Lucille Fletcher
| Lucille Fletcher | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 28, 1912 Brooklyn, New York |
| Died | August 31, 2000 (aged 88) Langhorne, Pennsylvania |
| Nationality | American |
| Citizenship | American |
| Alma mater | Vassar College |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Known for | The Hitch Hiker Sorry, Wrong Number |
| Spouse | Bernard Herrmann (1939–1948) John Douglass Wallop III (1949–1985) |
| Children | Dorothy Louise Herrmann Wendy Elizabeth Herrmann |
Lucille Fletcher (March 28, 1912 — August 31, 2000) was an American screenwriter of film, radio and television. Her full name was Violet Lucille Fletcher. Her credits include the story "The Hitch Hiker," which was turned into a radio drama by Orson Welles, a memorable Twilight Zone episode called "The Hitch-Hiker" and more recently inspired "Roadkill", an episode of Supernatural. Fletcher also wrote the screenplay for the film noir suspense thriller Sorry, Wrong Number, which was an expanded version of her 30-minute radio drama script.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Fletcher was born in Brooklyn in 1912 to parents Matthew and Violet Fletcher. She attended Vassar College, where she earned a degree in 1933.
[edit] Career
After her graduation from Vassar, Lucille Fletcher got a clerical job at CBS, where she met her future husband, composer Bernard Herrmann. The couple dated for five years, but delayed marriage due to her parents' objections. They finally married on October 2, 1939. Fletcher and Herrmann collaborated on several projects. He wrote the score for the November 17, 1941, radio presentation of her famous story "The Hitch Hiker" on the Orson Welles Show.
As Fletcher once explained in an interview, Sorry, Wrong Number was partially inspired by an incident from someone else's life. While Herrmann was sick at home, Fletcher went down to the corner drug store for medicine. Innocently striking up a conversation with her pharmacist, a longtime friend, she raised the ire of an elderly woman who had apparently been waiting first. The woman interrupted and approached the druggist, complaining about poor service and demanding to "know who this interloper is?!", referring to Fletcher. Finding the woman's shrill voice and demeanor particularly irritating, Fletcher went home with the intention of writing a script based around a character with those traits who becomes embroiled in a precarious situation.
The radio drama premiered in 1943 and became one of the most legendary radio plays of all time. Agnes Moorehead created the role in the first performance and again in several later radio productions. Barbara Stanwyck starred in the 1948 film version and, in 1952, performed the original radio play over the airwaves. A 1959 version produced for the CBS radio series Suspense received a 1960 Edgar Award for Best Radio Drama.
While married to Bernard Herrmann, Fletcher adapted the Emily Bronte novel Wuthering Heights into a libretto for her husband's opera of the same name. He completed the opera in 1951, by which time they had divorced.
[edit] Personal life
Lucille Fletcher and Bernard Herrmann had two children, Wendy and Dorothy. The couple divorced in 1948, over his affair with her cousin Kathy Lucille (Lucy) Anderson. In 1949, Bernard Herrmann married Lucy.[1] Lucille later married Douglass Wallop, and they remained married until he died in 1985.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Novels
- Sorry, Wrong Number, 1948, with Allan Ullman
- Night Man, 1951, with Ullman
- The Daughters of Jasper Clay, 1958
- Blindfold, 1960
- And Presumed Dead, 1963
- The Strange Blue Yawl, 1964
- The Girl in Cabin B54, 1968
- Eighty Dollars to Stamford, 1975
- Mirror Image, 1988
[edit] Plays
- Sorry, Wrong Number, (broadcast 1944), 1952
- Wuthering Heights, librettist, 1943-51
- Night Watch, 1972
[edit] Radio plays
- My Client Curley, 1940
- The Hitch Hiker, 1941
- Remodeled Brownstone
- The Furnished Floor
- The Diary of Sophronia Winters
- The Search for Henri Le Fevre
- Badm Dreams Fugue in C Minor
- Someone Else
- Night Man
- Dark Journey and The Intruder
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Lucille Fletcher at the Internet Movie Database
- Obituary, The New York Times, September 6, 2000
- Lucille Fletcher: Radio's First Queen of Screams
- Obituary
- Suspense: Diary of Saphronia Winters
- Suspense: Fugue in C Minor
- Suspense: The Hitchhiker
- Suspense: Sorry, Wrong Number
- Suspense: The Thing in the Window
