Cornell Woolrich Explained

Cornell Woolrich
Pseudonym:William Irish, George Hopley
Birth Name:Cornell George Hopley Woolrich
Birth Date:4 December 1903
Birth Place:New York City, US
Death Place:New York City, US
Alma Mater:Columbia University
Occupation:Writer (novelist)
Spouse: (d.1965)

Cornell George Hopley Woolrich (; December 4, 1903 – September 25, 1968) was an American novelist and short story writer. He sometimes used the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley.

His biographer, Francis Nevins Jr., rated Woolrich the fourth best crime writer of his day, behind Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner and Raymond Chandler.

Biography

Woolrich was born in New York City. His parents separated when he was young, and he lived for a time in Mexico with his father before returning to New York to live with his mother, Claire Attalie Woolrich.[1]

He attended Columbia University but left in 1926 without graduating when his first novel, Cover Charge, was published.[2] [3] As Eddie Duggan observes, "Woolrich enrolled at New York's Columbia University in 1921 where he spent a relatively undistinguished year until he was taken ill and was laid up for some weeks. It was during this illness (a Rear Window–like confinement involving a gangrenous foot, according to one version of the story) that Woolrich started writing, producing Cover Charge, which was published in 1926."[4] Cover Charge was one of his Jazz Age novels inspired by the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. A second short story, "Children of the Ritz", won Woolrich the first prize of $10,000 the following year in a competition organised by College Humor and First National Pictures; this led to his working as a screenwriter in Hollywood for First National Pictures. While in Hollywood, Woolrich explored his sexuality,[5] apparently engaging in what Francis M. Nevins Jr. describes as "promiscuous and clandestine homosexual activity" and by marrying Violet Virginia Blackton, the 21-year-old daughter of J. Stuart Blackton, one of the founders of the Vitagraph studio. Failing in both his attempt at marriage and at establishing a career as a screenwriter (the unconsummated marriage was annulled in 1933; Woolrich garnered no screen credits), Woolrich sought to resume his life as a novelist:

When he turned to pulp and detective fiction, Woolrich's output was so prolific his work was often published under one of his many pseudonyms.[4] For example, "William Irish" was the byline in Dime Detective Magazine (February 1942) on his 1942 story "It Had to Be Murder", source of the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie Rear Window and itself based on H.G. Wells' short story "Through a Window". François Truffaut filmed Woolrich's The Bride Wore Black and Waltz into Darkness in 1968 and 1969, respectively, the latter as Mississippi Mermaid. Ownership of the copyright in Woolrich's original story "It Had to Be Murder" and its use for Rear Window was litigated before the US Supreme Court in Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207 (1990).

He returned to New York, where he and his mother moved into the Hotel Marseilles (Broadway and West 103rd Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side). Eddie Duggan observes that "[a]lthough his writing made him wealthy, Woolrich and his mother lived in a series of seedy hotel rooms, including the squalid Hotel Marseilles apartment building in Harlem [sic], among a group of thieves, prostitutes and lowlifes that would not be out of place in Woolrich's dark fictional world."[4] Woolrich lived there until his mother's death on October 6, 1957, which prompted his move to the slightly more upscale Hotel Franconia (20 West 72nd Street near Central Park).[6] Duggan wrote: In later years, he socialized on occasion in Manhattan bars with Mystery Writers of America colleagues and younger fans such as writer Ron Goulart.[7] He moved later to the Sheraton-Russell on Park Avenue and became a virtual recluse. In his 60s, with his eyesight failing, lonely, wracked by guilt over his homosexuality, tortured by self-doubt, alcoholic and a diabetic, Woolrich neglected himself to such a degree that he allowed a foot infection to become gangrenous which resulted, early in 1968, in the amputation of a leg.

After the amputation and a conversion to Catholicism, Woolrich returned to the Sheraton-Russell, requiring the use of a wheelchair. Some of the staff there would take Woolrich down to the lobby so he could look out on the passing traffic.

Woolrich did not attend the premiere of Truffaut's film of his novel The Bride Wore Black in 1968, even though it was held in New York City. He died September 25, 1968.

Woolrich bequeathed his estate of about $850,000 to Columbia University to endow scholarships in his mother's memory for writing students. His papers are also kept at the Columbia University Libraries.[8]

Bibliography

Most of Woolrich's books are out of print, and new editions were slow to come out because of estate issues. However, new collections of his short stories were issued in the early 1990s. As of February 3, 2020, the Faded Page has seven titles available as ebooks in the public domain in Canada; these may be still under copyright elsewhere. In 2020 and 2021, Otto Penzler's "American Mystery Classics" series released new editions of Waltz into Darkness and The Bride Wore Black in both hardcover and paperback.

Woolrich died leaving fragments of an unfinished novel, titled The Loser; fragments have been published separately and also collected in Tonight, Somewhere in New York (2005).

Novels

Year Title Author Credit Notes
1926Cover ChargeCornell Woolrich
1927Children of the RitzCornell Woolrich
1929Times SquareCornell Woolrich
1930A Young Man's HeartCornell Woolrich
1931The Time of Her LifeCornell Woolrich
1932Manhattan Love SongCornell Woolrich
1940The Bride Wore BlackCornell Woolrich
1941The Black CurtainCornell Woolrich
1941MarihuanaWilliam IrishPublished in paperback only
1942Black AlibiCornell Woolrich
1942Phantom LadyWilliam Irish
1943The Black AngelCornell Woolrich
1944The Black Path of FearCornell Woolrich
1944Deadline at DawnWilliam IrishAlso published as an Armed Services Edition
1945Night Has a Thousand EyesGeorge Hopley
1947Waltz Into DarknessWilliam Irish
1948Rendezvous in BlackCornell Woolrich
1948I Married a Dead ManWilliam Irish
1950Savage BrideCornell WoolrichPublished in paperback only
1950FrightGeorge Hopley
1951You'll Never See Me AgainCornell WoolrichPublished in paperback only
1951Strangler's SerenadeWilliam Irish
1952Eyes That Watch YouWilliam Irish
1952Bluebeard's Seventh WifeWilliam IrishPublished in paperback only
1959Death is My Dancing PartnerCornell WoolrichPublished only in paperback
1960The Doom StoneCornell WoolrichPublished only in paperback
1987Into the NightCornell Woolrich(Posthumous release, manuscript completed by Lawrence Block)

Short fiction collections

Year Title Author Credit Notes
1943I Wouldn't Be in Your ShoesWilliam IrishAlso published as an Armed Services Edition.
1944After-Dinner StoryWilliam IrishIncludes his noted 1941 novella "Marihuana". Also published as an Armed Services Edition.
1946If I Should Die Before I WakeWilliam IrishPublished in paperback only.
1946Borrowed CrimeWilliam IrishPublished in paperback only.
1946The Dancing DetectiveWilliam Irish
1948Dead Man BluesWilliam Irish
1949The Blue RibbonWilliam Irish
1950Somebody on the PhoneWilliam IrishAKA Deadly Night Call
1950Six Nights of MysteryWilliam IrishPublished in paperback only.
1956NightmareCornell WoolrichIncludes both previously published and unpublished stories.
1958ViolenceCornell WoolrichIncludes both previously published and unpublished stories.
1958Hotel RoomCornell Woolrich
1959Beyond the NightCornell WoolrichPublished in paperback only.
1965The Dark Side of LoveCornell Woolrich
1965The Ten Faces of Cornell WoolrichCornell Woolrich
1971NightwebsCornell Woolrich
1978Angels of Darkness Cornell WoolrichIntroduction by Harlan Ellison.
1981The Fantastic Stories of Cornell WoolrichCornell Woolrich
1983Four by Cornell WoolrichCornell Woolrich
1984Rear WindowCornell Woolrich
1985Vampire's HoneymoonCornell Woolrich
1985Blind Date with DeathCornell Woolrich
1985Darkness at DawnCornell Woolrich
1998The Cornell Woolrich OmnibusCornell Woolrich
2003Night and FearCornell Woolrich
2005Tonight Somewhere in New YorkCornell Woolrich
2010Four Novellas of FearCornell Woolrich
2011Love and NightCornell Woolrich

Selected films based on Woolrich's fiction

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. That Old Feeling: Woolrich's World . Time . Richard . Corliss . 8 December 2003 . 25 July 2010 . https://web.archive.org/web/20100811185250/http://www.time.com/time/columnist/corliss/article/0,9565,557218,00.html . 11 August 2010 . dead . dmy-all .
  2. Web site: 2020-05-07 . Take Five with Charles Ardai '91 . 2022-05-01 . Columbia College Today . en.
  3. Book: Columbia College (Columbia University). Office of Alumni Affairs and Development . Columbia College today . Columbia College (Columbia University) . 1981 . New York: Columbia College, Office of Alumni Affairs and Development . Columbia University Libraries.
  4. [Eddie Duggan]
  5. News: Woolrich, Cornell . . 2007-08-20 . 2003 . Krinsky . Charles . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20070814195306/http://www.glbtq.com/literature/woolrich_c.html . 2007-08-14 .
  6. Nevins, Francis M. "Introduction," Tonight, Somewhere in New York. Carroll & Graf, 2001.
  7. Goulart, Ron: "The Ghost of Cornell Woolrich" The Twilight Zone Magazine, December 1984, pp. 16–17
  8. Web site: Cornell Woolrich papers, 1958-1964 . 2022-05-01 . www.columbia.edu.
  9. The melodrama star as a noir film heroine: The Trace of Some Lips (1952). Balajú. Revista de Cultura y Comunicación de la Universidad Veracruzana. 2 August 2018. Ortiz, Roberto Carlos. 8 . 69–89 . 10.25009/blj.v0i8.2552 . 192712997 . free.
  10. Two Takes on Gender in Argentine Film Noir. Studies in Hispanic Cinemas. May 2008. Thompson, Currie K. 4 . 2 . 121–130 . 10.1386/shci.4.2.121_1 .
  11. News: Shabnam Still Gets Fan Mail. Indian Express . Dec 4, 2010 . May 7, 2013.