Daniel Mainwaring
Daniel Mainwaring was an American author and screenwriter known for his contributions to crime fiction and film noir. Born in Oakland, California, he grew up on a family farm in the Sierra Nevada and later pursued his education at Fresno State Teacher's College. Mainwaring began his career in journalism, working as a crime reporter for major California newspapers before transitioning to writing novels. His first book, "One Against the Earth," was published in 1933, but it was not well received. He found greater success in detective fiction, penning twelve novels between 1936 and 1946 under his pen name Geoffrey Homes.
Mainwaring's film career took off when he became a publicist for Warner Brothers and later worked with other major studios. In 1945, he signed a contract with Paramount, which led to the creation of several notable screenplays, including "Out of the Past" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." His work often embedded social criticism, reflecting the political tensions of his time, particularly during the McCarthy era. He remained active in the industry throughout the 1960s, writing for both film and television until his death in 1977. His legacy is marked by his significant influence in crime literature and cinema, illustrating complex themes within his narratives.
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Daniel Mainwaring
Author
- Born: July 22, 1902
- Birthplace: Oakland, California
- Died: January 31, 1977
- Place of death: Los Angeles, California
Biography
The son of a forest ranger, Daniel Mainwaring was born in Oakland, California, and grew up on the family farm in the Sierra Nevada. He attended Fresno State Teacher’s College. After a short stint on New York City daily newspapers, he returned to California and worked as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote his first novel, One Against the Earth, in 1933, but the bleak tale of a lynching did not do well. Drawing on his journalistic experience, he turned to detective fiction and between 1936 and 1946 wrote twelve novels, the first of which was The Man Who Murdered Himself. In the first five novels the protagonist was, appropriately, Robin Bishop, a newspaperman; in the other novels, the protagonist was Humphrey Campbell, a private investigator. The majority of his screenplays and novels were written under the pen name Geoffrey Homes, his two middle names.
Mainwaring’s film career began in 1934, when he became a publicist for Warner Brothers Studios, though he subsequently worked as a publicist for Columbia, RKO, and Paramount. After ten years as a publicist, he signed a contract in 1945 with Paramount producers William Pine and William Thomas to write six screenplays, all of which were completed within a year. Mainwaring was forty-one years old when he began his screenwriting career. In 1946 he was hired to transform his last novel, Build My Gallows High, to the screen, where it was directed by Jacques Tourneur. It was filmed as Against All Odds in 1984. In the next twenty-five years Mainwaring wrote forty scripts, most of them in the crime genre, and several of them, beginning with The Big Steal, with noted film noir director Don Siegel. Mainwaring’s most significant scripts were written between 1947, when he wrote Out of the Past, and 1956, when he penned Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The latter film has a subtext critical of the McCarthyism that had plagued Hollywood in the early 1950’s. The film has since assumed cult status.
Mainwaring, who was a strong supporter of the Screen Writers Guild, was suspected of leftist tendencies in 1948, when Howard Hughes acquired RKO. To test Mainwaring’s political views, Hughes assigned him to write the script for I Married a Communist. When Mainwaring refused, he was fired. He subsequently returned to work for Pine and Thomas, who had also hired noted director Joseph Losey, who had also been dismissed from RKO. Mainwaring and Losey worked together on The Lawless (1950). Mainwaring, who had always written scripts quickly (he wrote his 1957 Baby Face Nelson in two weeks), was always in demand, but most of his scripts were for B- pictures.
He continued to write scripts during the 1960’s, including three for European producers, but most of his work in that decade was for NBC and CBS television (his last television script, one for Mannix, was shown November 16, 1968). He died of cancer in 1977. His major contributions were in crime fiction, filmscripts, and the social criticism embedded in his novels and his screenplays.