His raunchy, boundary-pushing first novel rattled the pearls in the stately, manicured homes around River Crest Country Club in Fort Worth.
Now, 34 years after James Atlee Phillips’ death, Fort Worthians can learn a little more about the man whose book created that tempest in the delicate porcelain teapots of Cowtown society in the 1940s.
TCU Press has published the author’s autobiography, “No Fixed Abode,” and plans to reprint Phillips’ first novel, “The Inheritors,” which was originally published by Dial Press in 1940 under the pseudonym Philip Atlee in the fall of 2026.
“The Inheritors” has been hard to find in the decades following publication and copies, when found, sell for well into three figure sums. The book was republished as a paperback in the 1950s with a new cover and title, “The Naked Year.” But that edition, too, has been hard to find.
Fort Worth author E.R. Bills gave a presentation on the book and its controversy during a 2024 presentation sponsored by TCU. The novel was ahead of its time in 1940, Bills said.
“The first chapter begins with the main character George Bellamy Jimble III, the protagonist of the book, who was based on Phillips himself, waking with a hangover and sophomoric episodes of masculine debauchery promptly ensue,” he said. “For the next two dozen chapters, they drink, chase girls, pursue a questionable easy money grift for liquor money and express profoundly dim views of country club gaiety and undermine the entire Cowtown dollar aristocracy.”
The book has some harsh descriptions of the wealthy, Bills said.
Bills recounted how Phillips, through Jimble, described the members of the country club during a party there: “‘Maybe they ought to lock the people up in the bank vault and let the money do the living.’ That’s pretty harsh,” he said.
It’s no surprise the characters cut so close to the truth. Phillips grew up around the wealthy and privileged of Fort Worth’s oil and ranch families, living in a home near River Crest Country Club.
Phillips’ father, Edwin Phillips Sr., was a successful attorney who died at 37, when James Phillips was 13.
His mother was Mary Louise Phillips, who served on the Fort Worth ISD board of education from 1935 to 1941. She was also head of “industrial development” for the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. An elementary school on the city’s west side is named after her.
Success elsewhere
Despite the positive reviews for “The Inheritors,” Phillips never returned to writing much contemporary fiction. Instead, he found success writing scripts for films and popular fiction.
He authored a couple of movies including “Big Jim McLain,” a 1952 anti-communist potboiler starring John Wayne, and the 1958 cult classic “Thunder Road” starring Robert Mitchum as a fast-driving moonshiner.
But Phillips found his biggest success writing a series of mystery and spy novels starring a character named Joe Gall. The novels remain in print.
Phillips wrote many of those books while traveling the world on freighter ships, according to his autobiography. He would apparently book passage on those ships and, packing along his typewriter, write the novels using much of the local color he encountered in his journeys.
“The Inheritors” continued to have its admirers over the years, even though copies remained difficult to find.
Texas author and critic A.C. Greene included “The Inheritors” on his list of “The Fifty Best Texas Books,” initially published by Texas Monthly in 1981. Other admirers of Phillips’ work included hard-boiled novelist Raymond Chandler.
Autobiography leaves out details
While the autobiography details a lot about Phillips in its 256 pages, it leaves a lot out. It’s unclear how serious Phillips was in writing about himself. He chronicles his three marriages, but doesn’t spend much time describing the issues that led to two divorces.
He does discuss his interesting side career as a promotions man for both Amon G. Carter and Broadway impresario Billy Rose as part of Fort Worth’s Texas Frontier Centennial exposition, the city’s competitor to Dallas’ more formal centennial celebration.
Phillips and his crew traveled the south plastering promotional copy on empty spaces in small towns promising that Fort Worth’s celebration of the state’s anniversary would be more fun than the one to the east. That led to one arrest for defacing a church whose leaders didn’t like their empty wall being used to advertise an event that promised more sin than Sodom and Gomorrah, according to Phillips.
Bailed out by Carter, Phillips then landed a job in New York with Rose, working as his publicity man. That was around the time Phillips completed “The Inheritors” and he was able to connect with publishers in the city.
“No Fixed Abode” doesn’t devote more than a couple of pages to the infamous book and its reaction.
“If I could manage fame in New York or nationally, I managed instant infamy in my hometown,” Phillips writes.
To Phillips’ delight, he claims, sermons were preached against “The Inheritors.” His book sold out in Fort Worth where, for an additional 50 cents, one could purchase the real names of the characters in the book, according to Phillips.
While the book received generally good reviews, the author’s timing was off.
With World War II on the horizon and paper rationed, “The Inheritors” was not reprinted until it came out as a paperback in 1954 under the title, “The Naked Party.” As a result of that scarcity and also because of the notoriety, copies of the novel can be costly. An online version of the book is available here.
Fame or infamy?
Phillips is hardly the only member of his family to earn some amount of fame, if not infamy.
His brother, David Atlee Phillips, rose to become the CIA’s chief of operations for the Western Hemisphere.
David Atlee Phillips was repeatedly connected to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, accused of meeting with Lee Harvey Oswald in the months before the assasination.
When a book accused Phillips’ brother of being Oswald’s case officer, he sued the authors for libel and won an undisclosed amount of money. The accusations were retracted.
Phillips’ son, Shawn, is a musician who was popular in the ’60s and ’70s and worked with a variety of artists including Donovan, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood.
While Phillips’ novel is now more than 80 years old, Bills says it remains topical and relevant.
“The things he says in the book still have an impact, and still have some truths to tell,” he said.
Bob Francis is business editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at bob.francis@fortworthreport.org. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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