Born December 4: Cornell Woolrich

Cornell Woolrich's life story offers so many cautionary tales that his biography is called First You Dream, Then You Die. A hard-nosed crime writer ranking with Chandler and Hammett, his many stories and novels inspired the more than two dozen movies: Rear Window, Phantom Lady, The Bride Wore Black, and Mississippi Mermaid. That explains how he had nearly one million dollars in the bank when he died at sixty-four in 1968, but why did he live for thirty-five years, with or near his mother, in a seedy residential hotel in Harlem? Although Woolrich was already in his fifties when she died, rather than exploring his freedom, he moved in with his aunt in a worse hotel. He had torrid gay affairs, which he described in his diary, discovered by his wife of three months. She learned, among other things, that he wore a sailor's uniform to attract hook-ups. Their marriage, never consummated, was annulled. In his final years, he moved into a luxury hotel, alone, yet he continued to treat himself badly. After wearing shoes that were too tight and seeing his foot become infected, he ignored it until finally doctors had to amputate his leg. A chronic smoker and alcoholic, he died weighing eighty-nine pounds.

Comments

[Reader]

"...but why did he live for thirty-five years, with or near his mother, in a seedy residential hotel in Harlem?"

According to Wikipedia, Woolrich lived with his mother in the Hotel Marseilles at W. 102nd and Broadway. As I wrote last year in response to this entry, that is not Harlem, but the Upper West Side. Whether it was "seedy" in the 40s or 50s I don't know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Woolrich