Clayton Rawson

Clayton Rawson (* 1906 in Elyria , Ohio ; † 1971 ) was an American writer and illustrator .

Career

Rawson was a son of Clarence Rawson and his wife Clara Smith. He graduated from Ohio State University a . a. Art and after graduating in 1929 got a job as an advertising draftsman and illustrator. In the same year he married Catherine Stone and had four children with her.

He later settled in Chicago ( Illinois ) and made his debut there in 1938 with "Death from a Top Hat" very successfully.

On March 26, 1945 he founded the literary association Mystery Writers of America (MWA) in New York together with Anthony Boucher , Brett Halliday and Lawrence Treat .

Rawson has been fascinated by magic and magic tricks since childhood; He has been doing magic himself since he was eight. That is why he equipped his protagonists with magic tricks; or provided them with relevant professions. Under the pseudonym Stuart Trowne he invented "Don Diavolo", a magician, and was able to publish four stories about it in the magazine Red Star Mystery in 1940 .

Honors

• 1949 MWA Special Edgar Award
• 1967 Special Edgar Award

Works (selection)

Don Diavolo cycle

• Ghost of the undead .
• Death out of thin air .

Merlini cycle

• Death of a Top Hat . 1938.
• The footprints on the ceiling . 1939.
• The headless lady . 1940.
• No coffin for the corpse . 1942.
• The Gret Merlini. The complete stories of the magician detective . Gregg Press, Boston, Mass. 1979, ISBN 0-83982-546-3 .

Non-fiction

• Hocus pocus. The big book for magicians ("The golden book of magic"). New edition Tessloff Verlag, Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-7886-0765-3 (former title The Great Magic Book of the Great Merlini ).
• The complete play production handbook. For schools, colleges, little theaters, community theater, summer stock fo anyone staging a play . New edition Harper & Row, New York 1982, ISBN 0-06-4635-58-9 .

Film adaptations

movie theater

• 1939 Tod Browning (Director): Miracles for sale (based on the novel Death from a Top Hat )
• 1942 Herbert I. Leeds (director): The man who wouldn't die (based on the novel No coffin for the corpse ).

watch TV

• 1951 The transparent man (loosely based on the “Merlini cycle”; a trailer for a series that was never realized).

literature

• Armin Arnold u. a. (Ed.): Reclams Kriminalromanführer . Reclam, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-15-010278-2 , pp. 289-290.
• Otto Prenzler u. a. (Ed.): Detectionary. A biographical dictionary of leading characters in detective and mystery fiction . Overlook Press, New York 1977, ISBN 0-87951-041-2 .