John Collier (fiction writer)

Born in London in 1901, John Collier was the son of John George and Emily Mary Noyes Collier. He had one sister, Kathleen Mars Collier. His father, John George Collier, was one of seventeen children, and could not afford formal education; he worked as a clerk. Nor could John George afford schooling for his son beyond prep school; John Collier and Kathleen were educated at home. He was privately educated by his uncle Vincent Collier, a novelist. Biographer Betty Richardson wrote: When, at the age of 18 or 19, Collier was asked by his father what he had chosen as a vocation, his reply was, "I want to be a poet." His father indulged him; over the course of the next ten years Collier lived on an allowance of two pounds a week plus whatever he could pick up by writing book reviews and acting as a cultural correspondent for a Japanese newspaper. He never attended university. He was married to early silent film actress Shirley Palmer in 1936; they were divorced. His second marriage in 1945 was to New York actress Beth Kay (Margaret Elizabeth Eke). They divorced a decade later. His third wife was Harriet Hess Collier, who survived him; they had one son, John G. S. Collier, born in Nice, France, on 18 May 1958. ==Career==

Poetry He began writing poetry at the age of nineteen, and was first published in 1920. For ten years Collier attempted to reconcile intensely visual experience opened to him by the Sitwells and the modern painters with the more austere preoccupations of those classical authors who were fashionable in the 1920s. Author Peter Straub has done the same with fake, negative reviews, in admiration of Collier. His second novel, ''Tom's A-Cold: A Tale'' (1933) depicted a barbaric and dystopian future England; it is mentioned in Joshua Glenn's essay "The 10 Best Apocalypse Novels of Pre-Golden Age SF (1904-33)." Richardson calls it "part of a tradition of apocalyptic literature that began in the 1870s" including The War of the Worlds: "Usually, this literature shows an England destroyed by alien forces, but in Collier's novel, set in Hampshire in 1995, England has been destroyed by its own vices—greed, laziness, and an overwhelming bureaucracy crippled by its own committees and red tape." Similarly, Christopher Fowler wrote in The Independent, "His simple, sharp style brought his tales colourfully to life" and described Collier's fiction as "sardonic". John Clute wrote, "He was known mainly for his sophisticated though sometimes rather precious short stories, generally featuring acerbic snap endings; many of these stories have strong elements of fantasy..." E. F. Bleiler also admired Collier's writing, describing Collier as ""One of the modern masters of the short story and certainly the preeminent writer of short fantasies", and stating that The Devil and All was "one of the great fantasy collections". ==Other media==

In the succeeding years, Collier traveled between England, France and Hollywood. Wilk writes that the film was considered bizarre at the time, but decades later, it enjoys a cult following. Collier landed in Hollywood on May 16, 1935, but, he told Wilk, after Sylvia Scarlett he returned to England. There, he spent a year working on Elephant Boy for director Zoltan Korda. Collier suggested a way to make the footage cohere into a story and to make "a star out of that little boy, Sabu." After these two unorthodox starts to screenwriting, Collier was on his way to a new writing career. Screenplays Collier returned to Hollywood, where he wrote prolifically for film and television. He contributed notably to the screenplays of The African Queen along with James Agee and John Huston, The War Lord, I Am a Camera (adapted from The Berlin Stories and remade later as Cabaret), Her Cardboard Lover, Deception and Roseanna McCoy. ==Awards==

• Poetry award granted by the Paris literary magazine This Quarter for his poetry collection Gemini. • International Fantasy Award for Fiction (1952) for Fancies and Goodnights (1951). • Edgar Award for Best Short Story (1952) for Fancies and Goodnights (1951). ==Death==

Collier died of a stroke on 6 April 1980, in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California. Near the end of his life, he wrote, "I sometimes marvel that a third-rate writer like me has been able to palm himself off as a second-rate writer." ==Collections of Collier's papers==

• The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin's papers "represent his transition from a poet to writer of novels, short stories, and screenplays. The bulk of the papers are manuscripts covering several genres, although a substantial amount of correspondence is also included." • University of Iowa Libraries, Special Collections • Colliers' son, John G. S. Collier == Bibliography ==

Collier's short story "Evening Primrose" was the basis of a 1966 television musical by Stephen Sondheim, and it was also adapted for the radio series Escape and by BBC Radio. Several of his stories, including "Back for Christmas", "Wet Saturday" and "De Mortuis", were adapted for the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The short story "Green Thoughts" may have inspired Little Shop of Horrors. for Gruen Guild Theater, 19 June 1952 (Season 2, Episode 7), starring Bill Baldwin, William Challee and Billy Curtis. • "De Mortuis" – Adapted for Star Tonight as "Concerning Death", 17 February 1955 (Season 1, Episode 3), starring Edward Andrews and Jo Van Fleet. • "Back for Christmas" – Adapted by Francis M. Cockrell for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 4 March 1956 (Season 1, Episode 23), starring John Williams and Isobel Elsom. • "Wet Saturday" – Adapted by Marian B. Cockrell for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 30 September 1956 (Season 2, Episode 1), starring Cedric Hardwicke and John Williams. • "De Mortuis" – Adapted by Francis M. Cockrell for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 14 October 1956 (Season 2, Episode 3), starring Robert Emhardt, Cara Williams, and Henry Jones. • "None Are So Blind" – Adapted by James P. Cavanagh for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 28 October 1956 (Season 2, Episode 5), starring Hurd Hatfield and Mildred Dunnock. • "Youth from Vienna" – Adapted, directed, and hosted by Orson Welles as "The Fountain of Youth," a 1956 television pilot for a proposed anthology series, broadcast on 16 September 1958 as an episode of Colgate Theatre (Season 1, Episode 5). • "Anniversary Gift" – Adapted by Harold Swanton for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 1 November 1959 (Season 5, Episode 6), starring Harry Morgan and Barbara Baxley. • "The Chaser" – Adapted by Robert Presnell Jr. for The Twilight Zone, 13 May 1960 (Season 1, Episode 31), starring John McIntire, Patricia Barry and George Grizzard. • "The Small Elephants" – Adapted by Russell Beggs for G.E. True Theater, 12 March 1961 (Season 9, Episode 21), starring Ronald Reagan as Host, Jonathan Harris, Barbara Nichols, Cliff Robertson, and George Sanders. • "Evening Primrose" – Adapted by James Goldman as a 1966 television movie directed by Paul Bogart, starring Anthony Perkins, Dorothy Stickney and Larry Gates, with songs by Stephen Sondheim. • 'Special Delivery" – Adapted by Michael Ashe and Paul Wheeler as "Eve" for Journey to the Unknown, 26 September 1968 (Season 1, Episode 01), starring Carol Lynley, Dennis Waterman and Michael Gough. • "Evening Primrose" – Adapted by Jon Bing and Tor Åge Bringsværd as Nattmagasinet, a 1970 Norwegian television film. • "Sleeping Beauty" – Adapted by James B. Harris as Some Call It Loving, a 1973 feature film starring Zalman King, Carol White, Tisa Farrow and Richard Pryor. • "Back for Christmas" – Adapted by Denis Cannan for Tales of the Unexpected, 31 May 1980 (Season 2, Episode 14), starring Roald Dahl (Introducer), Richard Johnson, Siân Phillips and Avril Elgar. • "De Mortuis" – Adapted by Robin Chapman as "Never Speak Ill of the Dead" for Tales of the Unexpected, 24 May 1981 (Season 4, Episode 8), starring Colin Blakely, Warren Clarke and Keith Drinkel. • "Youth from Vienna" – Adapted by Ross Thomas for Tales of the Unexpected, 2 July 1983 (Season 6, Episode 13). • "Wet Saturday" – Adapted by Collier for Tales of the Unexpected, 7 July 1984 (Season 7, Episode 8). • "Bird of Prey" – Adapted by Ross Thomas for Tales of the Unexpected, 4 August 1984 (Season 7, Episode 10). • "In the Cards" – Adapted by Ross Thomas for Tales of the Unexpected, 14 July 1985 (Season 8, Episode 2), starring Susan Strasberg, Max Gail, Elaine Giftos, and Kenneth Tigar. • "Anniversary Gift" – Adapted by Rob Hedden for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 28 February 1987 (Season 2, Episode 6), starring Pamela Sue Martin and Peter Dvorsky. • "In the Cards" – Adapted by Andy Wolk as "Dead Right" for Tales from the Crypt, 21 April 1990 (Season 2, Episode 1), starring Demi Moore and Jeffrey Tambor. ==Notes==