S. S. Van Dine
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S. S. Van Dine was the pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright (October 15, 1888 - April 11, 1939), a U.S. art critic and author. He created the once immensely popular fictional detective Philo Vance, who first appeared in books in the 1920s, then in movies and on the radio. Today both Van Dine and Vance are largely forgotten.
Willard Huntington Wright was born to Archibald Davenport Wright and Annie Van Vranken Wright on October 15, 1888, in Charlottesville, Virginia. He attended St. Vincent College, Pomona College, and Harvard University. He also studied art in Munich and Paris, an apprenticeship that led to a job as literary and art critic for the Los Angeles Times. Wright's early career in literature (1910 - 1919) was taken up by two causes. One was literary Naturalism. He wrote a novel and some short stories in this mode; as editor of the magazine The Smart Set he also published similar fiction by others.
In 1907, Wright married Katharine Belle Boynton of Seattle, Washington. He married for the second time in October 1930. His wife was Eleanor Rulapaugh, known professionally as Claire De Lisle, a portrait painter.
From 1912 to 1914 he edited The Smart Set, a New York literary magazine, and continued writing as a critic and journalist until 1923, when he became ill from overwork. His doctor confined him to bed because of a heart ailment for more than two years. In frustration, he began collecting and studying thousands of volumes of crime and detection. In 1926 this paid off with the publication of his first S. S. Van Dine novel, The Benson Murder Case. Wright took his pseudonym from Van Dyne, an old family name, and the abbreviation of "steamship." He went on to write 11 more mysteries, and his upper-class amateur sleuth, Philo Vance (who shared a love of aesthetics like Wright), was so popular that Wright became wealthy for the first time in his life. He moved into a penthouse and enjoyed spending his fortune in a style similar to that of the elegant and snobbish Vance. Wright died April 11, 1939, in New York city, N.Y.
In addition to his success as a fiction writer, Wright's lengthy introduction and notes to the anthology The World's Great Detective Stories (1928) are importance in the history of the critical study of detective fiction. Although dated by the passage of time, this essay is still a core around which many others have been constructed.
Wright also wrote a series of short stories for Warner Brothers film studio in the early 1930s. These stories were used as the basis for a series of 12 short films, each around 20 minutes long, that were released in 1930 - 1931. Of these, The Skull Murder Mystery (1931) shows Wright's vigorous plot construction. It is also notable for its non-racist treatment of Chinese characters, something quite unusual in its day. As far as it is known, none of Van Dine's screen treatments have been published in book form and it seems as if none of the manuscripts survive today. Short films were extremely popular at one point and Hollywood made hundreds of them during the studio era. Except for a handful of comedy silents, however, most of these films are forgotten today and are not even listed in film reference books.
External resources
- Biography (http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/vandinebiog.htm)
- Contemporary Biography: Biography (http://www.geocities.com/louisebrookssociety/vandine-bio.html)
- Bio and Work Analysis: Biography (http://members.aol.com/MG4273/vandine.htm)
- Bibliography of UK first Editions: Bibliography (http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/ssvandinebib.htm)it:S. S. Van Dine