Writers Born Today - Cornell Woolrich

It's the birthday of Cornell Woolrich, born December 4, 1903 in New York City.

For a while he lived in Mexico with his father after his parents separated, but returned to New York to live with his mother. F. Scott Fitzgerald was an early influence on his writing. He went to college at Columbia, but dropped out after his first novel, Cover Charge, was published.

His best writing occurred in the 1940s, with titles such The Bride Wore Black, I Married A Dead Man, and Night Has A Thousand Eyes. He also wrote under the pen names William Irish and George Hopley.

Many of his characters face a world of bleak prospects with little room for success or sentimentality. In his novel The Black Angel a man kills himself for the love of a woman, She remarks with cynicism, "I gave him something to die for. That was more than he'd had before. It's better to die for something than to live for nothing."

He's been called the Poe of the 20th century. Much of his work, especially his short stories, were published in pulp detective magazines, and are out of print. But as a testament to his skill, over two dozens films have been made based on his stories and novels. The best known is Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, based on his story It Had To Be Murder.

Writers Born Today - Celia Fremlin

It's the birthday of Celia Fremlin, born June 20, 1914 in London. She graduated from Oxford but worked as a domestic servant and in a war factory during her youth.  She used these experiences when she began writing. Her first book, The Seven Chars of Chelsea, observed the relationship between a mistress and servant.

Her marriage and experience raising three children found its way into her first published novel, The Hours Before Dawn. A young housewife with a newborn faces not only depression but a series of eerie occurrences that leave the reader wondering about her sanity and her safety. It won the Edgar Award in 1960 for Best Mystery Novel. Alfred Hitchcock used the novel as the basis of one of his episodes in season one of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, titled The Lonely Hours.

Fremlin went on to write 15 more novels and numerous short stories, many of which address the "domestic suspense" with which she is now associated.

Her reputation and interest in her work has surged in recent years thanks in large part to editor and mystery critic Sarah Weinman, who included in her anthology Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives one of Fremlin's stories, A Case of Maximum Need.

Faber & Faber of England is also in the process of reprinting her novels, which should help introduce this writer to modern mystery fans. It's long overdue.

"The best writing is, and always has been, squeezed out somehow from the turmoil of a demanding and absorbing life -- happy or miserable, in sickness or in health, loved or hated -- it doesn't matter, so long as you are right there, in the thick of it."

                      - Celia Fremlin

Writers Born Today - Daphne du Maurier

It's the birthday of Daphne duMaurier, author of gothic suspense novels and tales of terror, several of which were made into highly successful films. She was born May 13, 1907 in London and published her first novel at the age of 24, TheLoving Spirit.

More novels followed, and in 1937 she signed a three book deal. She had a title for her next novel, and not much else. It was to be called Rebecca, and it would become her masterpiece. The theme of the story was jealousy.

When Rebecca was published in 1938, a review in the Christian Science Monitor predicted it would quickly fade into obscurity, but it became a best seller, and has been in print ever since. It's opening sentence, "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.", is one of the most recognized in all of modern fiction. It earned her the National Book Award. The author credited Jane Eyre as her inspiration. Rebecca is a gothic story, a romance, and a novel of suspense wrapped into one.

Rebecca was made into an Oscar winning film by Alfred Hitchcock. He also filmed Jamaica Inn. Hitchcock's most famous film, The Birds, was based on her short story of the same name.

Daphne spent much of her life in her beloved Cornwall. She was interviewed there in 1977, and you can read the interview here.

This is a rare film clip of the author talking with Cliff Michelmore.

Writers Born Today - Robert Bloch

It's the 100th anniversary of the birth of Robert Bloch, born April 5, 1917 in Chicago.  He wrote over two dozen novels and hundreds of stories for print and the screen. He sold his first story to Weird Tales when he was only 17 years old. It was the beginning of a flourishing career.

Because jobs were hard to find during the depression, he continued to write. As he put it, “So I had this problem -- work or starve. So I thought I'd combine the two and decided to become a writer.”

He was part of the Lovecraft circle, an influential group of horror and sci-fi writers whose members included August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and of course, H. P. Lovecraft. Many of these members went on to create works of science fiction and horror that are considered classics in their genres.

Bloch was numerous awards during his long career, including the Hugo, World Fantasy, Bram Stoker and a special Edgar scroll for his novel Psycho. It is this novel for which most readers remember him, and the one that Alfred Hitchcock turned into the classic film of the same name. The creation of Norman Bates and his dual personality provided readers and filmgoers one of the most shocking examples of criminal deviancy in modern fiction.

"I discovered, much to my surprise - and particularly if I was writing in the first person – that I could become a psychopath quite easily. I could think like one and I could devise a manner of unfortunate occurrences. So I probably gave up a flourishing, lucrative career as a mass murderer."                       
                 (Robert Bloch in Faces of Fear by Douglas E. Winter, 1990)

After selling his book to Alfred Hitchcock, Bloch wrote for Hollywood and television. His credits include Thriller, Night Gallery, Star Trek, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Psycho was not his only novel featuring a psychopath. In 1947 he published his first novel, The Scarf, about a writer who murders women after using them in his fiction. (Think about that the next time a writer offers to use you as a character in their book).

He died in 1977. For more on his career, click here. And for a bibliography, here.


“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”  

- Robert Bloch

Writers Born Today - Margaret Millar

It's the birthday of Margaret (Sturm) Millar, born February 5, 1915 in Kitchener, Canada. She had less than a typical childhood. Some of her earliest memories involve walking to school past a slaughterhouse, whose stench and sounds of bellowing, dying animals was impossible to ignore. She spent her reading time with the pulp magazine Black Mask, which she devoured with relish. “Some kinds of addiction are considered incurable,” she would say later.

After attending the University of Toronto she married Kenneth Millar, and they moved to California while he served in the navy. She began writing after she was forced to remain in bed following the birth of her daughter. At first, she typed her husband's stories, then began to create her own. Her first novel, The Invisible Worm, was published by Doubleday to critical acclaim. The New Yorker called her "a writer of considerable voltage". She plunged into her second book and never looked back. More psychological thrillers followed, The Devil Loves Me in 1942, Fire Will Freeze in 1944, Do Evil in Return in 1950.

Hollywood bought some of her stories, and she was a favorite of Alfred Hitchcock, who adapted two of her novels, including Beast In View, for his television series.

In 1956, she won an Edgar Award for Beast in View from the Mystery Writers of America. She was the group's President in 1957, and received a Grand Master Award from the MWA in 1983. Her short story, The People Across The Canyon was featured in the recently released anthology, Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives. It was also reprinted in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine in the November 2005 issue as a Mystery Classic. You can listen to an audio broadcast of the story here.

Tragedy struck her family later in life. Her daughter died at the age of 31 and her husband suffered from Alzheimer's before his death in 1983. Macular Degeneration took her eyesight. She coped by writing. She told the Los Angeles Times in an interview, "If I couldn't write now I'd probably go off my rocker. Writing keeps me sane--or as sane as I am,"  She died in 1994.

You can read more about her in Kathleen Sharp's article from the LA Review of Books, The Dangerous Housewife, and Sarah Weinman's article in the National Post, Margaret Millar: The Original Canadian Queen of Crime.

Sarah also included Beast In View in a new collection of suspense novels which she edited. Women Crime Writer's of the 1940s and 50s was released last September by the Library of America.

Writers Born Today - Patricia Highsmith

It's the birthday of Patricia Highsmith, born January 19, 1921 in Fort Worth, Texas. She resented being categorized as a crime novelist. Although most of her stories involve a crime, psychological thriller may be more accurate in describing her work. A common theme involves the fate of average men and women thrust into circumstances that require desperate measures to survive. Many of her characters were amoral figures who ultimately escape punishment and even thrive, despite their crimes. In this regard, her fiction can be considered more honest and realistic than many popular mystery and detective novels, and thus far more disturbing.

She had an unhappy childhood, shuffled between her home and life with her grandmother. She once wrote in a notebook, "One situation—one alone, could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness." Despite numerous relationships, she never married (partly because she couldn't, more likely because she wouldn't) and was not overly fond of children. "“I am married to my mother", she once said. "I shall never wed another."

After graduating from Barnard College she lived in Greenwich Village while writing. (Click here to see an interactive map of her neighborhood.) Her first novel, Strangers on a Train was published in 1950 to good reviews and after Hitchcock made a film version, Highsmith's reputation soared. The plot centers around two strangers, Guy Haines and Charles Bruno, who met through a chance encounter and casually discuss people they'd like to see dead. One of the men, Bruno, follows through on this and kills Guy's wife. He then pressures Guy to uphold his end of the bargain by killing Bruno's father. Threats and blackmail soon follow and the pressure builds as Bruno's obsession and Guy's guilt threaten to destroy them both.

More novels followed including The Talented Mr. Ripley, and several of them were adapted for the screen. She also wrote short stories. You can read a review of one of my favorite Highsmith collections on the Friday Forgotten Books List (inspired by Patti Abbott), The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder.

Patricia Highsmith moved to England and France before settling in Switzerland. She died in 1995. You can read an excerpt from Joan Schenkar's excellent biography, The Talented Miss Highsmith, in which she prints one of the many lists the writer was fond of creating, called Little Crimes For Little Tots (example, 'Replacing roller skate on stairs, once mother has removed it'). You can also listen to an audio lecture on Patricia Highsmith, given at the Greenwich Village Society For Historic Preservation.

Of course, you could also read her books. I think she'd be pleased.