Homer Croy Corn Country

One part Mark Twain, and two parts Garrison Keillor, prize-winning humorist and essayist Homer Croy was a man of many distinctions: The first student of the first school of journalism in the United States, the first person to tour the world shooting motion pictures, and the first author of his day to write a best-selling novel that happened to be anonymous. Dale Carnegie dedicated his opus "How to Win Friends and Influence People" to him; Will Rogers, for whom Croy wrote more films than any other, made him honored guest at his Thanksgiving table. In between his pioneering studies in journalism at the University of Missouri and his mid-life, Missouri farm memoirs that sold in the hundreds of thousands, Croy flunked out of college, moved to the Big Apple, filmed his way around the world, tied the knot in the first marriage ever captured on a Universal newsreel, worked for Theodore Dreiser, earned a fortune, moved to Paris, tragically lost two children, wrote for Hollywood, earned an honorary doctorate, and, in the end, lost his fortune all while maintaining the down-home humor and heart that earned him a reputation among peers as the towering cornstalk of midcentury, midwestern memoir.