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(Anthony Walter) Patrick Hamilton (1904-1962) | |
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English novelist and playwright, whose best-known works were ROPE (1929) and GAS LIGHT (1938), both also adapted into screen. Patrick Hamilton died of cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure. "The good Americans usually die young on the battlefield, don't they? Well, the Davids of the world merely occupy space, which is why he was the perfect victim for the perfect crime." (Brandon in Alfred Hitchcock's film Rope, 1948) Born in Hassocks, Patrick Hamilton was the youngest of three children born to parents who were both divorced. His father, Bernard Hamilton, was a wealthy barrister, and a family tyrant, who spent his inheritance on drink and women. His first wife was a prostitute who subsequently threw herself under a train. Ellen Hamilton was briefly married to an incorrigible womanizer. Both Ellen and Bernard were published authors - Bernhard had written historical books, Ellen two romantic novels. Hamilton was educated at Holland House School in Hove, Sussex, Colet Court in London, and Westminster School (1918-19). At the age of seventeen he began to work as an actor and assistant stage manager for Andrew Melville. However, he then changed his career and worked as a stenographer, having learned the typing and shorthand via correspondence course. As a novelist Hamilton made his debut at the age of nineteen with the Dickensian MONDAY MORNING (1925). It was followed by CRAVEN HOUSE (1926), a story of the inmates of a boarding-house. It established his reputation on both sides of Atlantic. In 1927 Hamilton fell in love with Lily Connolly, a prostitute. Later he portrayed her in THE MIDNIGHT BELL (1929), which was the first part of the semi-autobiographical trilogy Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, a bleak love triangle revolving around the Midnight Bell pub. The second volume was THE SIEGE OF PLEASURE (1932), in which Jenny, the prostitute, was the central character. In the third volume, THE PLAINS OF CEMENT (1934), the barmaid Ella is offered an opportunity to change the course of her life. Together the novels were published in 1935. A celebrated 'bright young' novelist of the Twenties and Thirties, Hamilton's was in tune with the times, but he never glorified the life of the upper class like Evelyn Waugh. Despite his success and royalties from his plays, Hamilton was frequently broke. In London Hamilton lived in the fashionable Albany bachelor apartments off Piccadilly Circus, the fictional home of the fictional amateur 'gentleman thief', Hornung's 'Raffles'. Hamilton's first theatrical success was ROPE (1929), produced in the United States as ROPE'S END. The story depicts two Oxford undergraduates who attempt the 'perfect murder' - they kill a third boy, to prove that they are above ordinary people. The story had similarities with the notorious Richard Leopold and Nathan Loeb 'Killing for Kicks' murder case - they killed 14-year-old Bobbie Franks in 1924 purely for academic interest. Hamilton denied any connections. Alfred Hitchcock had been toying with Hamilton's play since the mid-1930s, and finally adapted it into screen in 1948. The result did not satisfy the author. Hitchcock shot the film in a series of eight-minute continuous takes and this technical experiment dominated too much the whole result. James Steward, playing the boys' former headmaster, Rupert Cadell, guesses the boys' secret, and realizes that if he gives the two enough rope they will hang themselves. "For whatever reason, Rope, despite its gimmick value and some effective moments, which earned its money back with a modest profit, seems strangely flat and ponderous, all played at a uniform pace which kills most of the excitement and suspense built into the subject-matter." (from Hitch by John Russell Taylor, 1978) Farley Granger's performance as Philip Morgan, the other college student, was considered a disappointment. Although the homosexual aspect was not prominent, the film was banned in Chicago and well as in other towns like Seattle and Memphis. At the peak of his career in 1932, Hamilton was accidentally run over by a car, sustaining multiple fractures and requiring plastic surgery. The accident left him permanently disfigured and perhaps contributed to his succumb to alcoholism. GASLIGHT in 1938 gained a huge success and ran in the United States for almost three years (1942-44). It was a story of a Victorian villain, who marries a woman for her money and tries to drive her mad in order to get his hands on it. In the British film version from 1940 Anton Walbrook played the villain, outwardly suave but eyes shining with cruelty. At the end, utterly defeated, he cradles his rubies with childish passion and the ex-detective, who has caught him, lets him be for the moment. George Cukor's film (1944) based on the play was a study of psychological dominance and abuse through manipulative words and actions. In the play the woman was a long-time spinster, but in the film Ingrid Bergman is much younger; Charles Boyer played the role of her husband. Bergman won the Best Actress Award for her performance as a victimized woman. "Bergman wasn't normally a timid woman; she was healthy," Cukor said later. "To reduce someone like that to a scared, jittering creature in interesting and dramatic." An earlier film version of the book was made in England in 1939-40, but MGM kept it out of circulation to benefit its own film. In 1941 appeared Hamilton's HANGOVER SQUARE. It was a grim study of a schizophrenic named George Harvey Bone who lives in the lower depths of Earl's Court, London. His mental detorioration is worsened by his love for a freckless whore, Netta Longdon, who is unfaithful to him with his best friends. Bone's agony forces him to revenge. Along with Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano (1947) the book is among the most penetrating studies of drinking. Behind the story was Hamilton's unrequited passion for the actress Geraldine Fitzgerald in the mid-1930s. Hamilton left London during the war and settled in Henley-on-Thames, a small town which inspired THE SLAVES OF SOLITUDE (1947). Hamilton's final series of novels remained unfinished. In THE WEST PIER, MR STIMPSON AND MR. GORSE and UNKNOWN ASSAILANT, he traced the career of another psychopath, Ralph Ernest Gorse. The character was an early example in thrillers of the cold-blooded and amoral charmer, a forefather of Psycho and Hannibal Lecter. Graham Greene described The West Pier as 'the best book written about Brighton'. Later the series was made into a television drama, The Charmer (1987), starring Nigel Havers, Bernard Hepton, Rosemary Leach, and Fiona Fullerton. Hamilton's novel was set along the seafront and pier in Brighton in the early 1920s. There are no murders and no violence, but Hamilton creates a dark, malevolent atmosphere, which perhaps is also a social statement in itself. Hamilton's Marxist views and private admiration of Stalin reflected only marginally from his works - he never joined the Communist Party. He did not depict the heroic working class, but rootless people, petty criminals, prostitutes, and barmaids, whose illusions are broken. "All the novels show a preoccupation with the perils and pleasures of drinking, and Hamilton's Marxism is expressed in his compassion for the hopelessness of his characters' lives." (from The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. by Margaret Drabble, 1998) Hamilton was married twice - to Lois Martin in 1930 and then to Ursula Stewart in 1953. During his last years Hamilton's wives looked after him without becoming friends. Patrick Hamilton died on September 23, 1962. The writer J.B. Priestley praised his gift in describing "a kind of No-Man's-Land of shabby hotels, dingy boarding-houses and all those saloon bars where the homeless can meet". Hamilton's younger brother was the detective novelist Bruce Hamilton. For further reading: World Authors 1900-1950, vol. 2, ed. by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens (1996); The Reader's Companion to Twentieth Century Writers, ed. by Peter Parker (1995); Patrick Hamilton by Sean French (1993); Through a Glass Darkly: The Life of Patrick Hamilton by Nigel Jones (1992); Twentieth Century Mystery and Crime Writers, ed. by J.M. Reilly (1985); The Light Went Out by B. Hamilton (1972) Selected works:
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