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paul_cornelius's review
5.0
Neither pure fiction or pure history, His Majesty O'Keefe is a fictionalized account of the life of Captain David Dean O'Keefe. It is a story of adventure and romance that elevates O'Keefe to mythic levels. Just the sort of story that would catch the attention of movie makers, which it did in 1954, with Burt Lancaster fittingly in the title role. The real story of O'Keefe, however, is greatly different from the novel and film. Francis X. Hezel's rather comprehensive but concise history of the real O'Keefe can be found here: http://www.micsem.org/pubs/articles/h.... It not only provides a needed revision to Klingman and Green but also updates (as of 2008) the lives of O'Keefe's family and heirs as well as the ongoing litigation for his estate.
This is not to dismiss Klingman and Green's work. I had long anticipated reading it, and I wasn't disappointed. They create a thrilling story. And it is as much a document of its time as the tale of O'Keefe was for his time in the late 1800s.
Written in 1950, just after World War II, that conflict is still on the authors' minds. His Majesty O'Keefe especially ravages the Germans. And perhaps nowhere does the book depart from history more than its depiction of the Germans who Hezel, for example, describes as fair, tolerant, and fairly enlightened. Klingman and Green describe what amounts to square-headed, blond-haired storm troopers dishing out genocide and racial arrogance at every turn. The truth? It's hard to tell, actually. German treatment of native peoples in its colonies was often brutal and savage--but maybe not so different from that of other European colonial masters.
The other major thread in His Majesty O'Keefe is the almost Horatio Alger, Jr.-like depiction of O'Keefe's success. From starving Irish immigrant to laboring railroad worker in America and then to ship's captain, O'Keefe then ventures forth to become a wise and enlightened commercial tycoon. But he is one who serves up racial justice and economic fair play. Some of these characteristics, it seems, were indeed part of the make up of the real O'Keefe. Yet they played especially well in a post World War II America on the verge of economic and consumer expansion heretofore unimagined in world history. O'Keefe was not only a man for his own times but for "our times" as well.
That time, alas, has seemed finally to pass. O'Keefe enjoyed considerable fame during his own years as a trader throughout the South Seas and Asia and Hong Kong. And fifty years after his death, when Klingman and Green wrote His Majesty O'Keefe, his memory was still relatively strong. Not to mention that it was still a living memory to some people at the time. Some 68 years after the publication of the book--and over 117 years, now, since O'Keefe's death--all this is no longer the case. O'Keefe has become a footnote. If remembered at all, it is because of the 1954 Burt Lancaster movie, which, in fact, does capture the essence of O'Keefe as described by Klingman and Green. Yet looking back at all the turmoil, the struggle, and even the success, we see how fleeting it all was, all is.
This is not to dismiss Klingman and Green's work. I had long anticipated reading it, and I wasn't disappointed. They create a thrilling story. And it is as much a document of its time as the tale of O'Keefe was for his time in the late 1800s.
Written in 1950, just after World War II, that conflict is still on the authors' minds. His Majesty O'Keefe especially ravages the Germans. And perhaps nowhere does the book depart from history more than its depiction of the Germans who Hezel, for example, describes as fair, tolerant, and fairly enlightened. Klingman and Green describe what amounts to square-headed, blond-haired storm troopers dishing out genocide and racial arrogance at every turn. The truth? It's hard to tell, actually. German treatment of native peoples in its colonies was often brutal and savage--but maybe not so different from that of other European colonial masters.
The other major thread in His Majesty O'Keefe is the almost Horatio Alger, Jr.-like depiction of O'Keefe's success. From starving Irish immigrant to laboring railroad worker in America and then to ship's captain, O'Keefe then ventures forth to become a wise and enlightened commercial tycoon. But he is one who serves up racial justice and economic fair play. Some of these characteristics, it seems, were indeed part of the make up of the real O'Keefe. Yet they played especially well in a post World War II America on the verge of economic and consumer expansion heretofore unimagined in world history. O'Keefe was not only a man for his own times but for "our times" as well.
That time, alas, has seemed finally to pass. O'Keefe enjoyed considerable fame during his own years as a trader throughout the South Seas and Asia and Hong Kong. And fifty years after his death, when Klingman and Green wrote His Majesty O'Keefe, his memory was still relatively strong. Not to mention that it was still a living memory to some people at the time. Some 68 years after the publication of the book--and over 117 years, now, since O'Keefe's death--all this is no longer the case. O'Keefe has become a footnote. If remembered at all, it is because of the 1954 Burt Lancaster movie, which, in fact, does capture the essence of O'Keefe as described by Klingman and Green. Yet looking back at all the turmoil, the struggle, and even the success, we see how fleeting it all was, all is.
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