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Bill S(anborn) Ballinger (1912-1980) - also wrote as Frederic Freyer, B.X. Sanborn | |
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American thriller writer, who specialized from the early 1950's in a multi-level kind of narration or divided narration, and mixed identities. Ballinger's best known books include THE WIFE OF THE RED-HAIRED MAN (1957) and THE TOOTH AND THE NAIL (1955). The latter was plagiarized by Finnish mystery writer Mauri Sariola in 1969, writing under the pseudonym Esko Laukko. Sariola paid 5,400 Finnish marks (about $1,000 nowadays, then very much more) to Ballinger who promised to give the money to the Finnish Writers' Association. Ballinger's books have been reprinted in some thirty countries, and translated into over thirteen languages. "I consider myself, primarily, a storyteller. To me the story is the thing." (Ballinger in St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers, ed. by Jay P.Pederson, 1996) Bill S. Ballinger was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa. He was educated at the University of Wisconsin, and received his B.A. in 1934. From 1934 he worked in advertising, and as a radio and television writer. In 1936 he married Geraldine Taylor - they divorced in 1946. After extensive travels in Europe and the Middle East, Ballinger moved to southern California, to take advantage of the television 'boom' of the 1950s as a scriptwriter. In 1949 he married Laura Dunham; she died in 1962, and two years later he married Lucille Rambeau. Between the years 1977 and 1979 Ballinger was an associate professor of writing at the California State University, Nortridge. In 1960, Ballinger received the Edgar Allan Poe Award from Mystery Writers of America for his TV work. In 1977-78 he was a member of the board of directors of Health and Welfare Plan and Pension Plan, and in 1978-79 President of Federal Credit Union. Ballinger died on March 23, 1980. In the beginning of his career, Ballinger published hard-boiled detective fiction. His first novel, THE BODY IN THE BED, appeared in 1948 and introduced private eye Barr Breed from Chicago, a typical tough hero of the post-war fiction. The story was more or less a variation of the Maltese Falcon. Breed's second adventure, THE BODY BEAUTIFUL, appeared in 1949. Ballinger soon abandoned the conventional detective formula, and concentrated on creating more innovative thrillers. In the 1960s he participated in the spy boom producing a new series characters, CIA operative Joaquim Hawks, who made his entrance in the novel THE CHINESE MASK (1965). In the book Ballinger depicts carefully everyday life in China, Hawks sees dreams of his ancestors, and scientists act in a circus. The resourceful, strong and handsome Hawks is half Spanish and half Nez Percé Indian, a linguist and smooth killer. Hawks continued his adventures in four other books, up until 1966. His assignment takes him to Southeast Asia in THE SPY IN THE JUNGLE (1965). Interestingly, one of its minor themes is religious - not ideological - tolerande. Hawks shows some knowledge of the Swedish philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg and Islam, and in Hanoi a Buddhist monk gives him a lecture on myths. Ballinger's first success was a nonseries book, PORTRAIT IN SMOKE (1950), in which Danny April, the new owner of a collection agency, motivated by curiosity, attempts to trace a girl named Krassy Almauniski from her origins in Chicago's slums. Ballinger depicts also Krassy's rise to fame and riches by changing her identity. Finally Danny finds Krassy, falls in love with her, but she frames him guilty of murder. The books was filmed in 1956 under the title Wicked As They Come. The Tooth and the Nail tells a story of false money and faking a murder. The protagonist is a magician, Luis Montana alias Lewis Mountain, who is pursuing his wife's murderer, Ballard Temple Humphries. Behind the murder is a plan to counterfeit money. The alternating narrative tells the story of a murder trial in which the identity of the accused is kept hidden from the reader. In the end, we learn that the avenger has faked a murder, by leaving in Humphries's cellar, in the central oven, signs of an apparent crime - a tooth and a nail along other items. Thus Lewis has successfully framed his opponent as his wife's murderer. THE CORSICAN (1974) was a story about the growth of a Union Corse 'family' in Corsica and Marseilles, covering the three-decade span between 1943 and 1973. 49 DAYS OF DEATH (1969) was a suspense story of reincarnation based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Detective Rick McAllister: "Money's nice, but it doesn't make the world go round." In the 1950s Ballinger made his breakthrough as a script writer. He wrote for The Mice (with Joseph Stefano), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-61), I, Spy, Cannon, M. Squad, Ironside, and Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, and The Outer Limits (1963-64) - more than 150 television scripts in total. I, Spy, starring Bill Cosby and Robert Culp, was the first weekly network television drama to present an African American as a star. Part of the success of the series was that the stars adlibbed much of their dialogue. The first episode was set in Hong Kong, but a critic for The New York Times noted that "the setting was the real star." Ballinger's television plays included The Hero, Road Hog, Dry Run, The Day of the Bullet, Escape to Sonoita (with James A. Howard), and Deathmate. The action film Operation CIA (1965), starring the young Burt Reynolds, was set in Saigon. It was one of the early movies dealing with the politics and spies of Vietnam war. In The Strangler (1963), directed by Burt Topper, a mother-dominated lab technician (Victor Buono) creates frenzy in Boston when he murders nurses who help his mother. Finally his fetish for dolls betrays him to the police. For further reading: Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, ed. by John M. Reilly (1985); Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, ed. by Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler (1976) Selected bibliography:
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