My Book Notes: "The Penny-a-Worder" (1958), a short story by Cornell Woolrich

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Included in Nightwebs: A Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich edited by Francis M. Nevins, Jr. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Hard Cover. First Edition. Number of pages: 510. ISBN-13: 9780060131739. Edited and Introduction by Francis M Nevins, Jr., that contains sixteen short stories written as Cornell Woolrich, William Irish and George Hopley plus Cornell Woolrich: a checklist, by H. Knott, F. M. Nevins, Jr., W. Thailing (p. 478-510). “The Penny-a-Worder” was originally entitled “A Penny for Your Thoughts”. It was  intended by the author for his novel Hotel Room (1958), however, it was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [v32 #3, Whole No. 178, September 1958], and then in The Saint Mystery Magazine, March 1967 issue as “Pulp Writer”. Finally it was collected in Nightwebs, three years after Woolrich’s death in 1968.  It was not reprinted until 2005, in Tonight, Somewhere in New York.

Description: Pulp fiction writers produced millions of words under intense time pressure in order to fill the pages of dozens of mystery magazines which filled newsstands from the 1920’s through the 1950’s. Some would argue that Woolrich’s “The Penny-a-Worder” is one of the best pieces of fiction on the subject. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1958, this short story is not only a fun read about a pulp writer’s life but is a wonderful example of Cornell Woolrich’s later work and, for all we know, may have been a first-hand experience suffered by Woolrich himself.
It’s the later part of the 1930’s and a struggling author by the name of Dan Moody checks into a hotel with an assignment to turn out a novella – literally overnight – with a story whose subject will coincide with artwork that has already been produced for the imminent publication of a “dime-detective” type magazine. With the publisher’s voice constantly in Moody’s mind and various distractions around him, the writer attempts to create a story worthy of publication. (Source: Goodreads)

The picture enclosed does not belong to the edition I read.

My Take: In essence, “The Penny-a-Worder” is a Woolrich’s unusual story. It’s not a crime or detective fiction and it does have a great sense of humour with some autobiographical contents. None the less, it touches some of the themes usually found in Woolrich fiction, like for example a race against the clock. The story revolves around a pulp writer whose publisher requires him to write a tale in a very short time frame. For this reason, they rent him a quiet room in a hotel, so he can work at ease. The magazine already has the cover image and the story must include a scene that matches it.

Woolrich mentioned that he particularly remembers his story “Guns, Gentlemen” (Argosy, 18 December 1937); collected as “The Lamp of Memory” in Beyond the Night (1959), because I wrote it to match up with the cover of the magazine, which they sent me. This doesn’t mean, of course, that he wrote the story in a single night! (Boucher on Woolrich: When Titans Touched by Francis M. Nevins)

For me the best story in the collection, “The Penny-a-Worder,” is not even a genuine crime story, but it is a brilliant little tale about a pulp crime writer.  Francis Nevins, who is convinced that Woolrich had no sense of humor, appreciates the fine quality of this story, but somehow himself apparently doesn’t see the humor in it.  (You would have to have a sense of humor, I think, to see it.)  I’ve written about this story before here, but I think I will write about it again in a successor blog post.  It’s such a brilliant little story that shows a lot of witty self-awareness on the part of an author whom a lot of people seem to think had capacity only for myopic misery. (Curtis Evans at The Passing Tramp).

About the Author: Cornell Woolrich is widely regarded as the twentieth century’s finest writer of pure suspense fiction. The author of numerous classic novels and short stories (many of which were turned into classic films) such as Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Waltz Into Darkness, and I Married a Dead Man, Woolrich began his career in the 1920s writing mainstream novels that won him comparisons to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The bulk of his best-known work, however, was written in the field of crime fiction, often appearing serialized in pulp magazines or as paperback novels. Because he was prolific, he found it necessary to publish under multiple pseudonyms, including “William Irish” and “George Hopley” …. Woolrich lived a life as dark and emotionally tortured as any of his unfortunate characters and died, alone, in a seedy Manhattan hotel room following the amputation of a gangrenous leg. Upon his death, he left a bequest of one million dollars to Columbia University, to fund a scholarship for young writers. (Source: Hard Case Crime, via Goodreads)

A Cornell Woolrich bibliography can be found here.

Recommended Reading: Francis M. Nevins’ Cornell Woolrich: First You Dream, Then You Die is an enormous, in depth biography and critical study on Woolrich and his work. It is a very detailed look at Woolrich’s world. Nevins also edited the best of all Woolrich collections, Nightwebs, which contains important essays and bibliographies as well. It also contains Woolrich’s autobiographical story, “The Penny-a-Worder” (1958), which is a gentle self portrait of a pulp writer. (Source: Mike Grost at A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection)

Additional Reading:

Articles on Cornell Woolrich at Mystery File.

Mike Grost on Cornell Woolrich.

Kate Jackson’s articles on Cornell Woolrich are at Cross-Examining Crime.

Martin Edwards’ articles on Cornell Woolrich are at ‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’

Curtis Evans’ articles on Cornell Woolrich are at The Passing Tramp.

Jim Noy’s articles on Cornell Woolrich are at The Invisible Event.

Cornell Woolrich page at Gadetection

“Who Was Cornell Woolrich?” by Richard Dooling

Pulp Kafka: The Nightmares of Cornell Woolrich BY Jake Hinkson

The Cornell Woolrich Revival by Steve Powell

Cornell Woolrich, the Dark Prince of Noir

The Stories Behind the Story, by Mike Nevins at Mystery File

“The Penny-a-Worder” un relato breve de Cornell Woolrich

Descripción: Los escritores de ficción “pulp” produjeron millones de palabras bajo una intensa presión de tiempo para llenar las páginas de docenas de revistas de misterio que llenaron los quioscos desde la década de 1920 hasta la década de 1950. Algunos dirían que “The Penny-a-Worder” de Woolrich es una de las mejores obras de ficción sobre el tema. Publicado por primera vez en Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine en 1958, este relato no solo es una lectura divertida sobre la vida de un escritor “pulp”, sino que es un maravilloso ejemplo del trabajo posterior de Cornell Woolrich y, por lo que sabemos, puede haber sido una experiencia de primera mano sufrida. por el propio Woolrich.
Es la última parte de la década de 1930 y un autor en apuros llamado Dan Moody se registra en un hotel con la tarea de escribir una novela corta, literalmente de la noche a la mañana, con una historia cuyo tema coincidirá con la portada que ya se han elaborado para su inminente publicación en una revista tipo “detective de diez centavos”. Con la voz del editor constantemente en la cabeza de Moody y varias distracciones a su alrededor, el escritor intenta crear una historia digna de publicación. (Fuente: Goodreads)

Mi opinión: En esencia, “The Penny-a-Worder” es una historia inusual de Woolrich. No es un crimen ni una novela policíaca y tiene un gran sentido del humor con algunos contenidos autobiográficos. Sin embargo, toca algunos de los temas que suelen encontrarse en las historias de Woolrich, como por ejemplo una carrera contrarreloj. La historia gira en torno a un escritor “pulp” cuya editorial le exige que escriba un relato en un lapso de tiempo muy corto. Por esta razón, le alquilan una habitación tranquila en un hotel, para que pueda trabajar a gusto.La revista ya tiene la imagen de la portada y la historia debe incluir una escena que coincida con ella.

Woolrich mencionó que recuerda especialmente su cuento “Guns, Gentlemen” (Argosy, 18 de diciembre de 1937); recopilado como “The Lamp of Memory” en Beyond the Night (1959), porque la escribí a juego con la portada de la revista que me enviaron. ¡Esto no significa, por supuesto, que escribiera la historia en una sola noche! (Boucher sobre Woolrich: When Titans Touched de Francis M. Nevins)

Para mí, la mejor historia de la colección, “The Penny-a-Worder”, ni siquiera es una historia policiaca genuina, pero es un pequeño cuento brillante sobre un escritor de novelas “pulp”. Francis Nevins, quien está convencido de que Woolrich no tenía sentido del humor, aprecia la excelente calidad de esta historia, pero de alguna manera él mismo aparentemente no ve el humor en ella. (Creo que tendrías que tener sentido del humor para verlo). He escrito sobre esta historia antes aquí, pero creo que volveré a escribir sobre ella en una publicación posterior del blog. Es un breve relato tan brillante que muestra mucho conocimiento ingenisoso de si mismo por parte de un autor que mucha gente parece pensar que solo tenía capacidad para desdichas miopes. (Curtis Evans en The Passing Tramp).

Sobre el autor: Cornell Woolrich está ampliamente considerado como el mejor escritor de pura ficción de suspense del siglo XX. Autor de numerosas novelas clásicas y relatos (muchos de los cuales se convirtieron en películas clásicas) como La ventana indiscreta, La novia vestía de negro, Mil ojos tiene la noche, La sirena del Mississippi, Con cariño desde el cielo, Woolrich comenzó su carrera en la década de 1920 escribiendo novelas convencionales que le ganaron comparaciones con F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sin embargo, la mayor parte de su obra más conocida se escribió en el campo de la novela policíaca, y a menudo aparece serializada en revistas “pulp” o como novelas de bolsillo. Debido a que fue prolífico, consideró necesario publicar bajo múltiples seudónimos, incluidos “William Irish” y “George Hopley”… Woolrich vivió una vida tan oscura y emocionalmente torturada como cualquiera de sus desafortunados personajes y murió, solo, en una sórdida habitación de un hotel en Manhattan tras la amputación de una pierna gangrenosa. A su muerte, dejó un legado de un millón de dólares a la Universidad de Columbia para financiar una beca para jóvenes escritores. (Fuente: Hard Case Crime, a través de Goodreads)

Una bibliografía de Cornell Woolrich se puede encontrar aquí.

More about Cornell Woolrich (1903 – 1968)

Please, allow me to repeat here some excerpts taken from the Introduction by Francis M Nevins, Jr., to Nightwebs. I hope I’m not violating any intellectual property rights, if so, I would immediately delete this entry. By the way I only write this for its possible interest to readers of this blog, and in no way do I get an economic benefit from it.

Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich was born in New York on December 4, 1903 to parents who divorced soon after his birth. He spent much of his childhood in Mexico and South America with his father, a civil engineer. He seems to have been shunted back and forth between parents, living with his socially prominent mother in New York during the school year and traveling with his father during vacation periods. In the early 1920s he entered Columbia University but he dropped out of college before graduating to devote himself entirely to literature when his first novel, Cover Charge, was published in 1926. His next novel, Children of the Ritz (1927), won the first prize of $10,000 in a contest conducted jointly by College Humor and First National Pictures, which filmed the book in 1929. Woolrich was invited to collaborate on the adaptation. While in Hollywood, Woolrich fell in love with and married a producer’s daughter, who left him within weeks and later had the marriage annulled. Woolrich returned to New York and his mother. He published four other novels. His early novels show a deep influence from Scott Fitzgerald (one of Woolrich’s favourite authors). In addition, between 1926 and 1932, Woolrich published a number of short stories, two articles, and a serial in magazines, but during 1933 not a single word appeared under his byline: the Depression had caught up to him. He did write another novel that year, but he couldn’t sell it, and eventually he threw it away. In any event, Woolrich grew to dislike all of his work up to the middle Thirties. “It would have been a lot better if everything I’d done until then had been written in invisible ink and the reagent had been thrown away,” he commented in his autobiography.

His second chance came to him about halfway through 1934, when he turned to a new market and a new kind of story. His first mystery story, “Death Sits in the Dentist’s Chair,” appeared in Detective Fiction Weekly on August 4, 1934. Woolrich’s two other mystery stories of 1934 are equally characteristic: “Walls that Hear You” and “Preview of Death”. The ten crime stories Woolrich published in 1935 were of uneven quality, but incredible variety; together they express almost all of the motives and beliefs and devices that form the nucleus of Woolrich’s fiction. Among these “The Corpse and the Kid” is the best known of Woolrich’s 1935 stories under its later title, “Boy with Body”.

By the end of 1935, Woolrich was a professional, and between 1936 and 1939 he published at least 105 stories (of every length, from short-short to the novella, but the majority of them long short stories), as well as two book-length magazine serials. By the end of 1939 his name had become a commonplace on all the top-quality mystery magazines—Argosy, Black Mask, Detective Fiction Weekly, Dime Detective—and had also appeared on the covers of low-grade cheapies like Black Book Detective and Thrilling Mystery, not to mention his tales in such a high-quality general fiction magazines as Whit Burnett’s Story. These hundred-odd stories are astonishing in their unity—hardly a single one lacks Woolrich’s unique mood, tone, and preoccupations – no less than in their variety. By the turn of the decade, Woolrich had made uniquely his own certain settings—the seedy hotel, the cheap dance hall, the precinct station back room, the inside of a rundown movie theatre—and certain motifs: the clock race, the corrosion of love and trust, the little guy trapped by powers beyond his control.

In 1940, Woolrich published his first mystery novel, The Bride Wore Black, which quickly became and today remains a classic in the literature of suspense. Bride was followed by five other novels over the next eight years, each including the word “black” in its title: The Black Curtain (1941), Black Alibi (1942), The Black Angel (1943), The Black Path of Fear (1944) and Rendezvous in Black (1948). Woolrich’s short stories and novellas were somewhat reduced in number in the early forties, but these included such classics as “All at Once, No Alice”, “Finger of Doom”, “One Last Night”, “Three Kills for One” and “Marihuana”. Part of the energy that he had devoted during the 1930s to stories for cheap publications he then channelled into a new genre: that of radio scripts. Many of Woolrich’s stories were “naturals” for adaptation and broadcasting on such series as Suspense, and at times Woolrich wrote the radio versions himself. As if all this were not enough, Woolrich continued to write other novels – too many for publication under a single byline.

Woolrich showed the manuscript of these novels to Whit Burnett, who had published some of his shorter fiction in Story, and Burnett showed it to the editors at J.B. Lippincott, who agreed to publish it. Since Simon & Schuster, then publishing the Black books, had exclusive right to use the name Cornell Woolrich, a pseudonym was needed; and together Woolrich and Burnett came up with the name of William Irish. The novel that Lippincott published under the Irish byline was, of course, the classic Phantom Lady (1942). The next Irish novels were: Deadline at Dawn (1944), Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1945), published under Woolrich’s last pseudonym, George Hopley, Waltz into Darkness (1947), and I Married a Dead Man (1948).

The public and critical success of the novels led to publication of several collections of Woolrich’s shorter work in a series of hard-cover volumes from Lippincott and in a number of paperback originals which today are  collector’s items. In addition to the many radio plays adapted from his work by himself and others, fifteen movies were made from Woolrich material between 1942 and 1950 alone, including Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmak, 1944), Deadline at Dawn (Harold Clurman , 1946, with screenplay by Clifford Odets) and The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (John Farrow, 1948); but almost all of them badly mauled their sources, and one can find little in them of the authentic Woolrich.

After 1948 Woolrich published little: a novel apiece under each of his three bylines in 1950–51, and one novella late in 1952. That he was remembered at all during the early Fifties is due largely to Ellery Queen, who reprinted in his magazine a host of Woolrich’s early pulp stories, and to Alfred Hitchcock, whose Rear Window (1954) gave some idea of Woolrich’s cinematic potential even though little distinctively Woolrichian is left in the finished film.

Woolrich’s silence in the 1950s is probably related to his mother’s prolonged illness: having spent most of his life in an intense, almost pathological, love-hate relationship with her, he was unable to produce anything during the last years of his mother’s life. On several occasions he passed off slightly updated narratives for new ones, misleading both book and magazine publishers and the public. Woolrich’s mother died in 1957, and not long after her death came her son’s first new book in seven years.

Hotel Room (1958) is a collection of largely noncriminous stories set in a New York City hotel at different periods in its history from its early years of sumptuous fashionableness to the last days before its demolition. The Hotel St. Anselm was apparently an amalgam of all the desiccated Victorian residential hotels in which Woolrich and his mother had lived, and the set in the hotel mark the beginning of Woolrich’s last period, which consists of a mere handful of stories, most of them near-shapeless, hyperemotional “tales of love and despair”.  Woolrich’s best story of the Fifties, though originally conceived as a chapter in Hotel Room, was excised at the last minute and appeared independently in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine as “The Penny-a-Worder”.

The year 1959 saw the publication of Woolrich’s last new novel and his worst, Death Is My Dancing Partner, in which he returns to themes already used. Effectively, Woolrich in his latest novel came around full circle to the sentimental novels he wrote during and just after his college days. And so, the last years wore on, Woolrich had become a diabetic and an alcoholic, he was obsessed with the fear that he was homosexual, he had lost touch  with most of the few acquaintances he had ever had. A tiny rivulet of new stories appeared every so often in EQMM or Saint Mystery Magazine, each eagerly awaited and discussed by those who loved his work, none equal in power to those great novels and stories of the Thirties and Forties.

In 1965 two more collections of his short fiction were published. The Ten Faces of Cornell Woolrich, edited by Ellery Queen, was of high quality, but seven of its ten stories included come straight out of earlier collections. The Dark Side of Love brought together eight stories from the author’s last period, including three, unsaleable to magazines, that appeared for the first time in the collection itself. There were no more books published in his lifetime and less than half-a-dozen further stories, and his condition continued to deteriorate. He developed gangrene in his leg and did nothing about it; when the doctors reached it, it was too far gone to do anything but amputate. He remained in lonely isolation, confined in a wheelchair, unable to learn how to walk on an artificial leg, probably unable to write anything. He died of a stroke a few month later, on September 25, 1968, leaving no survivors.  His state of close to a million dollars he left in a trust fund to Columbia University, for scholarships to go to students of creative writing. The fund is named after his mother.

My Book Notes: “All at Once, No Alice” (1940) a short story by Cornell Woolrich

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Included in The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries, Introductions and compilation by Otto Penzler (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original, 2014). Book Format: Kindle Edition. File Size: 11150 KB. Print Length: 1976 pp. ASIN: B00J1ISJJQ. eISBN: 978-0-8041-7279-0. “All at Once, No Alice” was first published in pulp magazine Argosy Weekly, 2 March, 1940 (Volume 297. No. 3. pp. 72-99), reprinted in EQMM in November 1951, and it was first collected in Eyes That Watch You (New York, Rinehart, 1952).

Description: Jimmy Cannon, a store clerk and the narrator of the story, elopes with Alice Brown, whom he barely knows and they marry with a roadside justice of the peace. Afterwards, they can’t find an available hotel room and a clerk at the Royal Hotel allows Alice to stay in a tiny single room with a cot while Jimmy is consigned to a room at the YMCA. The next morning, Jimmy returns to retrieve Alice who appears to have vanished – and not just from the room. Her name is gone from the register, the justice of the peace claims he hasn’t married them, and the cops think Jimmy is a lunatic. And so begins a race against the clock to save Alice! (Source. Goodreads)

The picture enclosed does not belong to the edition I read.

My Take: The story takes place in the fictional town of Michianopolis to where a newlywed couple has just arrived. They soon find out there’s no room available in any of the hotels to which they are directed, on account of a large convention that is being celebrated on those days in town. In a last and desperate attempt, the Royal Hotel offers them a tiny room with a cot that has barely enough space for one person only. Alice, the woman, accepts the room, while Jimmy, her husband and the narrator of the story, finds a place to stay at the YMCA that doesn’t accept couples. The morning after, Jimmy shows up at the hotel to pick up his wife. Much to his surprise her room is empty. Moreover, no one at the hotel claims to have seen her and her name doesn’t even appear in the hotel register. Alice has disappeared without a trace, as if she never existed. Even worse, no one believes him and everyone thinks he’s making it all up. He can’t even offer any proof of her existence or that he’s telling the truth. And in this way his worst nightmare has only just started.

I have no qualms about admitting that I’m becoming a fan of Cornell Woolrich even though I’ve only read, with this, three of his short stories. I’ve just got hold of some of his short story collections and several of his novels and I’m looking forward to reading them in a not too distant future. I content myself if they are only half as good as these three short stories I’ve just read. Stay tuned.

“All at Once, No Alice” can be found in several short story collections, and it has been reviewed, among others, by Jim Noy at The invisible Event.

About the Author: A sad and lonely man who desperately dedicated books to his typewriter and to his hotel room, Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich (4 December 1903 – 25 September 1968) was born in New York City, grew up in Latin America and New York, and was educated at Columbia University, to which he left his literary estate. Almost certainly a closeted homosexual (his marriage was terminated almost immediately) and an alcoholic, Woolrich was so antisocial and reclusive that he refused to leave his hotel room when his leg became infected, ultimately resulting in its amputation. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the majority of his work has an overwhelming darkness, and few of his characters, whether good or evil, have much hope for happiness–or even justice. Whether writing as Cornell Woolrich, William Irish, or George Hopley, no twentieth-century author equalled his ability to create suspense, and Hollywood producers recognized it early on; few writers have had as many films based on their work as Woolrich, beginning with Convicted (1938) starring Rita Hayworth, and based on “Face Work”. Street of Chance (1942) was based on The Black Curtain, and starred Burgess Meredith and Claire Trevor; The Leopard Man (1943), based on Black Alibi, featured Dennis O’Keefe and Jean Brooks; and Phantom Lady (1944), based on the novel of the same title, starred Ella Raines and Alan Curtis. “Chance” led to Mark of the Whistler (1944), with Richard Dix and Janis Carter; Deadline at Dawn became a movie with the same name in 1946, starring Susan Hayward; and “It Had to Be Murder” was made into Rear Window (1954), with Grace Kelly and James Stewart. There were at least fifteen other film adaptation, not including scores for television programs. Arguably the worst film ever made from any work by Woolrich is The Return of the Whistler, a 1948 Columbia Pictures movie so loosely based on “All at Once, No Alice” that it is barely recognizable and so leaden-paced that it is barely watchable. (Source: Otto Penzler)

A complete Cornell Woolrich bibliography can be found here.

Recommended Reading: Francis M. Nevins’ Cornell Woolrich: First You Dream, Then You Die is an enormous, in depth biography and critical study on Woolrich and his work. It is a very detailed look at Woolrich’s world. Nevins also edited the best of all Woolrich collections, Nightwebs, which contains important essays and bibliographies as well. It also contains Woolrich’s autobiographical story, “The Penny-a-Worder” (1958), which is a gentle self portrait of a pulp writer. A large amount of material on Woolrich, much of it by Nevins, is at Mystery*File. (Source: Mike Grost at A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection)

Cornell Woolrich page at Gadetection

“Who Was Cornell Woolrich?” by Richard Dooling

Pulp Kafka: The Nightmares of Cornell Woolrich BY Jake Hinkson

The Cornell Woolrich Revival by Steve Powell

Cornell Woolrich, the Dark Prince of Noir

“All at Once, No Alice” (De repente, sin Alice), un relato breve de Cornell Woolrich

Descripción: Jimmy Cannon, dependiente de una tienda y narrador de la historia, se fuga con Alice Brown, a quien apenas conoce, y se casan ante un juez de paz. Posteriormente, no pueden encontrar una habitación de hotel disponible y un empleado del hotel Royal permite que Alice se quede en una habitación individual pequeña con un catre mientras que consignan a Jimmy a una habitación en la YMCA. A la mañana siguiente, Jimmy regresa para recuperar a Alice, que parece haber desaparecido, y no solo de la habitación. Su nombre ha desaparecido del registro, el juez de paz afirma que no los ha casado y la policía cree que Jimmy es un lunático. ¡Y, así, comienza una carrera contrarreloj para salvar a Alice! (Fuente. Goodreads)

Mi opinión: La historia se desarrolla en la ciudad ficticia de Michianopolis a donde acaba de llegar una pareja de recién casados. Pronto descubren que no hay habitaciones disponibles en ninguno de los hoteles a los que se dirigen, debido a una gran convención que se celebra esos días en la ciudad. En un último y desesperado intento, el Hotel Royal les ofrece una diminuta habitación con un catre que apenas tiene espacio para una sola persona. Alice, la mujer, acepta la habitación, mientras que Jimmy, su marido y narrador de la historia, encuentra un lugar para hospedarse en el YMCA que no acepta parejas. A la mañana siguiente, Jimmy se presenta en el hotel para recoger a su mujer. Para su sorpresa, su habitación está vacía. Además, nadie en el hotel afirma haberla visto y su nombre ni siquiera aparece en el registro del hotel. Alice ha desaparecido sin dejar rastro, como si nunca hubiera existido. Peor aún, nadie le cree y todos piensan que se lo está inventando todo. Ni siquiera puede ofrecer ninguna prueba de su existencia o de que está diciendo la verdad. Y de esta forma su peor pesadilla no ha hecho más que empezar.

No tengo reparos en admitir que me estoy haciendo fan de Cornell Woolrich a pesar de que solo he leído, con este, tres de sus relatos. Acabo de hacerme con algunas de sus colecciones de relatos y varias de sus novelas y estoy deseando leerlas en un futuro no muy lejano. Me conformo con que sean la mitad de buenos que estos tres relatos que acabo de leer. Manténganse al tanto.

Sobre el autor: Un hombre triste y solitario que desesperadamente dedicaba libros a su máquina de escribir y a la habitación de su hotel, Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich (4 de diciembre de 1903 – 25 de septiembre de 1968) nació en la ciudad de Nueva York, creció en Hispanoamérica y Nueva York, y fue educado en la Universidad de Columbia, a la que legó su patrimonio literario. Casi con toda certeza un homosexual no declarado (su matrimonio terminó casi de inmediato) y un alcohólico, Woolrich era tan antisocial y solitario que se negó a salir de la habitación de su hotel cuando su pierna se infectó, que finalmente tuvo como resultado su amputación. Quizás no sea sorprendente, entonces, que la mayoría de su obra tenga una oscuridad abrumadora, y que pocos de sus personajes, ya sean buenos o malos, tengan mucha esperanza de alcanzar la felicidad, o incluso la justicia. Ya sea escribiendo como Cornell Woolrich, William Irish o George Hopley, ningún autor del siglo XX igualó su capacidad para crear suspense, y los productores de Hollywood lo reconocieron desde el principio; pocos escritores han tenido tantas películas basadas en sus obras como Woolrich, comenzando por Convicted (1938) protagonizada por Rita Hayworth, y basada en “Face Work”. Street of Chance (1942) estaba basada en The Black Curtain y fue protagonizada por Burgess Meredith y Claire Trevor; The Leopard Man (1943), basada en Black Alibi, contó con la participación de Dennis O’Keefe y Jean Brooks; y Phantom Lady (1944), basada en la novela del mismo título, protagonizada por Ella Raines y Alan Curtis. “Chance” dió lugar a Mark of the Whistler (1944), con Richard Dix y Janis Carter; Deadline at Dawn se convirtió en una película con el mismo nombre en 1946, protagonizada por Susan Hayward; y “It Had to Be Murder” se convirtió en Rear Window (1954), con Grace Kelly y James Stewart. Hubo al menos otras quince adaptaciones cinematográficas, sin incluir composiciones para programas de televisión. Podría decirse que la peor película jamás realizada a partir de cualquier trabajo de Woolrich es The Return of the Whistler, una película de Columbia Pictures de 1948 basada tan vagamente en “All at Once, No Alice” que apenas es reconocible y tiene un ritmo tan plomizo que apenas se puede ver. (Fuente: Otto Penzler)

Una bibliografía completa de Woolrich se puede encontrar aquí.

My Book Notes: “Murder at the Automat” (1937) a short story by Cornell Woolrich

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Included in Nightwebs (Orion Books, 2002) Paperback Edition. 362 pages. ISBN: 9780752851709. “Murder at the Automat” was originally published in Dime Detective Magazine. August 1937 (Volume 25. No.1) and later included in Nightwebs, a collection of short stories, published by Harper & Row Limited, 1971.

Description: “Murder at the Automat” is a short story that falls into the category of “impossible crime”. A man is murdered at an automat by a pre-wrapped poisoned bologna sandwich. The others at his table didn’t do it. The sandwich packers didn’t do it. No one could have done it. At least, that’s how it seems. (Based on The Pulp Journals)

My Take: A delightful short story very well crafted, that I have quite enjoyed and that have encouraged me to read the rest of the stories included in this collection. Another nice example of Woolrich’s ability to set up a story in the manner of a classic Golden Age mystery. Stay tuned.

“Murder at the Automat” can be found in several short stories collections, and it has been reviewed, among others, by Jim Noy at The invisible Event.

About the Author: Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich was born in New York City on 4 December 1903; his parents separated when he was young. He lived for a time in Mexico with his father before returning to New York to live with his mother, Claire Attalie Woolrich. He attended Columbia University but left in 1926 without graduating when his first novel, Cover Charge, was published. Cover Charge was one of six Jazz Age novels inspired by the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Woolrich is best known for penning the short story, “It had to Be Murder” in 1942 under the Irish name, loosely-based on H. G. Wells’ short story “Through a Window”. Alfred Hitchcock made it into a 1954 film renamed Rear Window and starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly. In 1990, ownership of the copyright in Woolrich’s original story “It Had to Be Murder” and its use for Rear Window was litigated before the United States Supreme Court in Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207.

He went on to be the father of American “noir fiction”, with his numerous short stories published in the pulp fiction magazines of the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s; as well as his legendary “black” series of novels, many of which have been turned into major motion pictures. Getting a Hollywood contract in the late 1920’s he worked as screenwriter. Woolrich was homosexual and was very sexually active in his youth. In 1930, while working as a screenwriter in Los Angeles, Woolrich married Violet Virginia Blackton (1910 – 65), daughter of silent film producer J. Stuart Blackton. They separated after three months, and the marriage was annulled in 1933.

Woolrich returned to New York where he and his mother moved into the Hotel Marseilles (Broadway and West 103rd Street). He lived there until her death on 6 October 1957, which prompted his move to the Hotel Franconia (20 West 72nd Street). He soon turned to pulp and detective fiction, often published under his pseudonyms: William Irish, George Hopley and Cornell Woolrich. Hopley-Woolrich throughout his writing career published 27 novels and 16 short story collections resulting in over 40 films and TV theatre episodes based on his stories. In later years, he socialized on occasion in Manhattan bars with Mystery Writers of America colleagues and younger fans such as writer Ron Goulart, but alcoholism and an amputated leg (caused by an infection from a too-tight shoe which went untreated) left him a recluse.

François Truffaut filmed Woolrich’s The Bride Wore Black and Waltz Into Darkness in 1968 and 1969, respectively, the latter as Mississippi Mermaid. He 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. Cornell Woolrich died on September 25, 1968 in New York City. He died weighing 89 pounds. He is interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.He bequeathed his estate of about $850,000 to Columbia University, to endow scholarships in his mother’s memory for writing students. 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 3 February 2020, the Faded Page has seven titles available as e-books in the public domain in Canada; these may be still under copyright elsewhere. In 2020, 2021 and 2022, Otto Penzler’s “American Mystery Classics” series released new editions of Waltz into Darkness (1947), The Bride Wore Black (1940) and Deadline at Dawn (1944).

His biographer, Francis Nevins Jr., rated Woolrich the fourth best crime writer of his day, behind only Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner and Raymond Chandler. A check of film titles reveals that more film noir screenplays were adapted from works by Woolrich than any other crime novelist, and many of his stories were adapted during the 1940s for Suspense and other dramatic radio programs. (Sources: The Passing Tramp; Wikipedia, and others).

A complete bibliography can be found here.

Recommended Reading: Francis M. Nevins’ Cornell Woolrich: First You Dream, Then You Die is an enormous, in depth biography and critical study on Woolrich and his work. It is a very detailed look at Woolrich’s world. Nevins also edited the best of all Woolrich collections, Nightwebs, which contains important essays and bibliographies as well. It also contains Woolrich’s autobiographical story, “The Penny-a-Worder” (1958), which is a gentle self portrait of a pulp writer. A large amount of material on Woolrich, much of it by Nevins, is at Mystery*File. (Source: Mike Grost at A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection)

Cornell Woolrich page at Gadetection

A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection

“Who Was Cornell Woolrich?” by Richard Dooling

Pulp Kafka: The Nightmares of Cornell Woolrich BY Jake Hinkson

The Cornell Woolrich Revival by Steve Powell

Cornell Woolrich, the Dark Prince of Noir

“Asesinato en el restaurante automático”, relato breve de Cornell Woolrich

“Asesinato en el restaurante automático” se publicó originalmente en Dime Detective Magazine, Agosto de 1937 (Volumen 25. No.1) y luego fué incluida en Las garras de la noche, una colección de relatos, publicados por Harper & Row Limited, 1971.

Descripción: “Asesinato en el restaurante automático” es un relato breve que pertenece a la categoría de “crimen imposible”. Un hombre es asesinado en un restaurante autómatico con un sándwich de mortadela envenenado previamente envuelto. Los otros en su mesa no lo hicieron. Los envasadores de sándwiches no lo hicieron. Nadie podía haberlo hecho. Al menos, eso es lo que parece. (Basado en The Pulp Journals)

Mi opinión: Una delicia de cuento muy bien elaborado, que he disfrutado bastante y que me ha animado a leer el resto de los relatos incluidos en esta colección. Otro buen ejemplo de la habilidad de Woolrich para montar una historia a la manera de los misterios clásicos de la Edad de Oro. Manténganse al tanto.

Sobre el autor: Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich nació en la ciudad de Nueva York el 4 de diciembre de 1903; sus padres se separaron cuando él era joven. Vivió un tiempo en México con su padre antes de regresar a Nueva York para vivir con su madre, Claire Attalie Woolrich. Asistió a la Universidad de Columbia, pero se fue en 1926 sin graduarse cuando se publicó su primera novela, Cover Charge. Cover Charge fue una de las seis novelas de la era del jazz inspiradas en los trabajos de F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Woolrich es más conocido por escribir el relato “It had to be Murder” en 1942 bajo el nombre de Irish, basado libremente en el cuento de H. G. Wells “Through a Window”. Alfred Hitchcock lo convirtió en una película de 1954 rebautizada como Ventana Indiscreta y protagonizada por James Stewart y Grace Kelly. En 1990, la propiedad de los derechos de autor de la historia original de Woolrich “It Had to Be Murder” y su uso para Ventana Indiscreta estuvo en litigio ante la Corte Suprema de los Estados Unidos en Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207.

Pasó a ser el padre de la ficción “noir” estadounidense, con sus numerosos relatos publicados en las revistas pulp de las décadas de 1930, 40 y 50; así como su legendaria serie de novelas “negras”, muchas de las cuales se han convertido en importantes películas. Consiguiendo un contrato en Hollywood a finales de la década de 1920, trabajó como guionista. Woolrich era homosexual y muy activo sexualmente en su juventud. En 1930, mientras trabajaba como guionista en Los Ángeles, Woolrich se casó con Violet Virginia Blackton (1910-1965), hija del productor de cine mudo J. Stuart Blackton. Se separaron después de tres meses y el matrimonio fue anulado en 1933.

Woolrich regresó a Nueva York, donde él y su madre se mudaron al Hotel Marseilles (Broadway y West 103rd Street). Vivió allí hasta la muerte de ella el 6 de octubre de 1957, lo que provocó su traslado al Hotel Franconia (20 West 72nd Street). Pronto se dedicó a la novela policíaca y pulp, a menudo publicada bajo sus seudónimos: William Irish, George Hopley y Cornell Woolrich. Hopley-Woolrich a lo largo de su carrera como escritor publicó 27 novelas y 16 colecciones de relatos que dieron como resultado más de 40 películas y programas de televisión basados ​​en sus historias. En años posteriores, socializó de vez en cuando en bares de Manhattan con colegas del Mystery Writers of America y aficionados más jóvenes como el escritor Ron Goulart, pero el alcoholismo y una pierna amputada (causada por una infección de un zapato demasiado apretado que no se trató) lo dejó recluído.

François Truffaut filmó The Bride Wore Black y Waltz Into Darkness de Woolrich en 1968 y 1969, respectivamente, esta última como La sirena del Mississippi. No asistió al estreno de la película de Truffaut de su novela The Bride Wore Black en 1968, a pesar de que se llevó a cabo en la ciudad de Nueva York. Cornell Woolrich murió el 25 de septiembre de 1968 en la ciudad de Nueva York. Murió pesando 89 libras. Está enterrado en el cementerio Ferncliff en Hartsdale, Nueva York. Legó su patrimonio de aproximadamente USD 850,000 a la Universidad de Columbia, para otorgar becas en memoria de su madre para alumnos que quieran dedicarse a escribir. La mayoría de los libros de Woolrich están agotados y las nuevas ediciones tardaron en salir por cuestiones de propiedad intelectual. Sin embargo, a principios de la década de 1990 se publicaron nuevas colecciones de sus cuentos. Desde el 3 de febrero de 2020, Faded Page tiene siete títulos disponibles en formato electrónico de dominio público en Canadá; estos pueden estar todavía bajo derechos de autor en otros países. En 2020, 2021 y 2022, la serie “American Mystery Classics” de Otto Penzler lanzó nuevas ediciones de Waltz into Darkness (1947), The Bride Wore Black (1940) y Deadline at Dawn (1944).

Su biógrafo, Francis Nevins Jr., calificó a Woolrich como el cuarto mejor escritor policíaco de su época, solo por detrás de Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner y Raymond Chandler. Una revisión de los títulos de las películas revela que se adaptaron más guiones de cine negro a partir de obras de Woolrich que de cualquier otro novelista policiaco, y muchas de sus historias se adaptaron durante la década de 1940 para Suspense y otros programas dramáticos de radio. (Fuentes: The Passing Tramp; Wikipedia y otros).

Una bibliografía completa se puede encontrar aquí.

My Book Notes: “Mystery in Room 913” (1938) a short story by Cornell Woolrich

Esta entrada es bilingüe. Desplazarse hacia abajo para acceder a la versión en español

Renaissance Literary & Talent in collaboration with the Proprietor, 2013. Book Format: Kindle Edition. File Size: 432 KB. Print Length: 78 pages. ASIN: B00F34QBTM. ISBN: 978-1-938402-28-9. Originally published in Detective Fiction Weekly Volume 120, Number 1. June 4, 1938. The story was collected in Somebody on the Phone (Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1950) under the alternative title “The Room with Something Wrong”.

Cornell Woolrich is “our greatest writer of Suspense Fiction” – Francis Nevins, Woolrich biographer.

Publisher Description: “Mystery in Room 913” is one of Woolrich’s short stories considered a novella based upon it’s length. Set in New York, a place he lived with his mother, and where many of his stories take place, it’s the story of Room 913 in the Hotel St. Anselm, where three men check in and unexplainably jump out of the window to their deaths. The detective who investigates refuses to believe that all three men coincidentally committed suicide in the same room of the same hotel. Not until the detective checks into the room himself does the reader learn of the secret of Room 913. This is one of Cornell Woolrich’s classics. It delivers the kind of suspense that Woolrich fans have come to love. The story was also published under the title “The Room with Something Wrong” in a collection of stories entitled Somebody on the Phone.

Opening line: “They thought it was the Depression the first time it happened“

My Take: The action takes place almost entirely in the Hotel St. Anselm in New York, during the years of the Great Depression. Over a three-year period, three men checked into room 913 and, for no apparent reason, committed suicide by jumping out of a window into the street in the early morning hours. Striker, the hotel detective, refuses to accept that these deaths were suicides, contrary to the opinion of City detective Eddie Courlander, to whom the matter was as clear as water. It is interesting to highlight that it only happened with singles, when there was a double occupancy in the room nothing ever happened. Striker became obsessed with what happened, to the point that he decided to spend the night alone in that room, in a desperate attempt to prove that the deaths were actually murders and not the result of chance.

My thanks to Curtis Evans for arousing my interest in reading Cornell Woolrich and for having turned my attention towards his short stories and novellas. Consequently I started digging and decided to read first “Mystery in Room 913”, and I wasn’t wrong, good prove of this are the two reviews that follow later. If this wasn’t enough, TomCat at Beneath the Stains of Time, says about “Mystery in Room 913” aka “The Room With Something Wrong”: “From all the Rooms-That-Kill stories I have read, this one ranks at the very top and concerns a hotel room with a will of its own and decides when guests have overstayed their welcome by hurdling them out of the window in the dead of night.” (Beneath the Stains of Time). And as Kate Jackson adds at her blog: “With Woolrich there is no guarantee of a happy ending, of right triumphing over wrong, and I feel this gives his work a grittier edge. This is not a criticism and I very much enjoyed reading this story. The mechanics involved are unusual and unexpected.” (Cross-examining Crime). In conclusion, I don’t know what you’re waiting for to grab a copy of this short story and start reading it. Highly recommended.

Mystery in Room 913 has been reviewed, among others, by  Curtis Evans at The Passing Tramp and Jim Noy at The Invisible Event,

About the Author: Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich was born in New York City on 4 December 1903; his parents separated when he was young. He lived for a time in Mexico with his father before returning to New York to live with his mother, Claire Attalie Woolrich. He attended Columbia University but left in 1926 without graduating when his first novel, Cover Charge, was published. Cover Charge was one of six Jazz Age novels inspired by the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Woolrich is best known for penning the short story, “It had to Be Murder” in 1942 under the Irish name, loosely-based on H. G. Wells’ short story “Through a Window”. Alfred Hitchcock made it into a 1954 film renamed Rear Window and starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly. In 1990, ownership of the copyright in Woolrich’s original story “It Had to Be Murder” and its use for Rear Window was litigated before the United States Supreme Court in Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207.

He went on to be the father of American “noir fiction”, with his numerous short stories published in the pulp fiction magazines of the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s; as well as his legendary “black” series of novels, many of which have been turned into major motion pictures. Getting a Hollywood contract in the late 1920’s he worked as screenwriter. Woolrich was homosexual and was very sexually active in his youth. In 1930, while working as a screenwriter in Los Angeles, Woolrich married Violet Virginia Blackton (1910 – 65), daughter of silent film producer J. Stuart Blackton. They separated after three months, and the marriage was annulled in 1933.

Woolrich returned to New York where he and his mother moved into the Hotel Marseilles (Broadway and West 103rd Street). He lived there until her death on 6 October 1957, which prompted his move to the Hotel Franconia (20 West 72nd Street). He soon turned to pulp and detective fiction, often published under his pseudonyms: William Irish, George Hopley and Cornell Woolrich. Hopley-Woolrich throughout his writing career published 27 novels and 16 short story collections resulting in over 40 films and TV theatre episodes based on his stories. In later years, he socialized on occasion in Manhattan bars with Mystery Writers of America colleagues and younger fans such as writer Ron Goulart, but alcoholism and an amputated leg (caused by an infection from a too-tight shoe which went untreated) left him a recluse.

François Truffaut filmed Woolrich’s The Bride Wore Black and Waltz Into Darkness in 1968 and 1969, respectively, the latter as Mississippi Mermaid. He 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. Cornell Woolrich died on September 25, 1968 in New York City. He died weighing 89 pounds. He is interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.He bequeathed his estate of about $850,000 to Columbia University, to endow scholarships in his mother’s memory for writing students. 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 3 February 2020, the Faded Page has seven titles available as e-books in the public domain in Canada; these may be still under copyright elsewhere. In 2020, 2021 and 2022, Otto Penzler’s “American Mystery Classics” series released new editions of Waltz into Darkness (1947), The Bride Wore Black (1940) and Deadline at Dawn (1944).

His biographer, Francis Nevins Jr., rated Woolrich the fourth best crime writer of his day, behind only Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner and Raymond Chandler. A check of film titles reveals that more film noir screenplays were adapted from works by Woolrich than any other crime novelist, and many of his stories were adapted during the 1940s for Suspense and other dramatic radio programs. (Sources: The Passing Tramp; Wikipedia, and others).

Bibliography: Cornell Woolrich’s novels written between 1940 to 1948 are considered his principal legacy. During this time, he definitively became an author of novel-length crime fiction which stand apart from his first six works, written under the influence of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Woolrich’s best known novels are: The Bride Wore Black (1940) (as by William Irish) aka Beware the Lady; The Black Curtain (1941); The Black Alibi (1942); Phantom Lady (1942) (as by William Irish); The Black Angel (1943); The Black Path of Fear (1944); Deadline at Dawn (1944) (as by William Irish); Night has a Thousand Eyes (1945) (as by George Hopley); Waltz into Darkness (1947) (as by William Irish); I Married a Dead Man (1948) (as by William Irish); and Rendezvous in Black (1948).

A complete short story bibliography can be found here.

Recommended Reading: Francis M. Nevins’ Cornell Woolrich: First You Dream, Then You Die is an enormous, in depth biography and critical study on Woolrich and his work. It is a very detailed look at Woolrich’s world. Nevins also edited the best of all Woolrich collections, Nightwebs, which contains important essays and bibliographies as well. It also contains Woolrich’s autobiographical story, “The Penny-a-Worder” (1958), which is a gentle self portrait of a pulp writer. A large amount of material on Woolrich, much of it by Nevins, is at Mystery*File. (Source: Mike Grost at A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection)

Cornell Woolrich page at Gadetection

A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection

“Who Was Cornell Woolrich?” by Richard Dooling

Pulp Kafka: The Nightmares of Cornell Woolrich BY Jake Hinkson

The Cornell Woolrich Revival by Steve Powell

Cornell Woolrich, the Dark Prince of Noir

“Mystery in Room 913”, relato de Cornell Woolrich

Descripción de la editorial: “Mystery in Room 913” es un relato breve de Woolrich considerado una novela corta por su extensión. Ambientada en Nueva York, un lugar donde vivió con su madre, y donde se desarrollan muchos de sus relatos, es la historia de la habitación 913 del Hotel St. Anselm, donde tres hombres se registran e inexplicablemente saltan por la ventana hacia la muerte. El detective que investiga se niega a creer que los tres hombres se suicidaron por casualidad en la misma habitación del mismo hotel. No es hasta que el detective se registra en la habitación que el lector se entera del secreto de la habitación 913. Este es uno de los clásicos relatos de Cornell Woolrich. Ofrece el tipo de suspense que los fans de Woolrich han llegado a gustar. La historia también se publicó con el título “The Room with Something Wrong” en una colección de relatos titulados Somebody on the Phone.

Primera frase: “Pensaron que era la Depresión la primera vez que sucedió”

Mi opinión: La acción transcurre casi en su totalidad en el Hotel St. Anselm de Nueva York, durante los años de la Gran Depresión. Durante un período de tres años, tres hombres se registraron en la habitación 913 y, sin razón aparente, se suicidaron saltando por una ventana a la calle en las primeras horas de la mañana. Striker, el detective del hotel, se niega a aceptar que estas muertes fueran suicidios, en contra de la opinión del detective de la City Eddie Courlander, para quien el asunto estaba tan claro como el agua. Es interesante resaltar que solo pasaba con personas solas, cuando la habitación tenía una ocupación doble nunca pasaba nada. Striker se obsesionó con lo sucedido, al punto que decidió pasar la noche solo en esa habitación, en un intento desesperado por demostrar que las muertes eran en realidad asesinatos y no fruto de la casualidad.

Mi agradecimiento a Curtis Evans por despertar mi interés por la lectura de Cornell Woolrich y por haber dirigido mi atención hacia sus relatos y novelas cortas. En consecuencia comencé a indagar y decidí leer primero “Mystery in Room 913”, y no me equivoqué, buena prueba de ello son las dos reseñas que he incluido más arriba. Si esto no fuera suficiente, TomCat en Beneath the Stains of Time, dice sobre “Mystery in Room 913”, también conocido como “The Room With Something Wrong”: “De todas las historias de cuartos-que-matan que he leído, esta se sitúa entre las mejores y hace referencia a una habitación de hotel con voluntad propia que decide cuándo los huéspedes se han quedado más de lo debido arrojándolos por la ventana en la oscuridad de la noche”. (Beneath the Stains of Time). Y como añade Kate Jackson en su blog: “Con Woolrich no hay garantía de un final feliz, de que el bien triunfe sobre el mal, y siento que esto le da a su trabajo una ventaja más valiente. Esto no es una crítica y disfruté mucho leyendo esta historia. La mecánica involucrada es inusual e inesperada”. (Cross-examining Crime). Para concluir, no sé a qué está esperando para hacerse con una copia de este relato y empezar a leerlo. Muy recomendable.

Sobre el autor: Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich nació en la ciudad de Nueva York el 4 de diciembre de 1903; sus padres se separaron cuando él era joven. Vivió un tiempo en México con su padre antes de regresar a Nueva York para vivir con su madre, Claire Attalie Woolrich. Asistió a la Universidad de Columbia, pero se fue en 1926 sin graduarse cuando se publicó su primera novela, Cover Charge. Cover Charge fue una de las seis novelas de la era del jazz inspiradas en los trabajos de F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Woolrich es más conocido por escribir el relato “It had to be Murder” en 1942 bajo el nombre de Irish, basado libremente en el cuento de H. G. Wells “Through a Window”. Alfred Hitchcock lo convirtió en una película de 1954 rebautizada como Ventana Indiscreta y protagonizada por James Stewart y Grace Kelly. En 1990, la propiedad de los derechos de autor de la historia original de Woolrich “It Had to Be Murder” y su uso para Ventana Indiscreta estuvo en litigio ante la Corte Suprema de los Estados Unidos en Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207.

Pasó a ser el padre de la ficción “noir” estadounidense, con sus numerosos relatos publicados en las revistas pulp de las décadas de 1930, 40 y 50; así como su legendaria serie de novelas “negras”, muchas de las cuales se han convertido en importantes películas. Consiguiendo un contrato en Hollywood a finales de la década de 1920, trabajó como guionista. Woolrich era homosexual y muy activo sexualmente en su juventud. En 1930, mientras trabajaba como guionista en Los Ángeles, Woolrich se casó con Violet Virginia Blackton (1910-1965), hija del productor de cine mudo J. Stuart Blackton. Se separaron después de tres meses y el matrimonio fue anulado en 1933.

Woolrich regresó a Nueva York, donde él y su madre se mudaron al Hotel Marseilles (Broadway y West 103rd Street). Vivió allí hasta la muerte de ella el 6 de octubre de 1957, lo que provocó su traslado al Hotel Franconia (20 West 72nd Street). Pronto se dedicó a la novela policíaca y pulp, a menudo publicada bajo sus seudónimos: William Irish, George Hopley y Cornell Woolrich. Hopley-Woolrich a lo largo de su carrera como escritor publicó 27 novelas y 16 colecciones de relatos que dieron como resultado más de 40 películas y programas de televisión basados ​​en sus historias. En años posteriores, socializó de vez en cuando en bares de Manhattan con colegas del Mystery Writers of America y aficionados más jóvenes como el escritor Ron Goulart, pero el alcoholismo y una pierna amputada (causada por una infección de un zapato demasiado apretado que no se trató) lo dejó recluído.

François Truffaut filmó The Bride Wore Black y Waltz Into Darkness de Woolrich en 1968 y 1969, respectivamente, esta última como La sirena del Mississippi. No asistió al estreno de la película de Truffaut de su novela The Bride Wore Black en 1968, a pesar de que se llevó a cabo en la ciudad de Nueva York. Cornell Woolrich murió el 25 de septiembre de 1968 en la ciudad de Nueva York. Murió pesando 89 libras. Está enterrado en el cementerio Ferncliff en Hartsdale, Nueva York. Legó su patrimonio de aproximadamente USD 850,000 a la Universidad de Columbia, para otorgar becas en memoria de su madre para alumnos que quieran dedicarse a escribir. La mayoría de los libros de Woolrich están agotados y las nuevas ediciones tardaron en salir por cuestiones de propiedad intelectual. Sin embargo, a principios de la década de 1990 se publicaron nuevas colecciones de sus cuentos. Desde el 3 de febrero de 2020, Faded Page tiene siete títulos disponibles en formato electrónico de dominio público en Canadá; estos pueden estar todavía bajo derechos de autor en otros países. En 2020, 2021 y 2022, la serie “American Mystery Classics” de Otto Penzler lanzó nuevas ediciones de Waltz into Darkness (1947), The Bride Wore Black (1940) y Deadline at Dawn (1944).

Su biógrafo, Francis Nevins Jr., calificó a Woolrich como el cuarto mejor escritor policíaco de su época, solo por detrás de Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner y Raymond Chandler. Una revisión de los títulos de las películas revela que se adaptaron más guiones de cine negro a partir de obras de Woolrich que de cualquier otro novelista policiaco, y muchas de sus historias se adaptaron durante la década de 1940 para Suspense y otros programas dramáticos de radio. (Fuentes: The Passing Tramp; Wikipedia y otros).

Bibliografía: Las novelas de Cornell Woolrich escritas entre 1940 y 1948 se consideran su principal legado. Durante este tiempo, se convirtió definitivamente en un autor de novelas policíacas que se distingue de sus primeros seis trabajos, escritos bajo la influencia de F. Scott Fitzgerald. Las novelas más conocidas de Woolrich son: La novia vestía de negro (1940) (como William Irish), también conocida como Beware the Lady; La cortina negra (1941); Coartada negra (1942); Dama Fantasma(1942) (como William Irish); El ángel negro (1943); El camino negro del miedo (1944); Deadline at Dawn (1944) (como William Irish); La noche tiene mil ojos (1945) (como George Hopley); Vals en la oscuridad (1947) (como William Irish); Me casé con un hombre muerto (1948) (como William Irish); y Encuentro en negro (1948).