Over the next decade, Clark published two more novels: The City of Trembling Leaves (1945) and The Track of the Cat (1949). In 1950, a collection of short stories, The Watchful Gods and Other Stories, was released. Since they began appearing in national magazines during the 1940s, Clark's short stories gained national recognition and earned the O. Henry Prize five times, in quick succession, between 1941 and 1945. After this initial success in the short story format, some of these stories (notably "Hook" and "The Wind And The Snow Of Winter") have been repeatedly anthologized as classic examples of the genre.Walter Van Tilburg Clark: The reason for the Nevada author’s sudden silence is still shrouded in mystery by Michael Engelmann, accessed 08 November 2014 via web.archive.org. Clark's short story, "The Portable Phonograph" - a poignant depiction of survivors in the aftermath of a war (and not a nuclear war as some claim, since it was written in 1941) - is also well known. Two Hollywood films were inspired by Clark's writings, and one of these (The Ox-Bow Incident) received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. The other film was Track of the Cat, based on Clark's novel The Track of the Cat. (Note that the film's title drops the definite article used in the novel's title).
