You're Lucky If You're Killed: Including Full Text & Music of the 1933 War Play You're Lucky If You're Killed

J. Marshall Craig; Norman McLeod Craig

ISBN 10: 0595659853 / ISBN 13: 9780595659852

Published by iUniverse, 2003

About this Item

iUniverse, Published 2003. Hardcover, xxv, 149 pp.; 24 cm; cloth issue, published simultaneously with a paperback; illustrated with black-and-white photographs, facsimiles of documents and newspaper advertisements, and printed music. In Very Good condition with a Very Good dust jacket. Blue boards, gilt lettering on spine. Light bumping to edges and corners. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Pictorial dust jacket, sepia portrait of Craig to front panel and a blue-toned view of him at the Sphinx in Egypt to rear, has light bumping to edges and mild shelf wear. Not price clipped, priced $25.95. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Norman McLeod Craig was a nineteen-year-old medical student at Queen's when he attested to the Canadian Expeditionary Force in March 1915, served in Egypt with the Royal Army Medical Corps, and finished the war as a flight commander in the Royal Naval Air Service. In 1932, out of patience with a Fergus town council that had deferred a war memorial for seventeen years, he wrote a war play and staged it himself in June 1933 with a local cast, at least seventy-five percent of gross receipts going to the memorial fund. His grandson, a Hollywood writer and director, prints the text and music here for the first time, with Craig's attestation papers, wartime photographs, the newspaper advertisements, and the program for the 1935 Dawn Parade that finally unveiled the monument. Contents: Acknowledgements; Introduction; Assorted First World War Documents; Photographs; The Royal Edward; You're Lucky If You're Killed; The Performances; Glossary; You're Lucky If You're Killed (the play text); Main Characters; The Music; The Dawn Parade; The Parade Program; The Legacy; Document Appendix.

Seller Inventory # 20260730002

Bibliographic Details

• Title: You're Lucky If You're Killed: Including Full Text & Music of the 1933 War Play You're Lucky If You're Killed
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0595659853
• ISBN 13: 9780595659852
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Weight: 15 ounces
• Seller catalogs:
  • History

About this title

Synopsis

Fergus, Ontario-born medical student Norman Craig wasn't yet 20 when he went to Egypt in 1915 with the Royal Army Medical Corps. He soon transferred, however, to the Royal Naval Air Service, finishing the war as a flight commander, leading a squadron of Sopwith Camels stationed in Mudros. By war's end, most of his boyhood friends had been killed. In 1932, after the town council he described as "a group of unreasoning pacifists" had again put off the construction of a war memorial in Fergus, Craig took matters into his own hands. He wrote You're Lucky If You're Killed, and produced it in June, 1933, using a local cast and crew. It took another two years but finally came Craig's Dawn Parade unveiling the monument--which represents "any small town in Canada."

The play itself--one of Canada's first--has never been seen again, despite some attempts in the early 1950s to resurrect & publish the work. Craig wanted people to remember the war dead, not his own actions, which he described as a "a small, overdue payment on a large debt."

In this book, Dr. Craig's grandson--a Hollywood-based writer and film director--makes public for the first time in 70 years the original text &music of the play, as well as an overview of the events that sparked its creation.

About the Author

J. Marshall Craig is the award-winning author of Eric Burdon's Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood; Chuck Leavell's Between Rock and a Home Place, Growing A Better America, also with Chuck Leavell; the highly anticipated memoirs of controversial former Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker, ROCKER: Scars & Strikes; the novel Eh Mail and the World War I history You're Lucky If You're Killed. His work appears in various literary collections with Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac and others (The Outlaw Bible of American Literature); Hells Angels founder Sonny Barger, Che Guevara and others (She's A Bad Motorcycle) and CNN talk show host Larry King (Remember Me When I'm Gone). Craig is also an award-winning feature film (Fabulous Shiksa In Distress) and music video director and produced Australian director Frank Howson's feature film Remembering Nigel, as well as The Nigel Diaries. His next novel, The Excellent Victim, is expected in late 2012.