OUT AMONG THE BIG THINGS

Arthur B. Guthrie

Arthur Chapman

Montana is known as "The Big Sky" country; and Arthur B. Guthrie is generally credited with having originating that concept. It was the title of Guthrie's novel, that was later made into a movie starring Kirk Douglas. This novel was widely acclaimed and heralded. It catapulted Guthrie into national prominence. He wrote The Big Sky in 1947. This was some 30 years or so AFTER Chapman wrote the following poem, "Out Among The Big Things". This poem was published by Chapman in his book "Out Where The West Begins" in 1917. The book bears a copyright dated 1916- 1917.

Out among the big things-
   The mountains and the plains-
An hour ain't important,
    Nor are the hour's gains;
The feller in the city
    Is hurried night and day,
But out among the big things
    He learns the calmer way.

Out among the big things-
   The skies that never end-
to lose a day ain't nothin'
    The days are here to spend;
So why not give 'em freely,
    Enjoyin' as we go?
I somehow can't stop thinkin'
    the good Lord means life so.

Out among the big things-
   the heights that gleam afar-
A feller gets to wonder
   What means each distant star;
He may not get the answer,
    But somehow every night
He feels, among the big things,
   That everything's all right.
                Arthur Chapman

       A. B. Guthrie, Jr. (1901 - 1991) was an American novelist, historian, and literary historian who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1950 for his The Way West. Guthrie was born in Indiana but moved to Montana as an infant. He attended school in Montana and worked in his father's newspaper. While in college, at the University of Montana School of Journalism, he worked in the United States Forest Service in the summers. He graduated in 1923 with a degree in journalism. He moved to to Kentucky in 1931. Soon after, he began his journalistic career in Lexington, starting out at the Lexington Leader in 1926. Over the ensuing 17 years, he moved up from reporter to city editor to editorial writer, and then to executive editor, marrying and raising a family along the way. He began writing fiction in the early '40s, principally set in the far West and the Northwest.

         He published his first novel, Murders at Moon Dance, in 1943 (retitled Trouble at Moon Dance for its 1951 reissue), and the following year, he received a Neiman Fellowship for a year's study at Harvard University, during which he ceased being a newsman who dealt with day-to-day events, and he became an author. In 1947, this resulted in the publication of The Big Sky, a novel about a group of white frontiersmen and traders and their 1830 journey of from St. Louis to the northwest territory. This was some 20 years or so after Lewis and Clark made their epoch journey. The country the group settled in is now Montana...and mainly the valley around Choteau, Montana. This is where Guthrie lived as a boy and where he retired in his golden years.

      The book became a bestseller. Howard Hawks, then affiliated with RKO, snapped up the rights to The Big Sky for a reported 40,000 dollars....(quite a lot of money at that time.) Hawks released the movie The Big Sky in 1952. It starred Kirk Douglas. It was a box-office failure here in the United States. In Europe, however, its vision of America and the men and women who settled the West proved extremely compelling; and the movie has since come to be regarded as a masterpiece of cinematic storytelling in France. After the movie came out, that title became increasingly used when referring to Montana. Today, Montana proudly claims to be "The Big Sky" Country.   Where did that concept come from? While it is widely attributed to Guthrie, the fact is that in 1917, 30 years before Guthrie published "The Big Sky", Chapman published his poem, Out Among The Big Things with the memorable lines:
                            Out among the big things-
                             The skies that never end-

          There were very few natives of Montana living in Montana during Guthrie's residence there that weren't familiar with the stories, essays and poems of Arthur Chapman. Certainly someone as devoted to literature as Montana native A. B. Guthrie was, would have been expected to be likewise familiar with the works of Arthur Chapman. Although it was the book and the movie that popularized the use of the precise term "The Big Sky", don't you think Chapman deserves some credit for having first originated the concept?
                                                                                                         Wacobelle