelphia fan Raymond Peel Mariella, who mentioned that one
of his teachers was an S-F writer who taught at Central High School. We also had
read a letter from a Philadelphia writer named Stephen G. Hale who had several
stories in Amazing, and who was also a high school teacher. It had to be the
same writer, we assumed, and both of us attempted to attend Central -- to no avail.
"You go to Northeast," we were told, and so we did.
But on the first day of art class, we
were amazed to realize that Stephen G. Hale (author of "The Laughing Death" and
"World's Apart") was our art teacher! He told us he had several other stories
awaiting publication (Amazing Stories) -- but they never appeared. Anyway,
one of our first assignments was 'figure study'. So far as drawing was concerned, I
was as bad as Baltadonis was good. We came to the deadline, and I hadn't finished
the assignment. "Not to worry," said the over-accommodating Baltadonis, "I'll do an
extra one and give it to you at class." But it turned out to be a scantily-clad
figure study of a female band leader named Ina Ray Hutton. She was drawn wearing
short tight pants, and John made sure he disguised nothing. I turned it in and, in
the next art period, Hale yelled out, "Madle! Come up here!" I stepped forward in
fear and trepidation because I knew he was going to accuse me of turning in someone
else's work. But that wasn't it at all -- he was extremely angry that I had turned
in this "piece of pornography" and that he was considering sending me and the drawing
down to the principal's office. But he relented -- perhaps because we had discovered
his stories a few days earlier.JVB, as Baltadonis became known in
fandom, not only edited and published one of the leading fan journals of this period,
but he also conceived of Comet Publications, which comprised all of the fan journals
published by the Philadelphia group. At one time, circa 1938-39, Comet Publications
comprised about 15 different fan mags. (It should be mentioned that the 1936-41
fandom was so small that some active fans used only initials. In addition to JVB,
there was DAW [Wollheim], FJA [Ackerman], MAR [Rothman], RWL [Lowndes], and RAM
[Madle].)JVB was one of the attendees at the
October 1936 meeting in Philadelphia when the New York group came to visit the
Philadelphia group. This became known as the 'First S-F Convention', partly because,
during the official meeting, Donald A. Wollheim suggested it. JVB was active in
producing the annual Philadelphia conference and in helping produce Nycon in 1939 --
the First World S-F Convention.JVB's activity in the 1936-41 period
was amazing. He did everything a fan could do -- he wrote, illustrated, collected,
corresponded, wrote to magazines, organized and attended conventions. During the
years 1937-40, he was always voted one of the top fans in the world. In fact, in
1938 and 1939 he was elected as Number One Fan. And this was during the times that
active fandom consisted of such as Ackerman, Bradbury, Wollheim, Moskowitz, Tucker,
Pohl, Lowndes, and other great names.Seventeen issues of Science
Fiction Collector appeared under JVB's editorship from 1937-41. It was a
treasure-trove of early S-F and fandom, beautifully illustrated in multi-color. The
final issue was dated Winter 1941 and marked the end of JVB's tenure as an active
fan; in reality, the start of World War II in December 1941 marked the end of the
grandest of all fan periods.After the war, Baltadonis rejoined
the PSFS for a while, but upon starting graduate work, drifted into inactivity. He
did illustrate the Program Book for the Philcon of 1947 and, in 1948, did the dust
wrapper and illustrations for New Era's only book, "The Solitary Hunters" and "The
Abyss" by David H. Keller. Despite his S-F illustrating talent, he appeared
professionally only once when Lowndes reprinted "The Abyss" in Magazine of
Horror in the 1960s. But his entire career was art-oriented -- he taught art in
Haverford, Pennsylvania school system for 35 years, then became art programs
coordinator for the district until his health forced him to retire.
Our paths crossed occasionally during
the late `40s and early `50s when I was attending Drexel University. In 1953 I moved
to Charlotte, North Carolina, and later to Washington, D.C., and we rarely made
contact. However, beginning in the early `80s, Agnew, John, and I attended Philcons
and PSFS Founders' Day dinners, and it was like the old days again. At the Philcons
and dinners, John's wife Pat, my wife Billie, and Agnew's wife Agnes learned more
than they wanted to when discussions of the old days came up.John always retained his interest in
S-F. He went from reader to collector to fan and back to reader. Fan history will
certainly show him as one of the most important members of the 1936-41 period of
fandom. (Just look at the indexes of Moskowitz's The Immortal Storm and
Warner's All Our Yesterdays and this becomes quite evident.) It's difficult
to accept that John V. Baltadonis is gone -- but the memories of the friendship and
the numerous hobbies, interests, and activities we shared, will be remembered
forever. - - - - - - - - - -
Harry Warner, Jr., noted that Baltadonis had actually been mostly and undeservedly
forgotten by latter-day fandom: "It's a shame that no worldcon ever thought about
making him the Fan Guest of Honor during his long life." Fred Smith wrote us in
agreement about Baltadonis' importance in fandom's earliest era, but also remarked
about how all is relative in fandom: "Robert Madle's tribute to John Baltadonis was
engrossing. It's funny, but when I was active in fandom in the 1950s, those guys,
along with Ackerman, Moskowitz, DeVore, and Kyle, were already legendary. We
even had nostalgia for the 'Good Old Days' back then!" Mimosa 24 was published in
August 1999, just before we left on a two-week trip that would take us first to the
1999 NASFiC, Conucopia, where we were Fan Guests, and then to Australia for the 1999
Worldcon. M24 was a "Communications" theme issue, featuring an intriguing
cover by Charlie Williams depicting the Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, where Ratatosk,
the messenger squirrel dwelt. We began the issue with a remembrance of a great
communicator. Aubrey Vincent Clarke was a contributor to Mimosa as well as a
frequent correspondent, especially about matters of fan history of the golden decade
of the 1950s. We were enriched by his friendship as we were immensely saddened by
his passing.Mimosa 24 cover by Charlie Williams All other illustrations by Joe Mayhew |
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