- Born
- Died
- Birth nameWillard Huntington Wright
- Willard Huntington Wright was born to Archibald Davenport Wright and Annie Van Vranken Wright on October 15, 1887, in Charlottesville. He attended St. Vincent College, Pomona College, and Harvard University. He also studied art in Munich and Paris, an apprenticeship that led to a job as literary and art critic for the Los Angeles Times. From 1912 to 1914, he edited "The Smart Set," a New York literary magazine, and continued writing as a critic and journalist until 1923, when he became ill from overwork. His doctor confined him to bed because of a heart ailment for more than two years. In frustration, he began collecting thousands of volumes of crime and detection. In 1926, all this work paid off with the publication of his first "S.S. Van Dine" novel, "The Benson Murder Case." He went on to write 11 more, and his aristocratic amateur sleuth, Philo Vance (who shares a love of aesthetics like Wright), was so popular that Wright became wealthy for the first time in his life. He moved into a penthouse and enjoyed spending his fortune in a style similar to that of elegant Philo.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Fiona Kelleghan <fkelleghan@aol.com>
- Archibald Wright moved his wife and two sons to Santa Monica, California in 1901 when he bought the Arcadia Hotel. The boys were highly competitive; their eldest son, learned to read and write at a very early age, while their youngest son, Stanton, aspired to become a painter. Willard Wright proved to be multi-talented but possessed a rebellious streak that made college problematic; he attended 3 colleges between 1903-06, even gaining entrance into Harvard as a 'non-martriculated' student, but consistently enjoyed partying more than studying and was asked to leave the Ivy League in the spring of 1907. While slowly making his way back westward, Wright met an aspiring writer, Katherine Boynton and hearing that his brother was engaged, quickly married her. This hasty marriage proved to be 20-year mistake. In the early days of his marriage, the Wrights were virtually penniless. He sponged off his wealthy parents and ran through innumerable jobs in quick succession, from real estate sales to attempting to launch a soft-drink company. Everything he tried failed miserably and he finally appealed to his wealthy father for help. Archibald landed him a job as a ticket clerk within the family's latest venture, a Pasadena to Los Angeles rail line. Although miserable in the job, it proved especially fortuitous for Wright, who met a reporter for the LA Times and schmoozed his way into a job interview with the paper's managing editor, the astute Harry Andrews. He was offered a job as a reporter/literary critic the same month his only child, Beverley, was born. Harry Andrews was fond of intelligent controversy and for the first time in his life, Wright had a job that matched his talents. Andrews quickly capitalized on Wright's often sensational criticism of popular best sellers and promotion of obscure writers in the Times' Sunday edition. He received notice from The Baltimore Sun's critic, H.L. Mencken, who in 1913 recommended Wright for an ill-fated job as editor-in-chief of Smart Set, a New York based monthly targeting an upper-class subscription base. He soon angered it's publisher by authorizing stories about assorted urban lowlife and was fired within a year for financial impropriety; he'd published a promotional version of an unauthorized literary magazine and charged it to Smart Set. Over the next decade, Wright's life would fall back into a pattern of false starts, debt and incredibly bad timing. He published a lightweight essay on touring Europe at the dawn of WWI that understandably failed miserably. Seemingly clueless, Wright published his second book, 'What Nietzsche Taught' in 1915, only to find the public's appetite for Teutonic philosophy seriously wanting after the sinking of the Lusitania. He then took on more conventional subjects, publishing 'Modern Painting: Its Tendency and Meaning.' This became an influential critical observation of art and sold well. During this period he was extremely productive, publishing a novel, 'Man of Promise,' which although it too failed, gained him good critical notice (and ironically, a reprint by Scribner's in 1930, designed to capitalize on his later Philo Vance success). Wright had always suffered from a need for immediate gratification and had a particular fondness for living on the edge and it was around this time he acquired a particularly nasty morphine habit and returned to his wife and daughter for an abortive reconciliation. He left for New York again in 1920, and immediately resumed his drug habit, sporadically writing penny-a-word copy for movie magazines in a haze of alcohol and a worsening need for dope, under various pseudonyms. Hitting rock bottom in 1922, he was living off a wealthy married woman. During this long downward spiral, Wright practiced the life of an addict: his shortcomings were magnified under the influence; he became thoroughly unreliable and borrowed money he wouldn't or couldn't repay. Wright succeeded in alienating his most prominent supporter, H.L. Mencken, and burned most of his friends, with the notable exception of author/chess affectionado Norbert Lederer, who encouraged him to write mystery novels. Lederer helped to nominally support Wright and allowed him access to his enormous mystery library as research. By 1925, desperate for money and figuring it was better than writing for hack movie magazines, Wright made his most serious attempt at drying out. He accepted Lederer's challenge and delved into the mystery genre, studying it's formula and style while suppressing his long-professed shame at writing popular fiction. And he succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations, creating one of the most famous detective characters in 20th Century fiction, the ultra-sophisticated Philo Vance. Adopting 'S.S. Van Dine' as his persona, he served as a narrator of Philo Vance's series of ingenious murder mysteries. Cleverly introducing Van Dine as Vance's lawyer (and college friend), he ingratiated himself unobtrusively in each story. Each of his novels would feature detailed schematics of the murderous settings and would become something of a trademark. 'The Benson Murder Case' was published in 1926 and was an immediate hit. Wright immediately hammered out two best selling follow ups which were sold to Paramount as a package deal in 1928. Wright's 'S.S. Van Dine' became the one of the most popular writers in America. His real identity was a brief national obsession until it was revealed in Scribner's Magazine in September 1928. He finally divorced his wife in 1929, marrying Claire de Lisle the following year. In his salad days, from mid-1926 through 1934, Willard Wright was at the top of his game, ranking as one of the most successful writers in America. He thoroughly enjoyed identifying with his character, the independently wealthy and cultured Philo Vance, to the extent that he quickly began to live like him. Wright partied lavishly and took on eccentric hobbies - owning a Scottish Terrier kennel and breeding exotic fish - and entertained lavishly, falling into a pattern of dangerously outspending his large income. By 1934, with the nation gripped in the Great Depression, literary tastes were turning away from Wright's aesthetic writing style, favoring grittier hard-boiled realism (a coincidental argument could be made cinematically, for the quality of Wright's film adaptations dropped precipitously after The Kennel Murder Case (1933), easily considered the best of the series), but he had created a lifestyle he was loathe to change. In any case, by the mid-1930s his popularity had waned considerably and Wright hadn't or couldn't adjust to the public's changing literary taste. He published his final Vance mystery, 'The Kidnap Murder Case' in 1936. By 1938, with his finances seriously on the wane, Wright leaped at the opportunity to sell a story to Paramount, The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939) which flopped badly at the box-office. In debt, drinking heavily and suffering the physical ravages of his long-term opium addiction, he accepted an assignment for a Sonja Henie film but had a heart attack while working on a draft. He temporarily recovered, but suffered a second heart attack on April 11, 1939 and died at 51.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jack Backstreet
- SpousesClaire de Lisle(1930 - April 11, 1939) (his death)Katharine Belle Boynton(July 1907 - 1929) (divorced, 1 child)
- Adopted his pseudonym based on Van Dyne, an old family name, and the abbreviation of "steamship."
- His younger brother was renowned abstract artist, Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890-1973). His works are on exhibit in the Smithsonian, Kemper, Hirshhorn and Walker Art Museums, amongst others.
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