How many have driven by this older building with a bright green extraterrestrial on its door, located on Old Woman Springs Road in Lucerne Valley without knowing the startling history of the former mild-mannered owner with a French accent? Do they know an author of five books sat in the corner of the store, then called Renee’s Ranch Store, and tediously typed manuscripts on a manual typewriter about his daring escape from Devil’s Island? René Belbenoît (pronounced Bell-ben-wah) was a humble man but his life both past and present were as different as night and day. Belbenoit’s former life was a stark contrast to the comfort and freedom he enjoyed living in a small town in the Mojave Desert. In fact, his past was hell on earth.
Although René Belbenoît sold ranch gear to locals, what Belbenoît clearly treasured most was his right to call himself an American citizen. Belbenoît ‘s journey to this point had been an arduous one full of pain and intrigue, as he had been incarcerated for petty theft in French New Guinea in the infamous Devil’s Island for eight years before he escaped, not only once but four times. The French penal colony on Devil’s Island was in operation from 1852 to 1946. Carrying his 40 lb. stack of papers wrapped in oilskins to protect it from the weather detailing the inhumanity of what he and other prisoners endured on Devil’s Island became a famous best seller.
Literary circles have compared René Belbenoît’s book Dry Gulliotine, Fifteen Years Among the Living Dead‘s impact on the penal colony system to that of Uncle Tom’s Cabin had on the slavery period in the United States. Both books are revered for igniting reform that led to the demise of cruel and inhuman systems of servitude. Devil’s Island, which actually encompasses three islands off the coast of French Guiana and a slice of Cayenne, warehoused French prisoners. Up to that time the island held approximately 100,000 prisoners during its century of operation.
The former Rene’s Ranch Store, located at 32746 Old Woman Springs Road (Highway 18) in Lucerne Valley. After Rene Belbenoit passed away in 1959, Dick Grobaty moved the Malt Shop from where China House now operates, to the Ranch Store site and opened Dick’s Center Store. From 1945-50, Dick was business manager for Earle Stanley Gardner, Esq. of Perry Mason fame. The present retailer is called Area Thrifty One next to Lucerne Properties, Inc.
Kansas City Times 11 March 1959
Although many are familiar with the name “Devil’s Island,” few can locate it, and fewer still are aware of its abject history. It is one of those places that has crept into the popular imagination without having many facts attached to it, like Transylvania, Timbuktu, or Siberia. As if Satan himself ordained it, the French Revolution changed French Guiana from a failed agrarian experiment into a laboratory for state-sponsored punishment and brutality. Devil’s Island, true to its name, would become Dante’s Inferno.
Dry Guillotine is the English translation of the French phrase la guillotine sèche, which was a prisoner term for the Devil’s Island penal colony in French Guiana. The book’s title comes from this phrase. His is one of the most shocking record of man’s inhumanity to man ever written. Belbenoît’s autobiography is the testament of a man triumphant after fifteen maddening years of privation and persecution.
Later, Devil’s Island became a film location for nineteen movies. The French Government took a dim view of these films and banned several of them. Belbenoît also served as a technical advisor on the movie Passage to Marseille, a wartime fim starring Humphrey Bogart, Claude Raines, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.
The San Bernardino County Sun–Telegram 11 July 1954, page 9.
Born in Paris, France on April 4,1899, impoverished René Lucien Belbenoît was at twenty-one years of age en route to a lifelong exile in the most notorious prison colony the civilized world has ever known. His crime? He had stolen a modicum of francs and a strand of pearls from his wealthy employer. His book, Dry Guillotine, begins with his exile from society and civilization. In the story of Devil’s Island, of Iles Royale and Saint Joseph, of Cayenne, the capital of a colony of sin, of libérés living like jackals, of men going crazy in solitary dark cells, of life more terrible than death and deaths more gruesome than fiction.
After a grueling transatlantic voyage during which he was locked in a cage (as were all convicts), Belbenoît first arrived at the penal colony in Saint-Laurent du Maroni, French Guiana on June 21, 1923, where he received convict number 46635. His first escape attempt came just two weeks after his arrival, but within a matter of days he was discovered by Dutch officials in Dutch Guiana (now Suriname) and sent back to the French camp. Belbenoit was sent to the very worst of the colony’s prison camps, Camp Charvein. Deep in the jungle, it was a malarial swamp. He again unsuccessfully attempted escape in 1924.
In 1926, Belbenoît met the American author Blair Niles on her visit to French Guiana and supplied her with details for her book Condemned to Devil’s Island (1928). Using money given by Niles, Belbenoît escaped for a third time. Upon his capture, he was sent to Devil’s Island for the first time for six months of solitary confinement, an experience he described as horrible. However, this punishment for ‘incorrigible’ behavior did not stop him from attempting a fourth escape.
In 1931, Belbenoît was released as a libéré. He was no longer a prisoner, but by law he was forced to stay in the penal colony for the length of his original labor sentence. He received a parole of one year to leave the colony, but was not allowed to return to France. After working a labor job in Panama for most of the year, he broke his parole and took a ship to France. He was promptly arrested in Le Havre and sent back to Devil’s Island for more solitary confinement.
Belbenoît knew the worst the penal colony could offer. He spent months of hell in isolation cells of the dreaded Iles Royal, where men go mad from solitary confinement barely living on stale bread and water, or else maim themselves to gain the privilege of seeing daylight again in the dismal prison infirmary. He suffered from exposure, fever and vermin, worked naked in the jungle at felling and hauling timber while enduring the maddening itch from oozing welts caused by bloodthirsty chiggers, mosquitoes and leeches.
Life held but two alternatives for the men condemned to Devil’s Island – “Escape or Die!” the impenetrable jungle or the raging sea. Ant-riddled skeletons testified to the impossibility of escape through the jungle. To attempt the open sea in a raft against diabolical currents where sharks waited for their next human meal. Yet he had made no less than four desperate but abortive tries for freedom, each followed by recapture and brutal punishment, before finally succeeding.
Toronto Star 29 July 1938
Belbenoît lived in the “Crimson Barrack” with its vicious guards, its graft and immorality, its monthly murder; and through all he felt the cruel hand of official corruption and injustice. Without food or equipment; beset on all sides by deadly reptiles, wild animals and hostile Indians; practically eaten alive by insects; he schemed and fought his way up through South and Central America – the only survivor from Devil’s Island ever to reach the haven of the United States alive and tell his story.
After serving additional time for parole violation, Belbenoit was officially released on November 2, 1934. Unable to tolerate his status as libéré, he planned yet another escape. This one would finally prove successful.
On May 2, 1935, he and five other convicts escaped the colony by sea. After traveling for seventeen days in a primative nineteen-foot boat, they washed up on the island of Trinidad. The British authorities let them go and they set out for Florida. A storm threw them adrift and they found themselves instead in Colombia, where they were again rounded up by authorities. Belbenoît managed to separate from the other prisoners and escape, heading for Panama, still carrying his 900 page manuscript, Dry Guillotine.
After a few months in Panama, Belbenoît slowly continued up the west coast of Central America by foot and stolen canoe, often staying with native tribes he encountered along the way. When he reached El Salvador, he stowed away on a ship to the United States and arrived in Los Angeles in 1937, more than two years after he had left French Guiana.
Belbenoît made his way to New York City, where he published his first book, Dry Guillotine, in 1938. It was quickly reprinted in several different languages. Two years later, he published Hell on Trial (1940). His hope in publishing the memoirs was to expose Devil’s Island for its horrible conditions. France had actually stopped sending prisoners to the penal colony in 1938, and officially closed the prison in 1946.
William LaVarre, Fellow at The Royal Geographical Society at the Harvard Club described Belbenoît at “thirty eight years old, terribly emaciated, almost blind, toothless, scurvy eaten and fever wrecked.” LaVarre surmised Belbenoît did not have many more years left to live. Belbenoît told LaVarre he hoped the publication of his book would accomplish just one thing. He hoped with all his heart, that it would cause France to finally do away with French Guiana and send no more human beings there to suffer–on the Dry Guillotine.
Belbenoît’s draft registration card. Notice he listed the name of his Dry Guillotine publisher, E.P. Dutton. @ancestry.com Biography & Genealogy Master Index (BGMI)
Once Belbenoît’s books caught the eyes of U.S. Immigration officers, he was deported as an illegal immigrant in 1940. A few months later, he was caught re-entering the country in Brownsville, Texas and served almost a year in prison. After his release from prison, Belbenoît secretly road trains to California.
Redwood City Tribune 23 August 1939, page 3
During the late 1940s, Belbenoît discovered the beauty of Lucerne Valley and the high desert north of Los Angeles, attracted, no doubt, to a climate antithetical to that of French Guiana. The dry, desert air must have been soothing to the man who had endured years of jungle dampness. A promotional brochure on the area stated: “Every day you live in Lucerne Valley is a day more glorious, more enchanting, more happy, than any preceding days. You will shout joyously to the world that at last an earthly paradise has been discovered.”
In 1951 Belbenoît moved to the earthly paradise of Lucerne Valley where he opened René’s Ranch Store. The prisoner who spent years without proper clothing became the purveyor of dude ranch and cowboy gear. Belbenoît had also met Lee Gumpert, five years his junior, the widow of a prominent Los Angeles physician. The smitten couple had fallen in love and were married in 1945.
Lee’s brother-in-law was Emil Gumpert, a prominent attorney who helped Belbenoît in his quest to become a U.S. citizen. Judge Gumpert, throughout his more than half-century professional career as an eminent trial lawyer, State Bar president and trial judge, substantially and effectively devoted himself to the administration of justice and to the improvement of trial practice. With help from Gumpert, other prominent attorneys, and some influential Hollywood producers, Belbenoît’s hard-fought application for citizenship was granted a decade later, on January 18, 1956. By then, Belbenoît was 57 years old.
Ancestry.com U.S., Naturalization Record Indexes, 1791-1992 (Indexed in World Archives Project)
Area Thrifty One, formerly Rene’s Ranch Store, Lucerne Valley, California.
A page from the manuscript of “Dry Guillotine,” including a picture of Belbenoît.
Photo courtesy: Harry Ransom Center
Belbenoît‘s scribbled notes on the backs of cigarette packs, inserted in the manuscript.
Photo courtesy: Harry Ransom Center
Times Herald 02 November 1941
Belbenoît’s wife Lee and her son from her first marriage commuted between their apartment on Havenhurst Drive in West Hollywood and Belbenoit’s place in Lucerne Valley, usually visiting him on the weekends. He spent much of his time writing and was still the subject of various articles and interviews. In 1955, an episode of the popular television program This Is Your Life was devoted to him.
Belbenoît didn’t get to enjoy his naturalized American citizenship for very long. He died of a heart attack while sitting in a chair in his store, perhaps typing his latest book, on February 25, 1959 in Lucerne Valley, California. The lack of medical care while he was imprisoned was likely a contributory factor. He was survived by his wife and a stepson. His cremains are interred at Chapel Of The Pines Crematory in Los Angeles, California.
The Republican, Springfield, Massachusetts, 27 February 1959.
When visiting Lucerne Valley to see Area Thrifty One, may we recommend you also stop by Lucerne Valley Market to check out its interesting merchandise, groceries and cafe. If you want to explore other local eateries, we recommend the much revered China House with its greasy spoon pink charm and authentic Chinese cuisine, the electic and funky Cafe 247 which offers a large menu of delicious BBQ, burgers, adult libations, live music and dancing, El Coyote Loco, Adelita’s Restaurant, Rock’s Place or other popular food joints in the area. We have embedded links to the places we’ve been to and enjoyed for ourselves.
Top Photo: René Belbenoît at his desk in the rear of Rene’s Ranch Store in Lucerne Valley, The San Bernardino County Sun–Telegram 11 July 1954. Photo enhanced by John Earl, 2024.
Note: Many thanks to La Quinta Museum’s Kim Steaffens Richards for putting Rene Belbenoît on our radar last year. Belbenoît is a relative of Kim’s cousin’s wife.
Citations and Recommended Resouces
Belbenoît, René; Dry Guillotine, Published by E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1938; Bantam Book Edition , I Escaped From Devil’s Island, 1949.
Belbenoît, René (1940). Hell on Trial. Translated by Rambo, Preston. New York: EP. Dutton & Co. OCLC 657176527. (The sequel to Dry Guillotine.)
Films Set on Devil’s Island, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Films_set_on_Devil%27s_Island
Belbenoît, René, 1899-1959 Collection https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00617
Two Devils in the City of Angels by Victoria Dailey, March 9, 2014 https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/two-devils-city-angels/
This is Your Life (1955): Rene Belbenoît https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11828924
The Storied Escapes of Rene Belbenoît (2013) https://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2013/05/14/rene-belbenoit
Emil Gumpert Award https://www.actl.com/home/awards-competitions-grants/emil-gumpert-award
Find a Grave; Belbenoît, René; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/211877666/rene-belbenoit
Lucerne Valley, A Wild West Town of Character(s), 2nd Ed., Lucerne Valley Museum Association et al, published by Lucerne Valley Economic Development Association, 2020.
Lucerne Valley Museum and History Association https://www.lucernevalleymuseum.org
