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Re: RARA-AVIS: Cornell Woolrich



This is for Frank Glenewinkel, but I thought I'd sent it to other list
members in case you all are interested.
According to the conversation I had with Shelton Abend, when Cornell
Woolrich died his executor was Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City.
Chase Manhattan appointed Abend to be Woolrich's actual executor. Abend
says this wasn't too difficult a job, as Woolrich's will was generally very
specific about what he wanted to happen to his assets. Where the picture got
more complicated was regarding copyrights to Woolrich's work. Apparently,
during the process of executing Woolrich's will, the opportunity arose to
purchase the copyright to a very substantial number of Woolrich manuscripts
for a very competitive sum. Abend says he tried to persuade Chase Manhattan
to buy the copyrights, by attempting to persuade them it would be an excellent
investment. When Chase Manhattan said they weren't interested, Abend bought the
copyrights himself (it's unclear to me whether this transaction represented
Abend's initial foray into copyright ownership, or whether he was already
in the business).
Where the plot thickens, and indeed, becomes downright noir-ish, is when
Abend began to look closely at Woolrich's diary (if I remember correctly,
Francis Nevins, in his wonderful book on Woolrich, says this diary is a
1924 diary that Woolrich used as a permanent diary/journal/notebook). Anyway,
Abend told me that he found a series of coded statements in the diary. It
took a long time for Abend to make sense of the code, but once he cracked it,
he realized they were titles for stories/novels. Now, they could have been
titles of pieces that Woolrich INTENDED to write, but never did. Alternatively,
bearing in mind Woolrich's predilection for publishing the same story under 
many different titles, they could have been lists of possible future titles.
However, Abend concluded that the coded entries referred to titles of COMPLETED
BUT MISSING Woolrich manuscripts.
I say 'missing,' because very few unpublished manuscripts were found among
Woolrich's effects after his death. He was known to be in the habit of carelessly giving away manuscripts to whoever asked for them in the increasingly incoherent final months of his life, but there were DOZENS of coded entries/manuscript
titles -- surely, Abend thought, Woolrich couldn't have given them ALL away?
So, Abend, set about figuring out where the missing manuscripts were. Finally,
he thought of the Woolrich family vault in upstate New York. Woolrich had pur-
chased this vault about ten years before his death, and the vault had four
spaces -- one for his mother, one for his father (whose remains he planned to
fly back from Mexico -- this never happened) and one for himself. Obviously,
this left one 'unnecessary' vault space -- what could this be for? Abend
reasoned that this fourth space contained the missing manuscripts! -- I told
you this was a noir story!
Empowered by his status as executor, Abend went up to the cemetery, and ordered
the Woolrich family vault opened. He checked the fourth space, and it was
empty -- except for a stubbed-out cigarette on the floor!!! Now, this is where
I think Abend was ingenious. He noticed that it was a 'Kool' cigarette, so he
collected the stub and sent it to the R&D people at Kool, and asked them if
they could date the tobacco. They said they could, and they did. They told
Abend that the tobacco in the cigarette was less than five years old -- this 
was in 1985 (or thereabouts), and Woolrich had died 20 years earlier! Abend
went back to the cemetery, and asked to see their visitor records -- according
to those records, no-one had been admitted into the Woolrich vault -- but
clearly someone had been there, and, according to Abend, had absconded with the
missing Woolrich manuscripts!!!
Since that time, Abend has been trying to track down the missing manuscripts.
In fact, at the time I spoke to him, he was about to fly to San Francisco, to
follow a lead that an unpublished Woolrich manuscript had just surfaced and
been sold -- Abend had the name of the buyer, and was heading out to California
to try and find the seller! Of course, Abend wants to solve the mystery for its
own sake, but he also has an interest in doing so -- any manuscripts recovered
would be the property of the Woolrich estate, and as Abend is the executor, he
would receive 50% of the proceeds of any sales.
How's that for an anecdote!!

David Schmid
Dept. of English
State University of New York at Buffalo
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