Michael Avallone was one of a handful of writers who
befriended Cornell Woolrich in the last decade of his life.
Mike was quite active in the New York MWA chapter for many
years and this piece was written for the MWA's The Third
Degree following Woolrich's funeral. For those interested in
the full article, it can be found in the Ace Books reprint of
THE BLACK ANGEL (Ace 06505), the fifth of the Woolrich
reprints published by Ace in a series that began a few months
before Woolrich died. Here follows a substantial portion of
that piece:
"Cornell Woolrich died on September 25, 1968, leaving behind
a body of suspense work that ensures him immortality. The man
who used the alias William Irish as well as his own name,
also bequeaths to posterity one of the most sorrowful
personal lives this side of Edgar Allan Poe. Woolrich died a
millionaire and almost a million dollars of that money has
been left to Columbia University, his alma mater, for the
care and keeping of budding writers. But few authors so
comfortably `fixed' have ever lived out their days in all the
loneliness and meanness and selfishness that this incredibly
gifted author did…
"His woeful personal life can best be described by the simple
facts: he lived some forty years of his time in a hotel room;
he had no close personal friends and the Big Romance always
eluded him; some of most memorable works are dedicated to
such lifeless things as hotel rooms, typewriters, and the
utter sadness of the human condition; later on in life he
discovered John Barleycorn and the empty days and nights of
his withdrawal from society, echoed and reechoed with the
typical alcoholic miseria of broken appointments, paranoiac
harangues and self-lashing, which ended in the usual weeping
haze of `Where did I go wrong?'….."
"Yet, with all that, this still is the shadowy figure
responsible for some of the greatest suspense novels in the
field, and many of the classic short stories and novellas of
the genre-mystery.
"His pitiful personal luck worked for him to the very bitter
end.
"For a last look at him, his lawyer, doctor, banker and
estate handlers showed up for the funeral services. The New
York Times, in their obit, misspelled his name twice: Cornell
Wollrich (sic) and the wrong day was given for the ceremony;
The Times obit never mentioned Phantom Lady or The Bride Wore
Black, easily his two most famous works. No writers'
organization sent flowers or a card-no, not even Mystery
Writers of America. And only the presence of Robert L. Fish,
Hans Stefan Santesson, Herbert Brean and an affiliate named
John Reynolds, could have established any form of connection
with the words writer and mysteries. Beatrice Radin came to
the funeral because she thought Cornell Woolrich was a poor,
lonely old man whom nobody would even remember. She was only
incorrect about the financial poverty of the man. (RM note:
Beatrice was probably the widow of true crime writer Edward
D. Radin)
"So many things had gone wrong.
"The Creator of Woolrich's life had provided for the
services, one Catholic priest to mark the conversion of the
man to Catholicism late in life. The role has seldom been
worse played; the priest raced through a five minute requiem,
half-turned to the mourners, mumbling and phurmphering all
the way….
"It was too much for me.
"Me-who along with Bob Fish and Hans Santesson and some
others who didn't want the story of Cornell Woolrich to end
so shabbily, who had talked with him and drunk with him, if
you will, and buoyed him down through the last decade trying
to instill in him a proper sense of who he was and what he
was-writhed in our chairs.
This then was the ultimate end for one of the Great Ones. Was
this how it had to be? A great talent, long unacknowledged by
Mystery Writers of America and abandoned by the show business
machinery-this man, this Woolrich-Irish, who had entertained
two generations of American mystery fans and God alone knows
how many Europeans-this man whom the current French director,
Traffaut, is reharvesting to his own personal credit with
versions of The Bride Wore Black and Waltz Into Darkness-was
this man to go to his grave, loaded to the gunwales with
nothing but hiss personal fortune of a million-and no word
from his own kind, his real family? Writers?
"Brothers and sisters he had none-his father was a long ago
memory and his mother had strangled him with the silver cord
until the day she died-and now there was no one. No children,
no lovers, no sweethearts…Only the lawyer, the doctor, the
banker and the estate handlers….
"I got to my feet, asked the priest to wait, walked to the
lectern and delivered vocally a personal poem of a few lines
that perhaps said more than all the gushing eulogies I could
have composed.
"Later, when the high priced hearse pulled away, heading for
the luxurious crypt in Hartsdale, New York, we all went to
the nearest bar restaurant and spent a few hours trying to
forget, each in his own private way, that perhaps if all the
world is indeed Vanity and little else, there still must be a
far, far better way to say goodbye to a great writer.
"Thus the story of Cornell Woolrich ended.
"Just about as lonely and unloved as if had been lived.
"He always called me `Mickey' and I had never been able to
convince him how good a writer he was. Nobody could. Not Bob,
or Hans or anybody.
"So the word has to be all. The story is the thing. On those
counts at least, Cornell Woolrich died a rousing, tremendous
success."
Michael Avallone Somewhere in New Jersey 27Oct68
Although the New York MWA members would know something of
Woolrich's background from word of mouth and seeing him at a
few MWA functions, much of the detail herein would be news to
other writers. This was before the days of mystery
conventions, specialty publications, and etc. The one
exception I know of was Frank Gruber's THE PULP JUNGLE
published in 1967 which contained the details of Woolrich's
life sharing a hotel room with his mother.
Richard Moore
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