Cornell Woolrich | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Cornell George Hopley Woolrich (1903-12-04)December 4, 1903 New York City, US |
| Died | September 25, 1968(1968-09-25) (aged 64) New York City, US |
| Pen name | William Irish, George Hopley |
| Occupation | Writer (novelist) |
| Alma mater | Columbia University |
| Spouse | (d.1965) |
Cornell George Hopley Woolrich (/ˈwʊlrɪtʃ/WUUL-ritch; December 4, 1903 – September 25, 1968) was an American novelist and short story writer. He sometimes used thepseudonymsWilliam Irish andGeorge Hopley.
His biographer, Francis Nevins Jr., rated Woolrich the fourth bestcrime writer of his day, behindDashiell Hammett,Erle Stanley Gardner andRaymond Chandler.[citation needed]
Woolrich was born inNew York City. His parents separated when he was young, and he lived for a time inMexico with his father before returning to New York to live with his mother, Claire Attalie Woolrich.[1]
He attendedColumbia University but left in 1926 without graduating when his first novel,Cover Charge, was published.[2][3] AsEddie 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 (aRear Window–like confinement involving a gangrenous foot, according to one version of the story) that Woolrich started writing, producingCover Charge, which was published in 1926."[4]Cover Charge was one of hisJazz Age novels inspired by the work ofF. 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 whatFrancis M. Nevins Jr. describes as "promiscuous and clandestine homosexual activity" and by marrying Violet Virginia Blackton, the 21-year-old daughter ofJ. Stuart Blackton, one of the founders of theVitagraph 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:
Although Woolrich had published six 'jazz-age' novels, concerned with the party-antics and romances of the beautiful young things on the fringes of American society, between 1926 and 1932, he was unable to establish himself as a serious writer. Perhaps because the 'jazz-age' novel was dead in the water by the 1930s when theDepression had begun to take hold, Woolrich was unable to find a publisher for his seventh novel,I Love You, Paris, so he literally threw away the typescript, dumped it in a dustbin, and re-invented himself as a pulp writer.[4]
When he turned to pulp anddetective 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 inDime Detective Magazine (February 1942) on his 1942 story "It Had to Be Murder", which was the source of the 1954Alfred Hitchcock movieRear Window and itself based on H.G. Wells' short story "Through a Window".François Truffaut filmed Woolrich'sThe Bride Wore Black andWaltz into Darkness in 1968 and 1969, respectively, the latter asMississippi Mermaid. Ownership of the copyright in Woolrich's original story "It Had to Be Murder" and its use forRear Window was litigated before theUS Supreme Court inStewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207 (1990).
He returned to New York, where he and his mother moved into theHotel Marseilles (Broadway and West 103rd Street on Manhattan'sUpper 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:
[After] Woolrich's mother died in 1957, he [went] into a sharp physical and mental decline.
In later years, he socialized on occasion in Manhattan bars withMystery Writers of America colleagues and younger fans such as writerRon 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 novelThe 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.[3] His papers are also kept at theColumbia University Libraries.[8]
Most of Woolrich's books are out of print, and new editions were slow to come out because of estate issues.[citation needed] 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 asebooks in thepublic domain in Canada; these may be still under copyright elsewhere. In 2020 and 2021,Otto Penzler's "American Mystery Classics" series released new editions ofWaltz into Darkness andThe Bride Wore Black in both hardcover and paperback. In January 2025, aebook complete novels edition for countries where his work falls in thepublic domain has been released by Delphi Classics.
Woolrich died leaving fragments of an unfinished novel, titledThe Loser; fragments have been published separately and also collected inTonight, Somewhere in New York (2005).
| Year | Title | Author Credit | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1926 | Cover Charge | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1927 | Children of the Ritz | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1929 | Times Square | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1930 | A Young Man's Heart | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1931 | The Time of Her Life | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1932 | Manhattan Love Song | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1940 | The Bride Wore Black | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1941 | The Black Curtain | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1941 | Marihuana | William Irish | Published in paperback only |
| 1942 | Black Alibi | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1942 | Phantom Lady | William Irish | |
| 1943 | The Black Angel | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1944 | The Black Path of Fear | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1944 | Deadline at Dawn | William Irish | Also published as anArmed Services Edition |
| 1945 | Night Has a Thousand Eyes | George Hopley | |
| 1947 | Waltz Into Darkness | William Irish | |
| 1948 | Rendezvous in Black | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1948 | I Married a Dead Man | William Irish | |
| 1950 | Savage Bride | Cornell Woolrich | Published in paperback only |
| 1950 | Fright | George Hopley | |
| 1951 | You'll Never See Me Again | Cornell Woolrich | Published in paperback only |
| 1951 | Strangler's Serenade | William Irish | |
| 1952 | Eyes That Watch You | William Irish | |
| 1952 | Bluebeard's Seventh Wife | William Irish | Published in paperback only |
| 1959 | Death is My Dancing Partner | Cornell Woolrich | Published only in paperback |
| 1960 | The Doom Stone | Cornell Woolrich | Published only in paperback |
| 1987 | Into the Night | Cornell Woolrich | (Posthumous release, manuscript completed byLawrence Block) |
| Year | Title | Author Credit | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1943 | I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes | William Irish | Also published as an Armed Services Edition. |
| 1944 | After-Dinner Story | William Irish | Includes his noted 1941novella"Marihuana". Also published as an Armed Services Edition. |
| 1946 | If I Should Die Before I Wake | William Irish | Published in paperback only. |
| 1946 | Borrowed Crime | William Irish | Published in paperback only. |
| 1946 | The Dancing Detective | William Irish | |
| 1948 | Dead Man Blues | William Irish | |
| 1949 | The Blue Ribbon | William Irish | |
| 1950 | Somebody on the Phone | William Irish | AKADeadly Night Call |
| 1950 | Six Nights of Mystery | William Irish | Published in paperback only. |
| 1956 | Nightmare | Cornell Woolrich | Includes both previously published and unpublished stories. |
| 1958 | Violence | Cornell Woolrich | Includes both previously published and unpublished stories. |
| 1958 | Hotel Room | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1959 | Beyond the Night | Cornell Woolrich | Published in paperback only. |
| 1965 | The Dark Side of Love | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1965 | The Ten Faces of Cornell Woolrich | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1971 | Nightwebs | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1978 | Angels of Darkness | Cornell Woolrich | Introduction byHarlan Ellison. |
| 1981 | The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1983 | Four by Cornell Woolrich | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1984 | Rear Window | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1985 | Vampire's Honeymoon | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1985 | Blind Date with Death | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1985 | Darkness at Dawn | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1998 | The Cornell Woolrich Omnibus | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 2003 | Night and Fear | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 2005 | Tonight Somewhere in New York | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 2010 | Four Novellas of Fear | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 2011 | Love and Night | Cornell Woolrich |
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