Shadowland After attending a revival screening of the 1936 film
Come and Get It in August 1972, Arnold became fascinated with the film's once-controversial but by then largely forgotten Seattle-born star,
Frances Farmer, who had been involuntarily committed to the Washington State mental asylum at
Steilacoom in the early 1940s. Two years later and based on the newspaper's own extensive file on the case, he wrote an article called "The Dark Odyssey of Frances Farmer" that raised questions about the commitment and, after its publication, brought forward numerous witnesses whose stories compounded the mystery of her fate. Utilizing these new sources, Arnold continued to investigate the Farmer story for the next three years, expanding "The Dark Odyssey" into a more novelistic first-person narrative about a reporter who, "as in the classic film
Laura, falls in love with the mysterious dead woman he is investigating." The manuscript found its way through a mutual friend to
Noel Marshall, the executive producer of
The Exorcist, who bought the film rights and took it to
Fred Hills, editor-in-chief of McGraw-Hill's trade book division. Hills bought the manuscript, edited it and published it in 1978 under a title he personally selected,
Shadowland. The book went through six printings in its first month of release and was the number-one bestseller in several markets. Some critics complained about the unacademic style, subjective point of view and
film noir-like advertising campaign for what was essentially a biographical subject but the reviews were mostly supportive.
The New York Times Book Review found "Mr. Arnold's tragic detective work... chilling... and poignant in the extreme." George Anderson in the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called it "the most moving and disturbing of all Hollywood horror stories... compassionately described by the writer."
Lloyd Shearer in
Parade thought it "definitive and superb" and
Richard Corliss in
Time magazine described it as "incorrigibly readable."
Frances lawsuit In May 1981, Arnold and producer Noel Marshall filed a lawsuit against comedian/producer
Mel Brooks and others involved in the making of Brooksfilms' Frances Farmer biopic,
Frances, charging it had substantially plagiarized
Shadowland. The case became one of the more widely publicized show business disputes of the 1980s, and would be characterized as a major incident in the comedian's career by
Patrick McGilligan in his 2019 biography of Brooks,
Funny Man. In an analysis of the
Shadowland case in
American Film magazine in May 1982, Stephen Farber went through the long history of legal battles between Hollywood filmmakers and writers of nonfiction books, and concluded that, under normal circumstances, such suits had little chance in court. "Frances Farmer is not the exclusive property of William Arnold or any single writer. However," he contended, "there are special circumstances in the
Shadowland controversy that would seem to strengthen Arnold's case" and he predicted a judgment for the plaintiffs would be a landmark decision, affecting all "future rulings in the thorny field of authors' rights in regard to factual material." The federal judge who decided the matter in summary judgement was
Malcolm M. Lucas, a
Nixon appointee who had presided over the
Charles Manson trial and would soon serve as the 26th
Chief Justice of California. Lucas appeared to believe the case had enough merit to reject two separate motions of the defense to dismiss the suit and, unusual in Hollywood business litigations,
China Gate Shortly before the
Frances trial, Arnold sold his novel
China Gate to editor-publisher
Marc Jaffe of
Ballantine/
Random House Books for what was, at that time, one of the highest first-novel advances on record. Set over thirty years in post-WWII Taiwan, and based partly on Arnold's personal experience there as a boy, it was the inaugural fiction offering of
Villard Books, a new imprint of Random House that Jaffe headed.
China Gate was another national bestseller and the reviews were mostly positive.
Publishers Weekly found it "fascinating... gripping reading" and the
New York Times Book Review declared it "a success." The
Washington Post reported that "Arnold... constructs his plot well" and predicted it might be "another
Tai-pan," while the
Portland Oregonian deemed it "a sharply plotted and crisply executed tale of international intrigue... a crackling yarn." Alice E. Gerard in
Best Sellers reported that, "The pace of
China Gate never slackens. It is extremely suspenseful and filled with action and intrigue... a well-written, exciting novel." But the novel also had its detractors, largely on political grounds, and was controversial. In his otherwise positive review in the
New York Times,
John Jay Osborne Jr. complained of its "superreactionary tone" and conservative "pontificating," The book also found resistance from the Taiwan government. In the early 1990s a major Hollywood film version of the novel, with a script by
Ron Bass and
Luis Mandoki directing, was abruptly terminated by
Carolco/
TriStar Pictures after production had commensed and more than a million dollars had been spent in development costs, reportedly due to last-minute objections by the Taiwan government, which was "unhappy" with the book's depiction of the historical ties of the
Kuomintang Party to the Chinese underworld. == As film critic ==