Thomas Trueblood - The Jam Handy Incident

The Jam Handy Incident

In May 1903, Trueblood became the subject of national media attention as a result of a newspaper article written by a 17-year-old freshman student claiming Trueblood was teaching a new “course in lovemaking.” The student, Jam Handy, was a campus correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. In the class, Trueblood taught "the delivery of short extracts from masterpieces of oratory." One such extract involved a scene from a play in which a man kneels in front of a woman pleading for her hand. In his 1893 textbook Practical Elements of Elocution, Trueblood used the scene to illustrate the "aspirate explosive" form of speech.

After watching Trueblood act out the kneeling scene, Handy wrote an article that was published on the front page of the Chicago Tribune on May 8, 1903, with a headline stating: "Learn Sly Cupid's Tricks; Students at Ann Arbor Take Lessons in Love Making." The article suggested that Trueblood was instructing his male students on romance rather than oratory technique. The next day, the Chicago Record-Herald published a three-panel cartoon of "Professor Foxy Truesport" dreaming up ways to "teach his class how to properly make love." Newspapers across the country picked up the story. The Daily Northwestern wrote: "Professor Trueblood of Michigan University has inaugurated a course in love making, his motive being to stimulate interest in his classes. The oratorical students are compelled to kneel and make fervid declarations to lady students." The Newark Advocate's headline read: "Lovemaking Lessons: Novel Course In the University of Michigan; Sly Cupid's Tricks Taught." The Salt Lake Tribune reported:

• "Lessons in Lovemaking. The University of Michigan has added a new course to the curriculum, one that may best be styled a course in love making. Prof. Trueblood is the inventor of the novel scheme, and his course, which has been hitherto shunned as one of the toughest at the university, now seems likely to become the most popular on campus. . . . Early this week he hit upon the successful plan, and now the many visitors who attend his classes are spectators of thrilling love scenes. Fifty times a day Prof. Trueblood is forced to kneel to some maiden and show his pupils the right way to declare their devotion to their sweethearts. . . . Each budding orator takes his place before a blushing maid, and no matter how smoothly the pair may have progressed in private the professor finds some fault with the public demonstration. 'No, kneel on both knees—now hold her hand, it impresses her more-so,' and the old professor again kneels and goes through it all over again."

On May 12, the Chicago Tribune ran a photograph of Trueblood with the caption: "Trueblood has nearly worn out his trousers at the knees, showing young men how to kneel, and has strained his voice and eyes in efforts to show his pupils how to throw fire and passion into their appeals."

The story was an embarrassment for Trueblood and the university. In his memoirs, Handy recalled being summoned to Trueblood's office: "His desk was piled high with letters...and clippings...from around the country...and he also had a copy of the McCutcheon cartoon. (He) was taking all of this as ridicule, although I had publicized the story with sincere enthusiasm for a new advance in education of which I felt the University of Michigan should be proud." The faculty voted unanimously to suspend Handy for a year for "publishing false and injurious statements affecting the character of the work of one of the Professors." In addition to the suspension, Handy was charged as a "faker" in the press: "Henry P. Handy, the student-correspondent at the University of Michigan who sent a sensational story to the Chicago newspapers, relating how Professor Thomas C. Trueblood had a class in love-making, has been suspended for one year and the story has been branded as a 'fake.' Handy based the story on an incident that occurred during the rehearsal of a drama, when Professor Trueblood showed one of the students how to kneel to propose."

Shortly after the incident, Trueblood left for a trip giving dramatic readings on the West Coast. Handy went on to become a successful public relations man.