Hi,
some time ago, getting there from Don Siegel's films, I
collected all the information I could get about Mainwaring
(the real name), the collection can still be found at
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Movie/1967/knoererkompass-donsiegel-mainw
aring.html - it's in a strange mixture of German and English,
though. There is a long and possibly complete list of his
books and movies there, plus two quotes:
"You'd written some mystery novels in the thirties. Did you
sense different interests and different themes in this novel
in the forties?
Well, Build My Gallows High was a different kind of book,
entirely different. First I had a detective named Robin
Bishop, and I got sick of him. Bishop got married and then
got awfully soft, and I got fed up with him. I changed to
Humprhey Campbell, who was a tougher one. With Build My
Gallows High I wanted to get away from straight mystery
novels. Those detective stories are a bore to write. You've
got to figure out 'whodunit'. I'd get to the end and have to
say whodunit and be so mixed up I couldn't decide myself."
(from an interview by Pat McGilligan)
and here's what director Joseph Losey said about him:
"This is one of the things that makes me very close to Dan
Mainwaring - his experience of Americana, the nostalgia of
the good things about small towns. I remember the smell of
burning leaves at night in the autumn too. And I remember the
smell of Christmas, the sparkle in the air at football games,
and the sound of distant trains. And Dan remembers them all.
He's a much underrated writer and he's a really quite noble
man. He damaged himself with drink and he was very badly hurt
by the blacklist." (also from McGilligan's book)
I have read one Homes book, The Man Who Didn't Exist from
1937 and I understand very well why Mainwaring didn't like
the Bishop guy: this is definitely not a hardboiled book. And
not a good one, either.
Best, Ekkehard Editor Crime Corner Magazin
www.crime-corner.de
----- Original Message ----- From: Rene Ribic <
rribic@optusnet.com.au> To: <
rara-avis@icomm.ca> Sent: Friday, July 05, 2002 2:23
PM Subject: RARA-AVIS: Geoffrey Homes/Daniel Mainwaring
> A little while ago someone was asking about
Homes/Mainwaring, whether
> he'd written any other novels worth reading aside
from the classic BUILD
> MY GALLOWS HIGH (made into the seminal film noir OUT
OF THE PAST with
> Bob Mitchum). Unfortunately I haven't read any of
his other books but I
> thought the following info may be of interest to the
person asking:
> under the name Mainwaring (I forget which one was
his real name) he
> wrote a lot of Hollywood screenplays, including the
screenplay to OUT OF
> THE PAST, which you probably knew. Today I just
rented a copy of
> INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS (considered to be an
SF/horror/film noir
> hybrid by many people) & discovered that
Mainwaring wrote this
> screenplay also. He has a good short story, again
under the Mainwaring
> name, in the Oxford University Press anthology HARD
BOILED (an excellent
> anthology & one that still seems to be in print,
at least I saw a copy
> of the paperback in a shop just today).Hopefully
some of this info is
> new & of interest to the person who enquired, or
others.
>
> Rene
>
> --
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