| Charlotte Armstrong | |
| Pseudonym: | Jo Valentine |
| Birth Date: | 2 May 1905 |
| Birth Place: | Vulcan, Michigan, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Glendale, California, U.S. |
| Children: | 3 |
Charlotte Armstrong Lewi (May 2, 1905 – July 18, 1969)[1] was an American writer. Under the names Charlotte Armstrong and Jo Valentine she wrote 29 novels, as well as short stories, plays, and screenplays. She also worked for The New York Times advertising department, as a fashion reporter for Breath of the Avenue (a buyer's guide), and in an accounting firm.[2] Additionally, she worked for the New Yorker magazine, publishing only three poems for them.
Born as Charlotte Armstrong on May 2, 1905 in Vulcan, Michigan. She was the daughter of mining engineer Frank Hall Armstrong and Clara Pascoe Armstrong. She graduated from Vulcan High School in Vulcan, Michigan in June 1921 just after she turned 16 years old. She attended the junior college program at Ferry Hall in Lake Forest, Illinois, for one year (1921–1922), during which time she served as editor of the student publication, Ferry Tales. She attended the University of Wisconsin for two years and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Barnard College in 1925.[3] During her time at The New York Times, she met Joseph (Jack) Lewi, whom she married in 1928. She had a daughter and two sons.
Armstrong's publications generally followed one of two tracks. All of her novels were published by Coward-Mccan, even The Protege, which was published posthumously.[4] Armstrong's short stories, however, were published in magazines. Most of these stories were published in Ellery-Queen's Mystery Magazine, but some others were published in The Saturday Evening Post and Argosy magazine.
In September 1952, Armstrong's fantasy novella, Three Day Magic (1948) was published in longer form in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The long version was reprinted in the 1979 anthology, Mysterious Visions, by Martin H. Greenberg, Joseph Olander, and Charles G. Waugh. The editors remarked in their introduction that it was a "powerful and almost forgotten novella" that demonstrated that, although the well-known mystery writer was "most famous for suspense and style," she could have "become equally famous for humor and style."[5]
In 1939, while living in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Charlotte Armstrong began her career as a writer with the plays The Happiest Days and Ring Around Elizabeth. Both made it to Broadway, but The Happiest Days flopped, and Ring Around Elizabeth did not perform well either. This lack of success prompted Armstrong to shift to mystery fiction with Lay On, Mac Duff! (1942), The Case of the Weird Sisters (1943) and The Innocent Flower (1945), a trilogy featuring detective MacDougal Duff. Her successful entrance into suspense with The Unsuspected was a boost to her career, and soon she was recognized as pioneer of domestic suspense.[6] Later adapted into the film Talk About a Stranger, Charlotte Armstrong's 1951 novel The Enemy is a good example of Armstrong work in the genre.
Many of Armstrong's novels, such as The Enemy, also include hidden political allegories.[7] In these stories, characters group into mobs to try to solve the mysteries. Mobs tend to jump to the first proposed conclusion, and in the process ignore any contradictions. Around the same time, fear of Communist influence in American institutions and the infiltration of Soviet spies started the McCarthy era. During this time, hundreds of Americans were accused of being communist or working with communists, some of them on questionable and exaggerated evidence, leading to sometimes undeservedly destroyed careers and unemployment. In The Enemy, mob rule is prevalent as people ignored evidence, paralleling McCarthyism as it dominated politics at the time. These elements of McCarthyism are also present in her 1951 novel Mischief, which was adapted into the film Don't Bother to Knock, directed by Roy Baker.
In recognition of her work, the house which Armstrong moved to and lived in until death in Glendale, California, became known as the "Charlotte Armstrong House."[8] In 1965, the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center reached out to Armstrong and requested to be the repository of all of her works. Armstrong obliged and now the Gotlieb Center serves as the best body for retrieving any of Armstrong's works. Furthermore, around 1956, Armstrong and her family put together a collection of works about her and her family, titled, Charlotte Armstrong, A Master Storyteller Remembered.
It seems Armstrong was not able to finish her own autobiography due to her early passing, but in 2008, Rick Cypert authored a biography of Armstrong which dictated her personal and professional life titled The Virtue of Suspense: The Life and Works of Charlotte Armstrong. Additionally, Mysterious Press made 13 of Armstrong's novels accessible by e-book.
In 1957, Armstrong received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for her novel A Dram of Poison.[9] She wrote two other Edgar-nominated novels: The Gift Shop (1966) and Lemon in the Basket (1967). Three of her short stories, all published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, were nominated for Edgars: "And Already Lost" (1957), "The Case for Miss Peacock" (1965), and "The Splintered Monday" (1966).[10]