Shelley Smith Mydans
Shelley Mydans | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 20, 1915 |
| Died | March 7, 2002 |
| Nationality | American |
Shelley Mydans or Shelley Smith (1915 – March 7, 2002) was an American novelist, journalist and prisoner of war.
Life
Shelley Smith was born in Stanford where she grew up and her father was a university professor of journalism. Smith moved to New York to work for the Literary Digest. She became a journalist for Life magazine where she met Carl Mydans in 1938. They married the following year and they were the first husband and wife team to be employed by the magazine.[1]
They were sent initially to the United Kingdom to cover the war but they eventually traveled over 45,000 miles visiting China, Scandinavia, Portugal, Italy, China, and Hong Kong. Mydans described her job as writer and researcher but she occasionally got attributed when a writer was not available.[2] They were both caught by the Japanese in the Phillipines and they were interred firstly in Manila and later in Shanghai. They were lucky to be exchanged in a prisoner swap in December 1943 and they both then returned to the war. Mydans was to write her first novel called "Open City" based on her time as a prisoner of the Japanese and this was published in 1945.[3]
In 1945 her husband went to Manila where he was to record the iconic moment of MacArthurs return but this was denied to Mydans and she was sent to Guam to work on a restricted basis. "I was accredited to the navy, but I was not - because I was a woman - allowed to cover action on naval ships or planes and my articles had to be confined to such things as the navy flight nurses and marine base camps."[2]
Mydans wrote radio plays for the American ABC network after the war including episodes on the March of Time. She resigned when the first of her four children were born.[2] She wrote two more novels - the first was based around the life of Thomas a Becket and the other was based in 8th century Japan. She and her husband also wrote a non-fiction book about post was terrorism.[1]
Mydans died in Sacramento, California in 2002.
Referenvces
- ^ a b Honan, William H (9 March 2002). "Shelley Mydans, 86, Author and Former P.O.W." New York Times. Retrieved 15 April 2013.
- ^ a b c "Shelley Mydans". schoolnet.co.uk. Retrieved 15 April 2013.
- ^ Mydans, Shelley Smith (1945). The Open City. Phillipines: Doubleday, Doran and company. p. 245.