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Rhubarb
A riotous, bawdy, and often slapstick story about a large yellow cat who, according to numerous complaints, had been assaulting dogs, stealing tennis balls, stalking mailmen, and attacking Macy's trucks. An eccentric millionaire who loathes all canines, is struck with admiration for any cat with the guts to go out and avenge his entire race and decides to adopt him.
Thaddeus Whitcomb Banner (the dog-hating millionaire), charmed by the cat's pugnacious attitude, calls his new pet, Rhubarb, a baseball term for a violent and noisy altercation. Rhubarb takes a liking to Thad and his press secretary Eric Yaeger, but he is indifferent if not downright vicious to everyone else. When his owner dies only forty-eight hours after signing his last will and testament, Rhubarb is there, sitting in his master's lap. In his will, Thad praises Rhubarb for his unsparing love and solace and thereby leaves him his entire fortune, including ownership of a professional baseball team, the New York Loons. Eric Yaeger is appointed Rhubarb's guardian, and Thad's daughter Myra, a mean-spirited young hipster doofus, is summarily disinherited.
Although initially reluctant to play baseball for a team owned by a cat, Loons players are tricked into believing that Rhubarb is a good luck charm and subsequently begin winning games. Meanwhile, Myra, not about to let a cat get away with her millions, begins a lawsuit to have the will invalidated, while her lawyer is part of a scheme to have Rhubarb murdered by a woman who has a mysterious connection to Myra. As for Eric, Rhubarb's frantic guardian ― well, Eric faces challenges only a fierce and concupiscent kitty cat can provide.
Thaddeus Whitcomb Banner (the dog-hating millionaire), charmed by the cat's pugnacious attitude, calls his new pet, Rhubarb, a baseball term for a violent and noisy altercation. Rhubarb takes a liking to Thad and his press secretary Eric Yaeger, but he is indifferent if not downright vicious to everyone else. When his owner dies only forty-eight hours after signing his last will and testament, Rhubarb is there, sitting in his master's lap. In his will, Thad praises Rhubarb for his unsparing love and solace and thereby leaves him his entire fortune, including ownership of a professional baseball team, the New York Loons. Eric Yaeger is appointed Rhubarb's guardian, and Thad's daughter Myra, a mean-spirited young hipster doofus, is summarily disinherited.
Although initially reluctant to play baseball for a team owned by a cat, Loons players are tricked into believing that Rhubarb is a good luck charm and subsequently begin winning games. Meanwhile, Myra, not about to let a cat get away with her millions, begins a lawsuit to have the will invalidated, while her lawyer is part of a scheme to have Rhubarb murdered by a woman who has a mysterious connection to Myra. As for Eric, Rhubarb's frantic guardian ― well, Eric faces challenges only a fierce and concupiscent kitty cat can provide.
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First published January 1, 1946
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About the author
H. Allen Smith
80 books19 followersHarry Allen Wolfgang Smith was an American journalist and humorist whose books were popular in the 1940s and 1950s, selling millions of copies.
Smith was born in McLeansboro, Illinois, where he lived until the age of six. His family moved to Decatur in 1913 and then to Defiance, Ohio, finally arriving in Huntington, Indiana. It was at this point Smith dropped out of high school and began working odd jobs, eventually finding work as a journalist.
He began in 1922 at the Huntington Press, relocating to Jeffersonville, Indiana, and Louisville, Kentucky. In Florida, editing the Sebring American in 1925, he met society editor Nelle Mae Simpson, and they married in 1927. The couple lived in Oklahoma, where Smith worked at the Tulsa Tribune, followed by a position at the Denver Post. In 1929, he became a United Press rewrite man, also handling feature stories and celebrity interviews. He continued as a feature writer with the New York World-Telegram from 1934 to 1939.
He found fame when his humor book Low Man on a Totem Pole (1941) became a bestseller during WWII, popular not only on the homefront but also read on troop trains and at military camps. Featuring an introduction by his friend Fred Allen, it eventually sold over a million copies. Damon Runyon called it, "Rich funny stuff, loaded with laughs." As noted by Eric Partridge in A Dictionary of Catch Phrases, the book's title became a catchphrase for the least successful individual in a group.
With his newfound financial freedom, he left the daily newspaper grind for life as a freelance author, scripting for radio while also writing (for six months) The Totem Pole, a daily column for United Features Syndicate, making personal appearances and working on his next book, Life in a Putty Knife Factory (1943), which became another bestseller. He spent eight months in Hollywood as a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures, and wrote about the experience in Lost in the Horse Latitudes (1944). His first three books were widely circulated around the world in Armed Services Editions. The popularity of these titles kept Smith on the New York Herald Tribune's Best Seller List for 100 weeks and prompted a collection of all three in 3 Smiths in the Wind (1946). By the end of World War II, Smith's fame as a humorist was such that he edited Desert Island Decameron (1945), a collection of essays and stories by such leading humorists as Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and James Thurber. Histories of the Manhattan Project mention Desert Island Decameron because it's the book Donald Hornig was reading when he was sitting in the Trinity Test tower babysitting the atomic bomb on July 15, 1945, the stormy night prior to the first nuclear explosion.
His novel, Rhubarb (1946), about a cat that inherits a professional baseball team, led to two sequels and a 1951 film adaptation. Larks in the Popcorn (1948, reprinted in 1974) and Let The Crabgrass Grow (1960) described "rural" life in Westchester County, New York. People Named Smith (1950) offers anecdotes and histories of people named Smith, such as Presidential candidate Al Smith, religious leader Joseph Smith and a man named 5/8 Smith. He collaborated with Ira L. Smith on the baseball anecdotes in Low and Inside (1949) and Three Men on Third (1951). The Compleat Practical Joker (1953, reprinted in 1980) detailed the practical jokes pulled by his friends Hugh Troy, publicist Jim Moran and other pranksters, such as the artist Waldo Peirce. His futuristic fantasy novel, The Age of the Tail (1955), describes a time when people are born with tails. One of his last books was Rude Jokes (1970).
Smith also wrote hundreds of magazine articles for Esquire, Holiday, McCall's, Playboy, Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, The Saturday Review of Literature, True, Venture, Golf and other publications. Smith made a number of appearances on radio and television. Fred Allen was one of his friends, and he was a guest on The Fred Allen Show on December 7, 1947
Smith was born in McLeansboro, Illinois, where he lived until the age of six. His family moved to Decatur in 1913 and then to Defiance, Ohio, finally arriving in Huntington, Indiana. It was at this point Smith dropped out of high school and began working odd jobs, eventually finding work as a journalist.
He began in 1922 at the Huntington Press, relocating to Jeffersonville, Indiana, and Louisville, Kentucky. In Florida, editing the Sebring American in 1925, he met society editor Nelle Mae Simpson, and they married in 1927. The couple lived in Oklahoma, where Smith worked at the Tulsa Tribune, followed by a position at the Denver Post. In 1929, he became a United Press rewrite man, also handling feature stories and celebrity interviews. He continued as a feature writer with the New York World-Telegram from 1934 to 1939.
He found fame when his humor book Low Man on a Totem Pole (1941) became a bestseller during WWII, popular not only on the homefront but also read on troop trains and at military camps. Featuring an introduction by his friend Fred Allen, it eventually sold over a million copies. Damon Runyon called it, "Rich funny stuff, loaded with laughs." As noted by Eric Partridge in A Dictionary of Catch Phrases, the book's title became a catchphrase for the least successful individual in a group.
With his newfound financial freedom, he left the daily newspaper grind for life as a freelance author, scripting for radio while also writing (for six months) The Totem Pole, a daily column for United Features Syndicate, making personal appearances and working on his next book, Life in a Putty Knife Factory (1943), which became another bestseller. He spent eight months in Hollywood as a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures, and wrote about the experience in Lost in the Horse Latitudes (1944). His first three books were widely circulated around the world in Armed Services Editions. The popularity of these titles kept Smith on the New York Herald Tribune's Best Seller List for 100 weeks and prompted a collection of all three in 3 Smiths in the Wind (1946). By the end of World War II, Smith's fame as a humorist was such that he edited Desert Island Decameron (1945), a collection of essays and stories by such leading humorists as Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and James Thurber. Histories of the Manhattan Project mention Desert Island Decameron because it's the book Donald Hornig was reading when he was sitting in the Trinity Test tower babysitting the atomic bomb on July 15, 1945, the stormy night prior to the first nuclear explosion.
His novel, Rhubarb (1946), about a cat that inherits a professional baseball team, led to two sequels and a 1951 film adaptation. Larks in the Popcorn (1948, reprinted in 1974) and Let The Crabgrass Grow (1960) described "rural" life in Westchester County, New York. People Named Smith (1950) offers anecdotes and histories of people named Smith, such as Presidential candidate Al Smith, religious leader Joseph Smith and a man named 5/8 Smith. He collaborated with Ira L. Smith on the baseball anecdotes in Low and Inside (1949) and Three Men on Third (1951). The Compleat Practical Joker (1953, reprinted in 1980) detailed the practical jokes pulled by his friends Hugh Troy, publicist Jim Moran and other pranksters, such as the artist Waldo Peirce. His futuristic fantasy novel, The Age of the Tail (1955), describes a time when people are born with tails. One of his last books was Rude Jokes (1970).
Smith also wrote hundreds of magazine articles for Esquire, Holiday, McCall's, Playboy, Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, The Saturday Review of Literature, True, Venture, Golf and other publications. Smith made a number of appearances on radio and television. Fred Allen was one of his friends, and he was a guest on The Fred Allen Show on December 7, 1947
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
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December 28, 2019if you only read one book in 2020 about a cat inheriting a major league baseball team, make that book rhubarb! (any publishers looking to reissue this feel free to blurb me.) for a novel of the '40s this reminded me of nothing so much as '90s nickelodeon cartoons, v loose-limbed, v kinetic -- the mlb commissioner steps in a giant mousetrap, an amateur private eye wakes up covered in spaghetti, the hair tonic tycoon's majordomo boils his clothes in catnip to win rhubarb's affection with unintended results, etc etc. some utterly crackerjack bits of snappy dialogue too: see, e.g., eric remarking of a glass of watercress juice "put it back in the watercress," or telling a weightlifter to "go clean and jerk something." it's the kind of novel i could see boris vian getting a kick out of but coulda just as easily functioned as a newspaper comic strip. rhead rhubarb
July 29, 2013
Like the other great American genius writer Throne Smith, his spiritual brother H. Allen Smith is many ways the PG Wodehouse of the Screwball era. A rich eccentric millionaire dies and leaves all his wealth and real estate to his pet cat Rhubarb, who like his owner is fussy, and kind of mean. And he also owns a baseball team. So in this book you get zany, zany characters - everyone from a muscle bound daughter to crooked lawyers, to dopey baseball players, to an occasional bad dog or two (sorry dog lovers). If you mixed Howard Hawks comedy with a side dish of Throne Smith, and a touch of small-town Manhattan you got "Rhubarb." The fact that this book is out-of-print is truly a criminal act.
January 4, 2012
Eccentric millionaire Thad Banner adopts a feral cat with a penchant for assaulting dogs and stealing tennis balls from the athletic club. Although the cat, named Rhubarb (after the baseball term for a heated or noisy argument), is devoted to Thad and to Thad's press secretary Eric Yaeger, he is indifferent, if not outright vicious to everyone else. Upon Thad's death, the reading of his will reveals that Thad left his entire fortune, including ownership of a professional baseball team, the New York Loons, to Rhubarb with Eric Yaeger as Rhubarb's guardian, and specifically disinherited his daughter Myra, a mean-spirited young hipster doofus. Although initially reluctant to play baseball for a team owned by a cat, Loons players are tricked into believing that Rhubarb is a good luck charm and subsequently begin winning games, eventually getting into the World Series. Meanwhile, Myra has brought a lawsuit to have the will invalidated, while her lawyer is part of a scheme to have Rhubarb murdered by a woman who has a mysterious connection to Myra.
Published in 1946, the novel was made into a 1951 screwball comedy starring Ray Milland, and this is a case of the very cute and charming movie being better than the book. The novel meanders all over the place telling the story (Smith even joking in the final chapter that he's finally getting to the plot), and although it's funny in the way that stories that your somewhat senile uncle might tell at a family reunion are funny, a lot of the humor is suggestive in a way that's more juvenile than crude. It's also kind of sexist in that Smith likes to throw the word "bitch" around whenever a woman has an opinion.
Otherwise, it was likable enough, particularly the first half before the narrative starts to drag, and the illustrations by Leo Hershfield are very winning. But I'd still recommend the movie over the book.
Published in 1946, the novel was made into a 1951 screwball comedy starring Ray Milland, and this is a case of the very cute and charming movie being better than the book. The novel meanders all over the place telling the story (Smith even joking in the final chapter that he's finally getting to the plot), and although it's funny in the way that stories that your somewhat senile uncle might tell at a family reunion are funny, a lot of the humor is suggestive in a way that's more juvenile than crude. It's also kind of sexist in that Smith likes to throw the word "bitch" around whenever a woman has an opinion.
Otherwise, it was likable enough, particularly the first half before the narrative starts to drag, and the illustrations by Leo Hershfield are very winning. But I'd still recommend the movie over the book.
Want to read
September 6, 2013rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb? rhubarb!
August 30, 2016
Don't let the opinion of Prof. Elmer Roessner dissuade you ("This book betokens the death of the novel form in America...") this is a wonderfully zany novel with a cast of screwball characters up to and including Rhubarb, a scraggly - and somewhat psychotic - alley cat that comes into a fortune (including ownership of baseball team, the New York Loons).
Smith writes with a verve seldom seen in postwar American fiction (no mystery why it's out of print: no men in gray flannel suits living repressed lives of quiet suburban angst), with dabs of, dashes of, "blue" humor to keep you smiling, wondering what Smith'll insinuate next. So, yes, there is plenty of sex in-between the lines, for you 50 Shaders. And you'll never think of guava jelly again without a smirk. A knowing smirk.
It's little wonder that the books available to order in the back of the paperback are The Playboy Advisor, Playboy's Ribald Classics, Playboy's Party Jokes and, for the completist, More Playboy's Party Jokes and, oh, The Green Beret Fitness Program.
Also of note, the novel predicts the rise of the cat as the universal animal, the millenial meme. Or something.
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From the back cover:
A wacky story about RHUBARB, the cat that took a night club by storm with a cast of characters including: POLLY, a female weight lifter with curves...MYRA, the dizzy bobby soxer who wasn't going to let Rhubarb get away with her million dollars...ERIC, Rhubarb's frantic guardian who thought the cat's concupiscence could be cured by psychiatry.
Smith writes with a verve seldom seen in postwar American fiction (no mystery why it's out of print: no men in gray flannel suits living repressed lives of quiet suburban angst), with dabs of, dashes of, "blue" humor to keep you smiling, wondering what Smith'll insinuate next. So, yes, there is plenty of sex in-between the lines, for you 50 Shaders. And you'll never think of guava jelly again without a smirk. A knowing smirk.
It's little wonder that the books available to order in the back of the paperback are The Playboy Advisor, Playboy's Ribald Classics, Playboy's Party Jokes and, for the completist, More Playboy's Party Jokes and, oh, The Green Beret Fitness Program.
Also of note, the novel predicts the rise of the cat as the universal animal, the millenial meme. Or something.
-----
From the back cover:
A wacky story about RHUBARB, the cat that took a night club by storm with a cast of characters including: POLLY, a female weight lifter with curves...MYRA, the dizzy bobby soxer who wasn't going to let Rhubarb get away with her million dollars...ERIC, Rhubarb's frantic guardian who thought the cat's concupiscence could be cured by psychiatry.
December 28, 2022
This may be one of H. Allen Smith's best known books, but I don't regard it as one of his better ones. There are amusing concepts (the judge who is obsessed with translating the complete works of Faith Baldwin into Greek, for example), but I didn't find the narrative in general nor any specific incidents to be especially funny. It also tries to extract humor out of ribald situations, which seemed to me to be out-of-place in a story like this.
April 22, 2011
A delightful baseball story where a cat owns a baseball team. H. Allen Smith was one of the great comedic writers of the 1930's to the 1950's, though he continued to write into the 1970's. And he is one of the first great chili cooks as he competed in the first of the now great Terlingua Chili cook-offs - he tied for first place in 1967. This a good, funny, read for baseball fans.
Want to read
July 7, 2008This was made into a movie back in the '30s or '40s. It's about a cat whose owner dies and leaves him a baseball team. Cute!
October 11, 2012
Funny and baseball, a winning combo.
September 6, 2015
A surprisingly bawdy book about an ill-tempered alley cat whose rich owner dies and leaves him a major league baseball team, the New York Loons.
September 20, 2018
I laughed all the way through the Tatlock vs. Banner case. The cat was hilarious too.
March 18, 2025
History would have been different if this had been my first H. Allen Smith book instead of The Great Chili Confrontation, in the sense that I wouldn't have gone on to read any of the others. Smith could write the hell out of yokels, having been one himself (see Lo, the Former Egyptian!), but he foundered on New York City types despite living in and around NYC for decades. The plot is silly but ignorable, the scenes set in Times Square reveal him as a Grade C Damon Runyon, and the sex jokes, of which there are plenty, are juvenile, except for the account of the title cat's moment of glory on a live nationwide radio show and, as far as the human characters go, the sensitive yet efficient line "She came over to him and kissed him and put her arms around him and one thing and another." The factors elevating "Rhubarb" to the coveted third star are some first-rate chapters in the style of Ring Lardner's "You Know Me, Al," and my forgiving nature.
Defaced, even in my 1977 edition, by the original Leo Hershfield drawings.
Defaced, even in my 1977 edition, by the original Leo Hershfield drawings.
October 8, 2025
Rhubarb: baseball term for a violent and noisy altercation. Also the name of a large, yellow cat, with maximum attitude, who has inherited the New York Loons, a professional baseball team, along with Thaddeus Whitcomb Banner’s entire fortune.
Banner was an eccentric millionaire who adopted Rhubarb because he liked the cat’s pugnacious attitude.
Eric Yaeger, Banner’s press secretary, is appointed Rhubarb’s guardian. Turns out Yaeger is one of very few people Rhubarb can stand and he finds he really has his hands full.
Convincing the New York Loons that the cat is a good luck charm and will help in winning games, is just one item on Yaeger’s list of to-dos. There is the matter of promoting the cat and the team to the public and the matter of dealing with Myra, Banner’s disinherited daughter. She files a lawsuit to invalidate the will and get the millions left. There is also a plot to have the cat killed for the money.
Written in 1946 by H. Allen Smith, it is a series of non-stop mad-cap actions, with a cast of zany characters. Definitely a fun read!!
Banner was an eccentric millionaire who adopted Rhubarb because he liked the cat’s pugnacious attitude.
Eric Yaeger, Banner’s press secretary, is appointed Rhubarb’s guardian. Turns out Yaeger is one of very few people Rhubarb can stand and he finds he really has his hands full.
Convincing the New York Loons that the cat is a good luck charm and will help in winning games, is just one item on Yaeger’s list of to-dos. There is the matter of promoting the cat and the team to the public and the matter of dealing with Myra, Banner’s disinherited daughter. She files a lawsuit to invalidate the will and get the millions left. There is also a plot to have the cat killed for the money.
Written in 1946 by H. Allen Smith, it is a series of non-stop mad-cap actions, with a cast of zany characters. Definitely a fun read!!
April 3, 2025
This book was copyrighted in 1946. It tells the tale of a cat that inherits a millionaire’s fortune and his baseball team. It is a farce supreme depicting the failures and foibles of the era. Written in the language and dialect of 1940’s city folk, the book is a fun read. The book was used as a basis for the 1951 film of the same title and starring Ray Milland. Naturally the book and the Hollywood version have only the slightest resemblance. However, both are worth reading/viewing. (301 pages)
March 23, 2024
I'm pretty I've owned this book for twenty five years. Probably picked it up at a library book sale. Well, now I can say that I've read it. The story is a creation of its time, lots of vignettes with a thin overlying plot. Very Thorne Smithy. Not a lot of redeeming female characters; most of the males act like they've read too much Damon Runyon. Rhubarb acts like a 😺. Baseball is played, but not as much as you would think. Time to rewatch the film.
February 28, 2021
The imaginations that the hilarious cover illustrations inspire are far more fun and interesting than the actual book. Barely any baseball and barely any Rhubarb the cat.
January 13, 2023
Imaginative. I really liked his approach to baseball.
Mature subject matter, but the simple story about a cat and baseball team appeals to younger audience, love story appeals to middle aged audience and there's appeal for an older audience.
Written in the late 40's and the human side is still relevant today.
It's on my list of books to consider if trapped on a deserted island.
Mature subject matter, but the simple story about a cat and baseball team appeals to younger audience, love story appeals to middle aged audience and there's appeal for an older audience.
Written in the late 40's and the human side is still relevant today.
It's on my list of books to consider if trapped on a deserted island.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews