Word: travenous
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...Traven Mystery...
...John Huston says that he "was pretty certain" that I was Traven himself [the author of the novel], which would mean that he had "hired" Traven for $100 (not $150 as he says) a week, that same Traven who a few months earlier had been offered between $750 and $1,000 a week...
John Huston (San Pietro, Let There Be Light), who wrote the screen play and directed the film, adapted it from a novel by Mexico's Mysterious Stranger, B. Traven. The story, ideal for movie purposes, is a sardonic, intensely realistic fable, masterfully disguised as an adventure story. It is a tale about three Americans of the mid-1920s, on the bum in Tampico. Running into modest luck in a lottery, they strike off into the depths of Mexico's mountains in search of gold...
...Mexico City's Reforma Hotel, one day, a frail little man in faded khaki, his shirt held together with a cheap gold pin, presented to Huston a card: Hal Croves, Translator. Traven, Croves explained, couldn't come; but as Traven's old friend and translator, he, Croves, knew the author and his work better even than Traven himself did. Huston hired Croves at $150 a week as technical adviser. By the time Croves had done his job and disappeared, Huston was pretty certain that uneasy little Mr. Croves was Traven himself...
...Traven's" first two books, The Death Ship and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, were published in the U. S. only after they had been published in virtually every country in Europe. Both together sold 4,000,000 copies in Soviet Russia. The Death Ship sold more than 250,000 in Germany before it was black-listed by the Nazis...