Harry Preston (writer)

Harry Preston (born Harry Pimm on September 4, 1923) is a veteran author and Hollywood screenwriter. To date, his credits include over 90 published books and over 300 films of all types, from feature films to industrials, commercials, documentaries and training films.

Biography

Harry Preston was born Harry Pimm in Durban, South Africa. His father was Richard Henry Pimm, a chemist who migrated from Tamworth, England, to Kimberly, SA, near Cape Town, where he opened a chemist shop. In Kimberly, Henry Pimm married Lilian Catherine Walter, daughter of George Walter, a US Consul to South Africa starting in 1872. The Pimms eventually moved to Durban, where Henry and his brother, William Pimm, founded WR Pimm & Co., a local chain of chemist shops.

Harry Pimm grew up in Howick, a small town near Pietermaritzberg, KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa, 115 miles inland from Durban. He began writing children's stories and books while still in his teens, moving on quickly to writing adult articles and short stories for major South African newspapers and magazines.

Harry Pimm moved to the U.S. in 1948, where he changed his last name to Preston. He settled in Dallas,TX, where he began writing and directing low budget films for the young Dallas film industry.

While news editor at WFAA-TV, Channel 8, the ABC station in Dallas, he wrote TORNADO, a documentary on the devastating tornado in Dallas in 1957, which won the Sylvania Award. He also wrote several Dallas television series, notably “Spotlight on Texas” sponsored by Southwestern Bell Telephone, as well as writing many Viewpoint columns in the Dallas Morning News. In 1959, he moved to California where he joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios as an analyst and rewrite man. The writers’ strike in 1962 forced him to move east to join the famous Jam Handy Studios in Detroit, where one of his commercials (for “Religion in American Life”) was nominated for an industry award.

After the Detroit riots of 1967, he returned to the West Coast, where he resumed work authoring fiction and non-fiction books. His book “Everything a Teenager Wants to Know About Sex and Should” (Books for Better Living) received rave reviews and went into seven printings. Among Harry Preston’s many novels are 14 romance novels he wrote for McFadden which were published under the pseudonym “Vanessa Cartwright”.

Following a year's visit to Cape Town in 1971, he wrote a supernatural horror tale set in South Africa called “Queen of Darkness” (Manor Books). During the Seventies, he also wrote many training films for the United States Air Force at Norton AFB in California.

In 1976, Mr. Preston moved back to Dallas and now works closely with the Texas film and literary communities. Honeymoon Horror is a 1982 horror/slasher film directed by Harry Preston. In 1989 he received a Life Achievement Award at the Corpus Christi Film Festival for his contribution to the Texas film industry. Since 1990 he has taught screenwriting at Richland College in Dallas and actively markets scripts and books through his literary agency - Stanton & Associates Literary Agency.

In 2002, his biography of former Broadway and movie star Thelma White, titled THELMA WHO? was published by Scarecrow Press and was selected as one of the top ten best books of 2002 by CLASSIC IMAGES, the national movie magazine. In 2003, Mr. Preston's latest novels FACES OF ANGELS and SHOT IN DALLAS were published. Harry Preston is currently represented by Stanton & Associates Literary Agency, 4413 Clemson Drive, Garland, Texas 75042