Leslie McFarlane

Leslie McFarlane (October 25, 1902 – September 6, 1977) was a Canadian journalist, novelist, and screenwriter.

Early years

Born Charles Leslie McFarlane in Carleton Place, Ontario, he is most famous for ghostwriting many of the early books in the very successful Hardy Boys series using the pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon.

The son of a school principal, McFarlane was raised in the town of Haileybury, Ontario. He became a freelance writer shortly after high school. He and his family moved to Whitby, Ontario in 1936.

Books

As a young man he worked in Sudbury, Ontario as a newspaper reporter then for a weekly paper in Toronto before taking a job at the Springfield Republican newspaper in Springfield, Massachusetts. While in the U.S. he replied to a want ad placed by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, publisher of such titles as Nancy Drew, Tom Swift and the Bobbsey Twins. As a result, he freelanced in 1926 and 1927 as one of the authors using the pseudonym Roy Rockwood to write seven of the Dave Fearless serialized mystery novels. This led to his involvement with the Hardy Boys, a project on which he was a large contributor, writing 19 of the first 25 books between 1927 and 1946 and 21 overall. He also wrote books in several other juvenile series, hed in pulp magazines, novellas or novels over his fifty year career at one point writing six novels in one year. Leslie earned as little as $85 per book during the Great Depression yet he continued because he had a growing family.

According to his son, McFarlane regarded the Hardy Boys books as a nuisance.

"In his diaries, my father talks about having to write another of those cursed books, in order to earn another $100 to buy coal for the furnace. And he never read them over afterward. It was only much later that he accepted plaudits for the work."

His daughter, Norah McFarlane Perez, said in an interview that "They'd give him an outline, But to make it palatable, he'd come up with different characters and add colour and use large words, and inject his wonderful sense of humour. And then he'd finish and say, 'I will never write another juvenile book.' But then the bills would pile up and he'd start another."

However, McFarlane was not bitter about not earning a cut of the enormous revenues generated by his work. "He was very philosophical about it. His attitude was, 'Look, I took these on and I was glad to get the deal.' There was no rancour," according to his daughter.

While still writing for the series for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, McFarlane returned to Canada to work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). As part of the NFB, in 1953 he was nominated for an Academy Award for Live Action Short Film for his documentary titled Herring Hunt. Moving to Toronto he wrote for CBC television and at the suggestion of his friend Lorne Greene, moved to Hollywood for a time to write scripts for the TV Western Bonanza in which Greene starred.

McFarlane also wrote the first four volumes of The Dana Girls series for the Stratemeyer Syndicate under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. His last Hardy Boys book, The Phantom Freighter was actually written by his wife, Amy.

The Leslie McFarlane Public School in Whitby, Ontario is named in his honour. His son, Brian McFarlane, is well known as a former commentator on Hockey Night in Canada.

In 2006, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario acquired the diaries, correspondence and early material of Leslie McFarlane, along with first editions of The Secret of the Caves and The Tower Treasure. University research collections librarian Carl Spadoni has been quoted as saying that the University plans to acquire early first editions of all of McFarlane's books. The archive donated to McMaster is estimated to have a value of $150,000.

Hardy Boy books attributed to Leslie McFarlane:

1. The Tower Treasure (1927)
2. The House on the Cliff (1927)
3. The Secret of the Old Mill (1927)
4. The Missing Chums (1928)
5. Hunting for Hidden Gold (1928)
6. The Shore Road Mystery (1928)
7. The Secret of the Caves (1929)
8. The Mystery of Cabin Island (1929)
9. The Great Airport Mystery (1930)
10. What Happened at Midnight (1931)
11. While the Clock Ticked (1932)
12. Footprints under the Window (1933)
13. The Mark on the Door (1934)
14. The Hidden Harbor Mystery (1935)
15. The Sinister Signpost (1936)
16. A Figure in Hiding (1937)
17. The Flickering Torch Mystery (1943)
18. The Melted Coins (1944)
19. The Short-Wave Mystery (1945)
20. The Secret Panel (1946)
21. The Phantom Freighter (by Amy McFarlane) (1947)

External links

• Listen to Leslie McFarlane Talk about his Hardy Boys Stories in a 1970's Canadian Broadcasting Corporation