I love ads in old magazines that claim to be able to turn people into published writers, and this one from the July 1932 issue of The American Magazine recently caught my eye. It tempts with a promise of “$25, $50 and $100 or more that can often be earned for material that takes little time to write—stories and articles on business, fads, travels, sports, recipes, etc.—things that can easily be turned out in leisure hours, and often on the impulse of the moment.”

But if someone had cut out and sent in that coupon from the Newspaper Institute of America, how well would they have really done?

Most of these types of ads give us no way to check, but this one does, because it includes a testimonial from Gene E. Levant in which he states that he “sold a feature story to Screenland Magazine for $50,” received “an immediate assignment to do another,” and “have had one short story published.” So what kind of writing career did Gene E. Levant have after that?

Based on what I could find online, not much of one.

Googling “Gene Levant” or “Gene E. Levant” turns up nothing more than results for the same or similar ad, appearing in such magazines as Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Amazing Stories and Startling Stories. No publications of any kind, and certainly no short stories.

Adding in the name of Screenland Magazine to the search, though, does yield the two features mentioned in the ad copy, but nothing else. His first piece, on Sylvia Ulbeck, masseuse to the stars, appeared in the November 1931 issue …

… while his second, about Anna Mae Wong, came out in the January 1932 issue.

That’s it.

Unless there were pieces published under pseudonyms—and if he sold any fiction to pulp magazines, there might have been—those two stories represent the total of Gene E. Levant’s writing career. (And pulp magazine experts out there—please let me know if I’m wrong)

Much better than not having published at all, and perhaps satisfying enough for some, who upon seeing their name in print once or twice would feel that to be success enough, but less, I think, than what the average coupon clipper would expect after answering an ad which claimed that the Newspaper Institute of America had “produced so many successful authors.”

If Gene E. Levant was their most successful student, their results don’t seem to have lived up to their pitch.