Bill S. Ballinger

Bill S. Ballinger (born William Sanborn Ballinger on 13 March 1912 in Oskaloosa, Iowa, died 23 March 1980 Tarzana, California) was an American author and screenwriter. He was educated at the University of Wisconsin and was an associate professor of writing at the California State University Northridge, Los Angeles, California.

Career

Working in radio and advertising in the early 1940s, Ballinger wrote 81 radio scripts and produced The Dinah Shore Show, The Breakfast Club, and Lowell Thomas broadcasts. After Ballinger moved from New York to Los Angeles he began writing full-time.

The author of 30 books, Ballinger also used the names B.S. Sanborn and Frederic Fryer. The first was The Body in the Bed in 1948. His most famous work was 1950s Portrait in Smoke that received a Les Grands Maîtres du Roman Policier Award and was filmed in 1956 as Wicked as they Come. Ballinger's two main fictional characters in his novels were Chicago private investigator Barr Breed and Native American Central Intelligence Agency Agent Joaquin Hawke. His book, The Longest Second, was nominated in 1958 for an Edgar Award for the Best Mystery novel.

Screenwriting

Ballinger was a frequent writer for American television with 150 teleplays to his name. These included seven teleplays for Alfred Hitchcock Presents (one of which, "The Day of the Bullet," based on a short story by Stanley Ellin, won him an Edgar for Best Half-Hour Teleplay in 1961), two episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, several police television shows such as Tightrope and Ironside and the episode "The Mice" for The Outer Limits.

In addition to his books and teleplays, Ballinger wrote screenplays for Burt Topper's The Strangler (1963) and Operation CIA (1965), a Burt Reynolds spy film set in Vietnam but filmed in Thailand.

Barr Breed series

• The Body in the Bed (New York, Harper, 1948)
• The Body Beautiful (New York, Harper, 1949)

Joaquin Hawks series

• The Spy in the Jungle (New York, New American Library, 1965)
• The Chinese Mask (New York, New American Library, 1965)
• The Spy in Bangok (New York, New American Library, 1965)
• The Spy at Angor Wat (New York, New American Library, 1966)
• The Spy in the Java Sea (New York, New American Library, 1966)

Non series novels

• Portrait in Smoke (New York, Harper, 1950)
• The Darkening Door (New York, Harper, 1952)
• Rafferty (New York, Harper, 1953)
• The Tooth and the Nail (New York, Harper, 1955)
• The Black Black Hearse (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1955) - as Frederic Freyer
• The Longest Second (New York, Harper, 1957)
• The Wife of the Red-Haired Man (New York, Harper, 1957)
• Beacon in the Night (New York, Harper, 1958)
• Formula For Murder (New York, New American Library, 1958)
• The Doom Maker (New York, Dutton, 1959) - as B.X. Sanborn.
• The Fourth Forever (New York, Harper, 1963)

• Not I Said the Vixen (New York, Fawcett, 1965)
• The Heir Hunters (New York, Harper, 1966)
• The Source of Fear (New York, New American Library, 1968)
• The 49 Days of Death (Los Angeles, Pyramid, 1969)
• Heist Me Higher (New York, New American Library, 1969)
• The Lopsided Man (Los Angeles, Pyramid, 1969)
• The Corsican (New York, Dodd Mead, 1974)
• The Law (New York, Warner, 1975), novelisation
• The Ultimate Warrior (New York, Warner, 1975)
• Lost City of Stone (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1978)

External links

• Bill S. Ballinger at IMDb
• Author Bill S. Ballinger appreciation website