A mischievous tugboat comes into Hardie’s life

Within a month, Hardie had an idea that would change his life. To rest his eyes when they grew tired, he liked to watch the boats on the East River out his window. One little tugboat seemed to have a personality of its own, never being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes it would go out into the river and return without having done any work, or it would make a figure 8. A few times the other boats would be blowing their horns for this tugboat to get out of the way! On January 12, 1938, Hardie wrote in his diary, "IDEA - do children's book on East River - little boats as characters. Sketch character in them each day -- chesty little tugs pulling a big load." Facetiously, we think, he noted that he could call the book "The Little Tug That Wouldn't."

Doppy was working hard as an artist as well, and one day that January she thought up a way to encourage Hardie:

"I'd done a whole textbook and I got what seemed the magnificent sum of $150. I had it cashed at the bank in $10's and $5's and hid them all around the apartment. I put together a treasure hunt with tags to 'Look under such and such.' Then I gave him the first one, and he started looking and 'Wheel' a $5 bill. Then a $10 bill and so on. That night we celebrated at Shima's in the Village where instead of the 65-cent meal, we splurged and got the complete 85-cent dinner! I think they added a little paper cup of sherbet between courses and one other extra, but we had a great time."

During 1938, my father did watercolors and sketches of tugboats and began to write a story to go with them. The story of the optimistic tugboat that was always getting into trouble (''I'm just like that little tugboat," Hardie once said) wrote itself naturally, and he entered the manuscript of Little Toot in a contest. It did not win the $5,000 award, but since it placed in the top ten of 1,500 entries, that gave encouragement for Hardie to persevere. He submitted it to one publisher who rejected it with the infamous line, "Children aren't thinking that way this year"! (Sixty-seven years later, the book the Library of Congress called one of the all-time classics in children's literature is still going strong, and in Spring 2007 a “restored classic edition” is being published by Penguin Putnam with art and colors back to the first edition of Little Toot with the delightful endpapers restored!)

In August, 1938, Hardie got lucky. He was having lunch with Charlie Murphy, a Fortune editor with whom he'd gone on assignment to Flin Flon mine in Canada earlier in the year. Murphy loved the Little Toot manuscript and said, "Hardie, you should have this published!" My father told him that that was the idea, so Murphy turned around to a G. P. Putnam's editor, Ken Rawson, sitting at the next table and said, "Here, Ken, take a look at this." Putnam's loved the manuscript and drawings and published it in October 1939, during their early years publishing children's books.

At the publication party on board a Moran tugboat in New York harbor were many celebrities including Reginald Marsh (who had been on jury duty with Hardie and who did a sketch in the first copy of all the people assembled), Gordon Grant, Christopher Morley (who impulsively dipped his finger in printer's ink and drew an anchor on the front of the book) and Anne Carroll Moore, the famous librarian from the New York Public Library. It was a grand day and the new book became an immediate success.

Later, in the forties, Walt Disney came to New York and told Hardie that the only thing he wanted to do was to ride on a tugboat, so Hardie called Eugene Moran, who was delighted to oblige. Hardie had kept a good relationship with Walt. In 1938, Walt gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times that ended by his saying, "There was a boy working for us who had a great future in our Studio. But his heart wasn't in his work and he decided to chuck it all and paint what he wanted to paint. We gave him a great send-off because we admired his spirit. He had a struggle, but he arrived. Even when he was struggling he was happy for he was doing what he wanted to do."