Vereen Bell was a journalist and author who enjoyed a brief period of success during the late '30s and early '40s. His contribution to movies was limited to his first novel, Swamp Water, which was filmed twice by 20th Century Fox. The Georgia-born Bell was the product of a rural but patrician Southern upbringing. A graduate of Davidson College in North Carolina, he had the bad fortune to enter the work force in 1932, amid the depths of the Great Depression. After trying for a time to survive as a freelance writer, he became the editor of American Boy magazine in Detroit, a position that he held for two years before returning to his native Georgia. Bell began making a name for himself as an author of articles and short stories about the subjects he knew and loved best -- hunting, dogs, and other components of rural Southern life, especially as it was led and understood by men. In 1940, he published his first novel, Swamp Water -- the book dealt with an encounter between two men, one a fugitive from justice and the other a young hunter, in the Okefenokee Swamp in rural Georgia, and painted a vivid picture of life as it was lived in and around that swamp. Bell knew his subject well, as he and his family knew the swamp and its surroundings, living in their vicinity. The book was well received critically and sold well enough to justify being reprinted in an early paperback edition, and its movie rights were bought up by 20th Century Fox. In 1941, French director Jean Renoir, newly arrived in America and under contract to Fox, made a gloriously lyrical, haunting film adaptation under the same title, starring Walter Brennan, Dana Andrews, Anne Baxter, and Walter Huston. Renoir's Swamp Water displays a delicacy and lyricism reminiscent of John Ford at his most introspective, and was a visually stunning movie, partly shot on location in Georgia (where Renoir insisted on directing the second-unit footage himself). The picture began a fascinating interlude into English-language cinema by Renoir, who followed it up four years later with The Southerner, a somewhat similar subject. Bell's family was much-enriched at the time of the movie's production and release by the resulting royalties and fees -- in his forward to the 1981 University of Georgia Press reprint, Vereen Bell Jr. recalled that they suddenly had access to a pair of automobiles and a small boat as well as the attentions of a part-time servant.
Bell published two more books during his lifetime, but most of his energy and attention from 1942 onward were devoted to his service in the United States Navy. According to his son, with his wife and family obligations, Bell could easily have remained a gunnery instructor within the confines of the United States, but he insisted on going into combat. He was killed in action in the third week of October 1944, in the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea off Leyte. In 1952, eight years after Bell's death, director Jean Negulesco did a far less effective remake under the title Lure of the Wilderness, starring Walter Brennan (repeating his role from the earlier version), Jeffrey Hunter, and Jean Peters. Many of Bell's stories about dogs and hunting have been reprinted, most notably in a volume entitled Brag Dog and Other Stories: The Best of Vereen Bell with illustrations by Margaret Kirmse. Swamp Water, which has been reprinted many times, both as a mass market paperback and in annotated university press editions, remains the book for which he is best remembered, and its story -- of murder, revenge, and redemption -- remains so powerful that it's surprising that some quality-minded producer hasn't gone after it as a vehicle for Billy Bob Thornton or Robert Duvall, among other potential leads.