Jack Denton Scott- Stars and Stripes Reporter and Savior of Mr. Magoo the Mongoose
You are moving at several hundred miles an hour, and things are coming at you at several hundred miles an hour, and you dearly love life and your wife back in the States, and the sooner you get the hell out of there the better it will suit you.” Jack Denton Scott
Jack Denton Scott had a versatile mind and imagination that enabled him to produce newspaper columns and magazine articles and books ranging from cook books, travel books and mystery novels to children’s books. He wrote 41 books and 1,500 magazine articles, and contributed articles to the Reader’s Digest for thirty years.
Born in Elkins, West Virginia in 1915, Jack Denton Scott wrote his first short story at 16 and had his first article published in a national magazine three years later when he turned 19. He studied literature at Columbia and Oxford Universities, and served in World War II as a war correspondent for Yank Magazine. He wrote 41 books and over 1,500 articles during his long and prolific career.
In World War II, Jack Denton Scott was a war correspondent for the Army newspaper Yank Magazine in London, Cairo and Florence and was also a member of the Writing 69th.
The United States Eighth Air Force sponsored a training program in February 1943 to prepare eight civilian and military journalists to take part in a high altitude bombing mission against Germany. The eight men were Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, Walter Cronkite of the United Press, Gladwin Hill of the Associated Press, Paul Manning of CBS Radio, Robert Post of the New York Times, Andy Rooney of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, William Wade of the International News Service and Denton Scott of the military magazine Yank.
Originally called The Flying Typewriters, the reporters later decided to adopt the name The Writing 69th, a play on words that referred to the famous fighting 69th that had fought in every war since the American Revolution. In a week long training course at Bovingdon, England, the Writing 69th learned how to adjust to high altitude, identify enemy planes and parachute. They trained to shoot weapons, although noncombatants were not allowed to shoot in combat. The Writing 69th was prepared to fly many missions with the Eighth Air Force, but tragedy struck on their very first mission.
On February 26, 1943, the Writing 69th flew their first and last bombing mission over Wilhelmshaven, Germany. The Germans shot down the B17 bomber carrying Robert Perkins Post and its crew and the Writing 69th flew no more missions together. Denton Scott was one of the most prolific writers of the Writing 69th.
Denton Scott missed the February 26, 1943 mission, but a few weeks later he flew on a raid over Lorient, France. He described it this way: “You are moving at several hundred miles an hour, and things are coming at you at several hundred miles an hour, and you dearly love life and your wife back in the States, and the sooner you get the hell out of there the better it will suit you.”
After World War II, Jack Denton Scott returned to the United States and worked for Field and Stream Magazine as its gun-dog editor. He almost singlehandedly established the Weimaraner breed of dog in the United States. In 1941, the Weimaraner Club of America was formed, and in 1942 the American Kennel Club recognized it, with an official standard following in February 1943, but the German based clubs kept tight control of breeding and selling practices. The American Weimaraner Club followed the same practices of its German colleagues, keeping tight control of breeding and selling practices in the United States.
Then in 1947, the Weimaraner breed came to the attention of Field and Stream gun-dog editor and publicist Jack Denton Scott. He wrote an article called “The Gray Ghost Arrives,” and his article sparked what was described as a Weimaraner craze in the United States. Shortly after the article appeared in Field and Stream, the Weimaraner Club approached Jack Denton Scott to publicize the Weimaraner breed and he publicized with a skill.
Weimaraners appeared on numerous magazine covers across the United States and were stars of multitudes of print advertisements for everything from beer to motor oil. By the end of the 1950s, the Weimaraner had become a status symbol breed that people believed could do anything from tracking game to herding sheep to answering telephones!
In 1957, Jack Denton Scott was a syndicated columnist, writing columns about adventure and the outdoor life that appeared three times a week in The New York Herald Tribune. He and his wife Mary Lou lived on a 150 acre farm in Roxbury, Connecticut, and tiger and buffalo hunting in the forests of India seemed far away from their peaceful lives. Then one day early in 1957, Ashoka Dutt, publicity officer of the Government of India Tourist Office suggested that Denton and Mary Lou Scott journey to Indian and discover firsthand what sports the country had to offer. The Indian Government also said that this is the first time that they had made such an offer to a foreign writer.
Dutt arranged to have Indian tourist office representatives meet them at every stop in India, and gave Jack and his wife Mary Lou a list of what he thought they would need, even though his office didn’t know too much about hunting and hunting big game on safari. By working out the climatic conditions for February and March, the time of year that they would be in the jungle areas, they discovered that they would need both cold and warm weather clothing.
Jack Scott and Mary Lou Scott were grateful to Dutt many times late at night as they shivered on the platform waiting for game in alpaca duck shooting coats and caps and lined shooting pants. Denton Scott said that left to their own resources he and Mary Lou would have taken only tropical gear into the jungles. He said that nearly everything he and his wife had read about Indian concentrated on its steaming climate.
As well as writing about dogs, Jack Denton Scott was an experienced hunter. He had hunted in Africa, Mexico, Canada, and many other countries. He wrote that he had spent long hours in the most uncomfortable duck blinds known to man and had even perched in the crotch of a mangrove tree for hours in a blinding rain, waiting for ducks to appear. He crawled two miles on his hands and knees, hunting wild sheep and goat. He had waded through hip deep mud in Cuba and Hudson Bay, hunting ducks and geese. He had been torn by the sisal cacti of Yucatan after quail, but he wrote in Forests of the Night, published in 1959, that he never encountered anything that required as much restraint, patience and strength of character as sitting up all night on an Indian hunting platform stalking tigers and leopards.
Jack Denton Scott remembered a conversation with his wife Mary Lou while they were still in the Indian jungle in Forests of the Night. Mary Lou asked him how many more days they had to spend in the jungle and he replied that they must leave soon.
Speaking about the jungle, Mary Lou said, “I love it. It’s so restful, even when we’re hunting, that I find I’m relaxed and at peace with the world all of the time. I haven’t missed a newspaper or a radio, and I’m beginning to wonder if all that crazy rush and things like that TV nonsense are a dream. This is real.”
ack replied in part, “Here we are tracking a leopard in the jungle after sitting up in a tree all night, without sleep, watching murder walk the ground under us and you tell me that you love it. Characteristics like this should be foot-noted in the marriage contract. She likes the faraway places. You must promise not only to love, honor and respect, but you must see that she spends two months every year in the jungle hunting man-eating animals.”
“I guess you’re stuck,” she said, smiling as if she had been caught counting the money in my billfold.”
Mary Lou and Jack Denton Scott continued to collaborate and for their book Passport to Adventure that they published in 1966, they logged some 500,000 miles over five years.
The Scotts also collaborated on writing cookbooks. Scott wrote his first cookbook, The Complete Book of Pasta: an Italian Cookbook, 1968, because he said he considered cooking an art and had made it an “ardent hobby.” They collaborated on The Meat and Potatoes Cookbook in 1988 and in 1989 they did Rice: A Cookbook. In 1991, the Scotts wrote a successful paperback called The Bean, Pea and Lentil Cookbook.
Jack Denton Scott eloquently expressed his feelings about cooking when he talked about venison filet. A.D. Livingston quoted Scott in the Complete Fish and Game Cookbook.
“How should you serve what most of us consider the best piece of venison, the filet, that tender muscle that can almost be cut with a sharp glance? Although the English have the reputation of being unimaginative cooks, I believe they have a method of serving that prized filet that leads all others – even the French.
“It passes the test of all superior dishes, is dramatically presented, appeals to the eye and is so tasty that once eaten it is never forgotten. I had it in the home of a baronet in Kent who stalked his meal on ancestral acres in Scotland. It was a filet from a royal stag, well hung, and it easily served eight drooling guests. I watched his cook, a gentle and skillful Irish woman, prepare it.”
As well as writing travel, mystery, adventure and cook books, Jack Denton Scott wrote books that introduced children to the animals of the wild. The titles of his many illustrated children’s books reflected his interests as a naturalist. They include Loggerhead Turtle: Survivor from the Sea, 1974; Canada Geese, 1976; Discovering the Mysterious Egret, 1978; Island of Wild Horses, 1978; and Moose, 1981.
Other children’s books that he wrote include Orphans from the Sea, 1982; The Book of the Pig, 1981; The Book of the Goat, 1979; Island of the Wild Horses, 1978; City of Birds and Beasts: Behind the Scenes at the Bronx Zoo, 1978 and The Duluth Mongoose, 1965.
One of Jack Denton Scott’s most popular children’s books was The Duluth Mongoose. Jack Scott heard about the story from sources in Duluth, Minnesota, in November 1962. The first story about Mr. Magoo the Mongoose ran in the Duluth News-Tribune of November13, 1962. Duluth News-Tribune staff writer William F. Thompson introduced his readers to a tea-drinking mongoose-tea with sugar that is - at the Duluth Zoo. A foreign ship docked at Duluth and a sailor donated his pet mongoose to zoo director Lloyd Hackl. Mr. Magoo was the first mongoose ever on display in Duluth, and Hackl believed Mr. Magoo probably was the only captive mongoose in the United States.
Jack Denton Scott became intrigued with Mr. Magoo and his story, especially since he had spent time in India and he knew that that Mr. Magoo and his mongoose family usually grow no larger than 16 inches long, but kill six foot cobras, breaking their necks after a furious battle. Zoo director Hackl said that Mr. Magoo did not face the hazards of jungle survival at the Duluth zoo and that he was more like a house pet. He ate a little meat and vegetables and drank a little milk, preferring warm tea with sugar. He had the coloring of a squirrel, but with yellowish brown eyes and the reddish cheeks and throat that distinguish the markings of all mongooses.
Mongoose visiting hours at the Duluth Zoo for Mr. Magoo and the public were from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Many people came to see Mr. Magoo and he soon became a celebrity. Then someone told customs officials that Mr. Magoo lived at the Duluth zoo and United States customs officials got involved and declared Mr. Magoo an undesirable alien. The Customs officials impounded Mr. Magoo on the strength of a 1909 United Fish and Wildlife Service regulation forbidding people to import mongooses into the United States. A foreign seaman had given Mr. Magoo to the Duluth Zoo and the zoo wanted to keep him.
Harry Nash, head of the Duluth Recreation Department, appealed to F.J. Davis of the Fish and Wildlife Service. He wrote that Mr. Magoo had been “very popular with adults and children and is clean, healthy and well-mannered.” Nash said that he understood that the mongeese weren’t allowed in the United States because it is a prolific animal, but he pointed out that Mr. Magoo didn’t have a mate. He added that if the Duluth Zoo could keep Mr. Magoo, he would be neutered. The Customs Officials imprisoned Mr. Magoo at the zoo where he had always lived and Floyd H. Davis, the federal fish and wildlife official, “said he had no choice,” but to issue a death sentence for Mr. Magoo. The Wildlife Service agent was instructed to go to the Duluth Zoo, pick up Mr. Magoo, kill him humanely and ship his body to the Minneapolis office.
Duluth mobilized to save Mr. Magoo, its pet mongoose from the federal executioner. People circulated petitions. Duluth Mayor George D. Johnson petitioned for a court order and a stay of sentence. People wired their congressmen. Zoo manager Lloyd Hackl, padlocked Mr. Magoo’s cage to ensure his safety. Duluth Mayor Johnson sent a telegram to Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, requesting a stay of execution for Mr. Magoo. He also asked City Attorney Harry E. Weinberg to issue a restraining order to prevent the Fish and Wildlife Service from killing Mr. Magoo. Weinberg said a 1960 amendment made it possible for the Department of the Interior to make an exception if a mayor requested it.
Zookeeper Lloyd Hackl said that thousands of people, mostly adults, visited the Duluth Zoo since they read about Mr. Magoo in the Duluth News-Tribune or heard his story from other people. He said that some people had advised him to take Mr. Magoo and hide and others wanted him to disappear with the keys to the cage. The St. Paul Automobile Club sent a telegram to Mayor Johnson offering to pay to fly Mr. Magoo back to India if his life was spared.
Interior Secretary Stewart Udall ordered his legal staff to “take a good, close look at the law to see if there isn’t some way of sparing” Mr. Magoo from the 1909 federal law that bans the importation of mongooses to the United States for any reason, including exhibition at zoos. Udall’s top assistant, Orren Beatty said that he hoped his department could stop the execution.”From what we hear, Mr. Magoo seems to be a good, progressive, New Frontier type mongoose, and after some preliminary checks with some of the experts here, we find it may not be necessary that the mongoose be executed.”
Mr. Magoo’s story spread from Duluth across the country and finally the Department of the Interior announced that Mr. Magoo’s sentence would be commuted from death to temporary residence to deportation to India. Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall signed the reprieve, without a definite deportation date. An Interior Department spokesman said that mongooses multiply so rapidly that they overpopulate their territory and they eat singing birds, ducks, and other birds. The Department of Interior didn’t mind giving Mr. Magoo a temporary home as long as he remained a bachelor and maintained his popularity in Duluth, but the moment he fell out of favor he would be on his way to India.
Mr. Magoo never became unpopular and finally Secretary of Interior Udall granted him permanent nonpolitical asylum in the United States. Duluth Zoo Director Lloyd Hackl ordered a new house for Mr. Magoo and said with the warmer weather his cage would be moved outside so he could enjoy the sunshine.
President John F. Kennedy said, “Let the story of the saving of Magoo stand as a classic example of government by the people.” The President and Secretary of Interior Udall visited Duluth in September 1963 and they inquired about Mr. Magoo.
Mr. Magoo continued to be the most popular animal at the zoo and he lived the full life span of a mongoose which is about eight years. Zoo keepers estimated that he had been two or three years old when the sailor from India gave him to the Duluth Zoo in September 1962.
Three years later, on January 8, 1968, Mr. Magoo died at the zoo of old age. He was mounted by a taxidermist and put on permanent display at the zoo.
Jack Denton Scott fell in love with Mr. Magoo and his story and wrote a children’s book about him called The Duluth Mongoose, which William Marrow published in November 1965. It was one of his bestselling books and is still popular around Duluth, Minnesota.
After enjoying a long professional writing career and enduring a long illness, Jack Denton Scott, died on Tuesday January 3, 1995, at his home in Corning, N.Y. He was 79 years old. His wife and collaborator Mary Louise Scott survived him for fourteen years. Mary Lou Limoncelli was born April 10, 1918, the daughter of Pasquale and Mary Cifelli Limoncelli. She graduated from St. Joseph’s Hospital School of Nursing and worked as a nurse in New York City during the years her husband Jack Denton Scott served overseas as a war correspondent for Yank Magazine.
After World War II, she and Jack Denton Scott spent 40 years as world travelers and authors. Together they wrote 56 books and countless periodical articles. During their world travels, Mary Louise also hunted. She died at Horseheads, New York on Friday, April 24, 2009 at age 91.
References
Killing the Messenger: Journalists at Risk in Modern Warfare, Herbert N. Foerstel. Praeger, 2006
My War. Andy Rooney. Public Affairs Publications, 2002.
New York Times, January 6, 1995. Jack Denton Scott
Forests of the Night. Jack Denton Scott. Rhinehart, 1959.
The Duluth Mongoose, Jack Denton Scott, William Morrow, 1965.
You are moving at several hundred miles an hour, and things are coming at you at several hundred miles an hour, and you dearly love life and your wife back in the States, and the sooner you get the hell out of there the better it will suit you.” Jack Denton Scott
Jack Denton Scott had a versatile mind and imagination that enabled him to produce newspaper columns and magazine articles and books ranging from cook books, travel books and mystery novels to children’s books. He wrote 41 books and 1,500 magazine articles, and contributed articles to the Reader’s Digest for thirty years.
Born in Elkins, West Virginia in 1915, Jack Denton Scott wrote his first short story at 16 and had his first article published in a national magazine three years later when he turned 19. He studied literature at Columbia and Oxford Universities, and served in World War II as a war correspondent for Yank Magazine. He wrote 41 books and over 1,500 articles during his long and prolific career.
In World War II, Jack Denton Scott was a war correspondent for the Army newspaper Yank Magazine in London, Cairo and Florence and was also a member of the Writing 69th.
The United States Eighth Air Force sponsored a training program in February 1943 to prepare eight civilian and military journalists to take part in a high altitude bombing mission against Germany. The eight men were Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, Walter Cronkite of the United Press, Gladwin Hill of the Associated Press, Paul Manning of CBS Radio, Robert Post of the New York Times, Andy Rooney of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, William Wade of the International News Service and Denton Scott of the military magazine Yank.
Originally called The Flying Typewriters, the reporters later decided to adopt the name The Writing 69th, a play on words that referred to the famous fighting 69th that had fought in every war since the American Revolution. In a week long training course at Bovingdon, England, the Writing 69th learned how to adjust to high altitude, identify enemy planes and parachute. They trained to shoot weapons, although noncombatants were not allowed to shoot in combat. The Writing 69th was prepared to fly many missions with the Eighth Air Force, but tragedy struck on their very first mission.
On February 26, 1943, the Writing 69th flew their first and last bombing mission over Wilhelmshaven, Germany. The Germans shot down the B17 bomber carrying Robert Perkins Post and its crew and the Writing 69th flew no more missions together. Denton Scott was one of the most prolific writers of the Writing 69th.
Denton Scott missed the February 26, 1943 mission, but a few weeks later he flew on a raid over Lorient, France. He described it this way: “You are moving at several hundred miles an hour, and things are coming at you at several hundred miles an hour, and you dearly love life and your wife back in the States, and the sooner you get the hell out of there the better it will suit you.”
After World War II, Jack Denton Scott returned to the United States and worked for Field and Stream Magazine as its gun-dog editor. He almost singlehandedly established the Weimaraner breed of dog in the United States. In 1941, the Weimaraner Club of America was formed, and in 1942 the American Kennel Club recognized it, with an official standard following in February 1943, but the German based clubs kept tight control of breeding and selling practices. The American Weimaraner Club followed the same practices of its German colleagues, keeping tight control of breeding and selling practices in the United States.
Then in 1947, the Weimaraner breed came to the attention of Field and Stream gun-dog editor and publicist Jack Denton Scott. He wrote an article called “The Gray Ghost Arrives,” and his article sparked what was described as a Weimaraner craze in the United States. Shortly after the article appeared in Field and Stream, the Weimaraner Club approached Jack Denton Scott to publicize the Weimaraner breed and he publicized with a skill.
Weimaraners appeared on numerous magazine covers across the United States and were stars of multitudes of print advertisements for everything from beer to motor oil. By the end of the 1950s, the Weimaraner had become a status symbol breed that people believed could do anything from tracking game to herding sheep to answering telephones!
In 1957, Jack Denton Scott was a syndicated columnist, writing columns about adventure and the outdoor life that appeared three times a week in The New York Herald Tribune. He and his wife Mary Lou lived on a 150 acre farm in Roxbury, Connecticut, and tiger and buffalo hunting in the forests of India seemed far away from their peaceful lives. Then one day early in 1957, Ashoka Dutt, publicity officer of the Government of India Tourist Office suggested that Denton and Mary Lou Scott journey to Indian and discover firsthand what sports the country had to offer. The Indian Government also said that this is the first time that they had made such an offer to a foreign writer.
Dutt arranged to have Indian tourist office representatives meet them at every stop in India, and gave Jack and his wife Mary Lou a list of what he thought they would need, even though his office didn’t know too much about hunting and hunting big game on safari. By working out the climatic conditions for February and March, the time of year that they would be in the jungle areas, they discovered that they would need both cold and warm weather clothing.
Jack Scott and Mary Lou Scott were grateful to Dutt many times late at night as they shivered on the platform waiting for game in alpaca duck shooting coats and caps and lined shooting pants. Denton Scott said that left to their own resources he and Mary Lou would have taken only tropical gear into the jungles. He said that nearly everything he and his wife had read about Indian concentrated on its steaming climate.
As well as writing about dogs, Jack Denton Scott was an experienced hunter. He had hunted in Africa, Mexico, Canada, and many other countries. He wrote that he had spent long hours in the most uncomfortable duck blinds known to man and had even perched in the crotch of a mangrove tree for hours in a blinding rain, waiting for ducks to appear. He crawled two miles on his hands and knees, hunting wild sheep and goat. He had waded through hip deep mud in Cuba and Hudson Bay, hunting ducks and geese. He had been torn by the sisal cacti of Yucatan after quail, but he wrote in Forests of the Night, published in 1959, that he never encountered anything that required as much restraint, patience and strength of character as sitting up all night on an Indian hunting platform stalking tigers and leopards.
Jack Denton Scott remembered a conversation with his wife Mary Lou while they were still in the Indian jungle in Forests of the Night. Mary Lou asked him how many more days they had to spend in the jungle and he replied that they must leave soon.
Speaking about the jungle, Mary Lou said, “I love it. It’s so restful, even when we’re hunting, that I find I’m relaxed and at peace with the world all of the time. I haven’t missed a newspaper or a radio, and I’m beginning to wonder if all that crazy rush and things like that TV nonsense are a dream. This is real.”
ack replied in part, “Here we are tracking a leopard in the jungle after sitting up in a tree all night, without sleep, watching murder walk the ground under us and you tell me that you love it. Characteristics like this should be foot-noted in the marriage contract. She likes the faraway places. You must promise not only to love, honor and respect, but you must see that she spends two months every year in the jungle hunting man-eating animals.”
“I guess you’re stuck,” she said, smiling as if she had been caught counting the money in my billfold.”
Mary Lou and Jack Denton Scott continued to collaborate and for their book Passport to Adventure that they published in 1966, they logged some 500,000 miles over five years.
The Scotts also collaborated on writing cookbooks. Scott wrote his first cookbook, The Complete Book of Pasta: an Italian Cookbook, 1968, because he said he considered cooking an art and had made it an “ardent hobby.” They collaborated on The Meat and Potatoes Cookbook in 1988 and in 1989 they did Rice: A Cookbook. In 1991, the Scotts wrote a successful paperback called The Bean, Pea and Lentil Cookbook.
Jack Denton Scott eloquently expressed his feelings about cooking when he talked about venison filet. A.D. Livingston quoted Scott in the Complete Fish and Game Cookbook.
“How should you serve what most of us consider the best piece of venison, the filet, that tender muscle that can almost be cut with a sharp glance? Although the English have the reputation of being unimaginative cooks, I believe they have a method of serving that prized filet that leads all others – even the French.
“It passes the test of all superior dishes, is dramatically presented, appeals to the eye and is so tasty that once eaten it is never forgotten. I had it in the home of a baronet in Kent who stalked his meal on ancestral acres in Scotland. It was a filet from a royal stag, well hung, and it easily served eight drooling guests. I watched his cook, a gentle and skillful Irish woman, prepare it.”
As well as writing travel, mystery, adventure and cook books, Jack Denton Scott wrote books that introduced children to the animals of the wild. The titles of his many illustrated children’s books reflected his interests as a naturalist. They include Loggerhead Turtle: Survivor from the Sea, 1974; Canada Geese, 1976; Discovering the Mysterious Egret, 1978; Island of Wild Horses, 1978; and Moose, 1981.
Other children’s books that he wrote include Orphans from the Sea, 1982; The Book of the Pig, 1981; The Book of the Goat, 1979; Island of the Wild Horses, 1978; City of Birds and Beasts: Behind the Scenes at the Bronx Zoo, 1978 and The Duluth Mongoose, 1965.
One of Jack Denton Scott’s most popular children’s books was The Duluth Mongoose. Jack Scott heard about the story from sources in Duluth, Minnesota, in November 1962. The first story about Mr. Magoo the Mongoose ran in the Duluth News-Tribune of November13, 1962. Duluth News-Tribune staff writer William F. Thompson introduced his readers to a tea-drinking mongoose-tea with sugar that is - at the Duluth Zoo. A foreign ship docked at Duluth and a sailor donated his pet mongoose to zoo director Lloyd Hackl. Mr. Magoo was the first mongoose ever on display in Duluth, and Hackl believed Mr. Magoo probably was the only captive mongoose in the United States.
Jack Denton Scott became intrigued with Mr. Magoo and his story, especially since he had spent time in India and he knew that that Mr. Magoo and his mongoose family usually grow no larger than 16 inches long, but kill six foot cobras, breaking their necks after a furious battle. Zoo director Hackl said that Mr. Magoo did not face the hazards of jungle survival at the Duluth zoo and that he was more like a house pet. He ate a little meat and vegetables and drank a little milk, preferring warm tea with sugar. He had the coloring of a squirrel, but with yellowish brown eyes and the reddish cheeks and throat that distinguish the markings of all mongooses.
Mongoose visiting hours at the Duluth Zoo for Mr. Magoo and the public were from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Many people came to see Mr. Magoo and he soon became a celebrity. Then someone told customs officials that Mr. Magoo lived at the Duluth zoo and United States customs officials got involved and declared Mr. Magoo an undesirable alien. The Customs officials impounded Mr. Magoo on the strength of a 1909 United Fish and Wildlife Service regulation forbidding people to import mongooses into the United States. A foreign seaman had given Mr. Magoo to the Duluth Zoo and the zoo wanted to keep him.
Harry Nash, head of the Duluth Recreation Department, appealed to F.J. Davis of the Fish and Wildlife Service. He wrote that Mr. Magoo had been “very popular with adults and children and is clean, healthy and well-mannered.” Nash said that he understood that the mongeese weren’t allowed in the United States because it is a prolific animal, but he pointed out that Mr. Magoo didn’t have a mate. He added that if the Duluth Zoo could keep Mr. Magoo, he would be neutered. The Customs Officials imprisoned Mr. Magoo at the zoo where he had always lived and Floyd H. Davis, the federal fish and wildlife official, “said he had no choice,” but to issue a death sentence for Mr. Magoo. The Wildlife Service agent was instructed to go to the Duluth Zoo, pick up Mr. Magoo, kill him humanely and ship his body to the Minneapolis office.
Duluth mobilized to save Mr. Magoo, its pet mongoose from the federal executioner. People circulated petitions. Duluth Mayor George D. Johnson petitioned for a court order and a stay of sentence. People wired their congressmen. Zoo manager Lloyd Hackl, padlocked Mr. Magoo’s cage to ensure his safety. Duluth Mayor Johnson sent a telegram to Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, requesting a stay of execution for Mr. Magoo. He also asked City Attorney Harry E. Weinberg to issue a restraining order to prevent the Fish and Wildlife Service from killing Mr. Magoo. Weinberg said a 1960 amendment made it possible for the Department of the Interior to make an exception if a mayor requested it.
Zookeeper Lloyd Hackl said that thousands of people, mostly adults, visited the Duluth Zoo since they read about Mr. Magoo in the Duluth News-Tribune or heard his story from other people. He said that some people had advised him to take Mr. Magoo and hide and others wanted him to disappear with the keys to the cage. The St. Paul Automobile Club sent a telegram to Mayor Johnson offering to pay to fly Mr. Magoo back to India if his life was spared.
Interior Secretary Stewart Udall ordered his legal staff to “take a good, close look at the law to see if there isn’t some way of sparing” Mr. Magoo from the 1909 federal law that bans the importation of mongooses to the United States for any reason, including exhibition at zoos. Udall’s top assistant, Orren Beatty said that he hoped his department could stop the execution.”From what we hear, Mr. Magoo seems to be a good, progressive, New Frontier type mongoose, and after some preliminary checks with some of the experts here, we find it may not be necessary that the mongoose be executed.”
Mr. Magoo’s story spread from Duluth across the country and finally the Department of the Interior announced that Mr. Magoo’s sentence would be commuted from death to temporary residence to deportation to India. Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall signed the reprieve, without a definite deportation date. An Interior Department spokesman said that mongooses multiply so rapidly that they overpopulate their territory and they eat singing birds, ducks, and other birds. The Department of Interior didn’t mind giving Mr. Magoo a temporary home as long as he remained a bachelor and maintained his popularity in Duluth, but the moment he fell out of favor he would be on his way to India.
Mr. Magoo never became unpopular and finally Secretary of Interior Udall granted him permanent nonpolitical asylum in the United States. Duluth Zoo Director Lloyd Hackl ordered a new house for Mr. Magoo and said with the warmer weather his cage would be moved outside so he could enjoy the sunshine.
President John F. Kennedy said, “Let the story of the saving of Magoo stand as a classic example of government by the people.” The President and Secretary of Interior Udall visited Duluth in September 1963 and they inquired about Mr. Magoo.
Mr. Magoo continued to be the most popular animal at the zoo and he lived the full life span of a mongoose which is about eight years. Zoo keepers estimated that he had been two or three years old when the sailor from India gave him to the Duluth Zoo in September 1962.
Three years later, on January 8, 1968, Mr. Magoo died at the zoo of old age. He was mounted by a taxidermist and put on permanent display at the zoo.
Jack Denton Scott fell in love with Mr. Magoo and his story and wrote a children’s book about him called The Duluth Mongoose, which William Marrow published in November 1965. It was one of his bestselling books and is still popular around Duluth, Minnesota.
After enjoying a long professional writing career and enduring a long illness, Jack Denton Scott, died on Tuesday January 3, 1995, at his home in Corning, N.Y. He was 79 years old. His wife and collaborator Mary Louise Scott survived him for fourteen years. Mary Lou Limoncelli was born April 10, 1918, the daughter of Pasquale and Mary Cifelli Limoncelli. She graduated from St. Joseph’s Hospital School of Nursing and worked as a nurse in New York City during the years her husband Jack Denton Scott served overseas as a war correspondent for Yank Magazine.
After World War II, she and Jack Denton Scott spent 40 years as world travelers and authors. Together they wrote 56 books and countless periodical articles. During their world travels, Mary Louise also hunted. She died at Horseheads, New York on Friday, April 24, 2009 at age 91.
References
Killing the Messenger: Journalists at Risk in Modern Warfare, Herbert N. Foerstel. Praeger, 2006
My War. Andy Rooney. Public Affairs Publications, 2002.
New York Times, January 6, 1995. Jack Denton Scott
Forests of the Night. Jack Denton Scott. Rhinehart, 1959.
The Duluth Mongoose, Jack Denton Scott, William Morrow, 1965.
