Ramona Stewart Explained

Ramona Stewart
Birth Date:19 February 1922
Birth Place:San Francisco, California, U.S.
Death Place:Key West, Florida, U.S.
Occupation:Novelist
Nationality:American
Alma Mater:University of Southern California
Genre:Romance fiction, supernatural thriller

Ramona Stewart (February 19, 1922 – April 30, 2006) was an American author. She is best known for her 1946 novel Desert Town and the 1970 supernatural thriller The Possession of Joel Delaney, both of which were adapted into films.[1]

Life and career

Stewart was born in San Francisco, California in 1922, the daughter of James Oliver Stewart and Theresa Waugh.[2] She grew up in Los Angeles with her father, a promoter of silver mines.[3] She was of Irish descent. Stewart attended the University of Southern California from 1938 until 1941.[2]

Her first published works were serialized stories for Collier's magazine. The first of them, first published as "Bitter Harvest" from November 24 to December 8, 1945, was quickly optioned by Hollywood producer Hal B. Wallis and became the basis of Desert Fury, a film noir by Lewis Allen starring Lizabeth Scott, John Hodiak, and Burt Lancaster.[4] Stewart later developed the story into her first full-length novel with the title Desert Town.

After this early success, Stewart continued to submit material to Collier's, often coming-of-age stories that were popular in the slicks. She wouldn't publish another novel until 1962, The Stars Abide. This was followed by several other books sharing the themes she had established in her debut: odd love triangles, dysfunctional families, and more or less explicit homosexual relationships. At least one of those books, The Surprise Party Complex, dealing with disenchanted teenagers living in Hollywood, seems to have been turned into a spec script, but no film was produced.[5] [6]

After a detour toward the historical novel with Casey in 1968,[7] Stewart finally settled as an author of thrillers with supernatural elements in the 1970s, starting with The Possession of Joel Delaney, which became her second title to be adapted into a film, directed by Waris Hussein and starring Shirley MacLaine and Perry King.

Stewart's final novel, The Nightmare Candidate, was published in 1980. For much of her adult life she resided with her husband in Key West, Florida, where she died in 2006.

Reception and impact

While Desert Town has been marketed as an early example of pulp fiction, Stewart's early novels in particular have been praised for the depth hidden beneath the raunchy dialogue and the relationships between innocent females and almost clichéd males.[8] Author and poet Sarah Key wrote that Stewart's female characters were "ahead of their time, often outcasts from conventional society, sometimes aided by supernatural forces".

Stewart's work is also noted for its early depictions of homosexual relationships. Noir expert Eddie Muller called the film adaptation of Desert Town "the gayest movie ever produced in Hollywood's golden era".[9]

Notes and References

  1. Book: Stewart . Ramona . Desert Town . February 9, 2014 . preface . Norris . F.L. . Raven's Head Press . 9781493620111 . 7–11 .
  2. Book: 1089. Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. 2. Reginald, R.. Burgess, Mary A.. Menville, Douglas. September 2010 . Wildside Press. 978-0-941-02878-3.
  3. Web site: Key . Sarah . Holding Down the Cat: Friends Before Facebook . Huffpost . September 28, 2019.
  4. .
  5. Web site: Sconce . Jeffrey . The Surprise Party Complex (1963) . Consumed and Judged . September 23, 2019.
  6. Book: Harris . Mark . Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood . 2008 . Penguin . 9781594201523 . 98 .
  7. Book: Barr Ebest . Sally . The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women Writers . 2013 . Syracuse University Press . 9780815652403 . 63.
  8. Web site: Norris . JF . FFB: Desert Town – Ramona Stewart . Pretty Sinister Books . November 14, 2003 . September 28, 2019.
  9. Eddie Muller: Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, St. Martin's, New York 1998,, p. 183.