Thanks, Juri, for responding to Mark's question about Orrie
Hitt. I would have myself but work has been hectic this
week.
Ah, Orrie Hitt. How many young men in the 1950s and 1960s
poured over the Orrie Hitt novels published by Beacon and
Midwood with titles like DORMITORY GIRLS? I went on line and
found a Orrie Hitt novel titled THE SUCKER. The back cover
blurb had the headline "One Damn Girl After Another." In this
day of explicit sexual content on television, it is hard to
imagine the time when this sort of thing was borderline
legal. On that back cover there is the wonderful rundown of
the women the hero knew including one with whom he
"...conspired by day and perspired by night." My goodness,
the writer who came up with that should have been carried out
of the room on the shoulder of his or her peers.
For years I assumed that Orrie Hitt was a "house name" as it
seemed unlikely that any writer could be that prolific. Few
writers put their real names on Beacon or Midwood paperbacks.
Michael Avallone was one exception. Mike came up with the
best soft porn title THE CUNNING LINGUIST but he did use his
Troy Conway name for that one.
So years ago I was surprised to learn that Orrie Hitt was a
real person. But the real shocker was the source of the
information the late Ellen Nehr, who celebrated the cozy
mystery and seemed to have a special love for mysteries by
women with three names--Phoebe Atwood Taylor was a particular
favorite. She was the first fan guest of honor at the Malice
Domestic convention and they've named an award after
her.
So it was with some considerable shock in a Bouchercon party
many years ago (so many that it was filled with cigarette
smoke and people were drinking alcoholic beverages)that I
heard Ellen say "I've been talking to the family of Orrie
Hitt."
I should not have been that surprised because Ellen was a
wonderful researcher and if she couldn't do the work she
could browbeat someone else into doing it. Abou the same
time, she had me in the Alexandria, Virginia tracing the
woman who wrote several wondefful mysteries under the name
Francis Bonnamy.
And back in the day when no one gave a damn about mystery
writers and paperback writers she was tracking them down and
interviewing them and writing about them--see the early
issues of Ed Gorman's "Mystery Scene" or Ellen's award
winning book on the Doubleday Crime Club series.
So with a tip of my hat to the memory of my dear late friend
Ellen Nehr, I must report that Orrie Edwin Hitt (1916-1975)
did not consider himself a paperback hack and was quite proud
of his writing career. I do appreciate and understand the
basis of Juri's opinion.
Richard Moore
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Juri Nummelin"
<juri.nummelin@...> wrote:
>
> Orrie Hitt was a paperback hack, writing dozens (if
not hundreds) of
mild
> sex novels set usually in the backwoods. He wrote, I
think, from the
> fourties to the sixties. He's dealt with in Lee
Server's history of
the
> paperbacks.
>
> Juri
>
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