The Substitute Millionaire

Footner wrote a four-act play titled The Saving of Zavia in 1904 that he later retitled The Younger Mrs. Favor He accepted a part in a play Sherlock Holmes which opened in Baltimore when the lead actor made a commitment to produce his play. His acting role took him to forty-one states and four Canadian provinces. His play was never produced. While traveling he wrote a vaudeville sketch for two characters his Long-lost Child which he and a comedian from the closed show performed in until his partner asked that he replace himself. Two decades later a Baltimore Sun columnist wrote extensively about his early experiences in the theater world. He returned to New York and nearly starved there living on thirty cents a day but fully occupied by a long list of classic literary books and plays which substituted for a formal education. He wrote many short stories and novels based on his early adventurous canoe voyages which were serialized in Cavalier Western Story Magazine Argosy Munsey's and Mystery and then published as novels. His book New Rivers of the North was utilized by subsequent surveyors and mapmakers to guide them as they moved north into the unmapped North West Territory to Slave Lake. His explorations of upper Canada are recognized by these officials who were the original surveyors and used this book as a guide then gave his name in appreciation to beautiful Lake Footner near the town of High Level and to a large tree preserve in northwestern Alberta which has the name Footner Forest. His novel Jack Chanty which is based on his canoe adventures in the great northwest and published by Doubleday Page & Co. where Christopher Morley was a fledgling editor assigned to the similarly inexperienced novelist and a friendship was created that remained close until Footner's death. His second novel had many editions and reprints in New York Canada and London anchoring Footner's lifelong career as a novelist. Grosset & Dunlap reissued the novel Jack Chanty as a Photoplay edition illustrated with scenes from the film that was produced by Masterpiece Film Manufacturing Co. He wrote several other adventure books set in the Canadian northwest after he had relocated to Maryland in 1913: The Sealed Valley Toronto 1914; The Fur Bringers London 1916; The Huntress 1917 London; On Swan River London 1919 & published in the US as The Woman From Outside New York 1921; The Wild Bird London & New York 1923; A Backwoods Princess New York & London 1926; The Shanty Sled 1926; Roger Manion’s Girl London 1928 and Tortuous Trails London 1937 a book of several crime cases set in Canada.His travels by canoe ended but were replaced by constant shifts of his growing family to New York Charleston New Orleans London then to Japan and China alone and several year-long visits to Britain France and Italy with the growing family after Europe emerged from its Great War in 1918. He collected book royalties in London through the years as his popularity as a writer of detective-adventure stories seemed secure. He acquired a circle of writer-friends abroad most of whom visited his home Charles' Gift and included authors Frank Swinnerton and H. M. Tomlinson James Bone London editor of the Manchester Guardian David Bone writer of sea tales and master of White Star liners Max Beerbohm who he met at Rapallo Aldous Huxley Frank Morley an editor at Faber & Faber and Arthur Wesley Wheen a World War I mentally scarred British spy who was a close friend and lived a tottering existence on the rim of life with the stress of deep guilt and was translator of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and The Road Back which was published in 1929. His friend Christopher Morley was also a writer of books and poetry of a lighter vein. He credits Morley for having steered him past an overdose of northwestern stories into crime stories adventure and romance. His most successful creation was the be