Fisher, Stephen (Gould) 1913–1980

(Steve Fisher, Stephen Gould, Grant Lane)

PERSONAL: Born August 29, 1913; died, March 27, 1980; son of an actress; married Edythe Syme (a magazine editor), 1935 (marriage ended); remarried; children: two sons. Education: Attended Oneonta Military Academy.

CAREER: Author. Military service: U.S. Navy, 1928–32; served on a submarine.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Forever Glory, Macaulay (New York, NY), 1936.

Destroyer, Appleton Century (New York, NY), 1941.

Destination Tokyo, Appleton Century (New York, NY), 1943.

Giveaway, Random House (New York, NY), 1954.

MYSTERY NOVELS

(Under pseudonym Grant Lane) Spend the Night, Phoenix Press (New York, NY), 1935.

Satan's Angel Macaulay (New York, NY), 1935.

(Under pseudonym Stephen Gould) Murder of the Admiral, Macaulay (New York, NY), 1936.

(Under pseudonym Stephen Gould) Murder of the Pigboat Skipper, Curl (New York, NY), 1937.

The Night before Murder, Curl (New York, NY), 1939.

(Under pseudonym Stephen Gould) Homicide Johnny, Arcadia House (New York, NY), 1940.

I Wake Up Screaming, Dodd Mead (New York, NY), 1941, revised edition, Bantam (New York, NY), 1960.

Winter Kill, Dodd Mead (New York, NY), 1946.

The Sheltering Night, Fawcett (New York, NY), 1952.

Take All You Can Get, Random House (New York, NY), 1955.

No House Limit, Dutton (New York, NY), 1958.

Image of Hell, Dutton (New York, NY), 1961.

Saxon's Ghost, Sherbourne Press (Los Angeles, CA), 1969.

The Big Dream, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1970.

The Hell-Black Night, Sherbourne Press (Los Angeles, CA), 1970.

SCREENPLAYS

(With Allen Rivkin and Leonard Lee) Typhoon, Paramount, 1940.

(With Lamar Trotti) To the Shores of Tripoli, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1942.

(With Jack Andrews) Berlin Correspondent, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1942.

(With Frank Gruber) Johnny Angel, RKO Radio, 1945.

(With Raymond Chandler) Lady of the Lake, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1946.

(With Oliver H. P. Garrett) Dead Reckoning, Columbia, 1946.

(With Bradley King) That's My Man, Republic, 1947.

(With Nat Perrin) Song of the Thin Man, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1947.

The Hunted (based on Fisher's story "You'll Always Remember Me"), Allied Artists, 1948.

I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes (based on the novel by Cornell Woolrich), Monogram, 1948.

(With Cyril Hume and Bertam Millhauser) Tokyo Joe, Santana-Columbia, 1949.

(With others) A Lady without Passport, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1950.

(With George Bricker) Roadblock, RKO Radio, 1951.

Battle Zone, Allied Artists, 1952.

(With John Gilling) Whispering Smith Hits London (also known as Whispering Smith versus Scotland Yard), Royal-Exclusive-RKO, 1952.

(With John Gilling) The Lost Hours (also known as The Big Frame), Royal-RKO Radio, 1952.

Flat Top, Monogram, 1952.

San Antone, Republic, 1953.

Woman They Almost Lynched, Republic, 1953.

(With D. D. Beauchamp) The Man from the Alamo, Universal-International, 1953.

City That Never Sleeps, Republic, 1953.

(With Norman Reilly Raine) Sea of Lost Ships, Republic, 1953.

Hell's Half Acre, Republic, 1954.

(With Seton I. Miller and Lester Yard) The Shanghai Story, Republic, 1954.

Thirty-six Hours (also known as Terror Street), Exclusive-Lippert, 1954.

Night Freight, Allied Artists, 1955.

The Big Tip-Off, Allied Artists, 1955.

Las Vegas Shakedown, Allied Artists, 1955.

(With Richard Schayer) Top Gun, Fame-United Artists, 1955.

(With Paul L. Peil) Betrayed Women, Allied Artists, 1955.

Silent Fear, NAC-Gibralter, 1955.

Toughest Man Alive, Allied Artists, 1956.

The Restless Breed, Alperson/Twentieth Century-Fox, 1957.

Courage of Black Beauty, Alperson/Twentieth Century-Fox, 1957.

I, Mobster, Alperson/Twentieth Century-Fox, 1959.

(With Robert B. Gordon) Noose for a Gunman, 1960.

(With W. R. Burnett) September Storm, Alperson/Twentieth Century-Fox, 1961.

Law of the Lawless, Lyles/Paramount, 1964.

(With Robert E. Kent) The Quick Gun, 1964.

(With A. C. Lyles) Young Fury, Lyles/Paramount, 1965.

Black Spurs, Lyles/Paramount, 1965.

(With Andrew Craddock) Johnny Reno, Lyles/Paramount, 1966.

Waco, Lyles/Paramount, 1966.

(With Andrew Craddock) Red Tomahawk, Paramount, 1967.

(With Andrew Craddock) Fort Utah, Lyles/Paramount, 1967.

(With Sloane Nibley and James Edward Grant) Hostile Guns, Lyles/Paramount, 1968.

(With Andrew Craddock) Arizona Bushwhackers, Lyles/Paramount, 1968.

(With A. C. Lyles) Rogue's Gallery, Lyles/Paramount, 1968.

Savage Red—Outlaw White, 1974.

The Great Gundown, Sun Productions, 1974.

TELEVISION SCRIPTS

The George Sanders Mystery Theatre, National Broadcasting Company (NBC), 1957.

Man on a Raft (pilot for Michael Shayne, Detective), NBC, 1958.

"Goodbye Hannah," The Dick Van Dyke Show, 1961.

Luke and the Tenderfoot (pilot), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), 1965.

(With Jim Byrnes and A. C. Lyles) The Last Day (television screenplay), 1975.

Author of scripts for television series, including Bringing up Buddy, CBS, 1960–61; The Dick Powell Show, NBC, 1961–63; The Wild, Wild West, CBS, 1965–70; Cannon, CBS, 1971–76″; McMillan and Wife, 1971–76; Barnaby Jones, CBS, 1973–80; S.W.A.T., American Broadcasting Company (ABC), 1975–77; Switch, CBS, 1975–78; Starsky and Hutch, ABC, 1975–79; On Our Own, CBS, 1977–78; and Fantasy Island, ABC, 1978–80.

OTHER

(With Alex Gottleib) Susan Slept Here: A Comedy in Two Acts (first produced in New York, NY, 1961), French (New York, NY), 1956.

Also contributor of about hundreds of short stories, usually under name Steve Fisher, to magazines and newspapers, including Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Saturday Evening Post, Sure-Fire Detective, Nick Carter, Detective Fiction Weekly, Popular Detective, Ace Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, Thrilling Detective, The Shadow, Saucy Romantic Adventures, Clues, Argosy, Mystery, Black Mask, Armchair Detective, Giant Detective Annual, and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

ADAPTATIONS: Fisher's short story "If You Break My Heart" was adapted as the film Nurse from Brooklyn, 1938; "Shore Leave" was adapted as the film Navy Secrets, starring Fay Wray, 1939; I Wake up Screaming was adapted as the films I Wake up Screaming, starring Victor Mature and Betty Grable, 1941, and Vicki, 1953; Destination Tokyo was adapted for film, 1943.

SIDELIGHTS: Stephen Fisher, a prolific author of short stories for pulp magazines, later found success as a novelist and screenwriter for movies and television. As a short-story writer for the pulps (usually under the name Steve Fisher), he was known primarily for his hardboiled crime stories—many of which featured private investigator Sheridan Doome—for Black Mask in the 1930s and 1940s. However, he also wrote in a wide variety of other genres, ranging from adventure tales and war stories to science fiction and romance. Doome later appeared in a couple of Fisher's novels, and the author's most successful book was I Wake up Screaming, which was adapted twice to celluloid. As the pulp market began to dry up in the 1950s, Fisher turned more and more to writing for movies, and at the end of his career he found success as a scriptwriter for popular television series such as The Wild, Wild West and Macmillan and Wife.

The son of an actress who was often not at home, Fisher grew up in Los Angeles and attended military school. He ran away at age sixteen, joined the U.S. Navy, and served on a submarine. In his free time, he began writing short stories that drew on his naval experience. When he left the military in 1932, he set off for New York City and spent several years in desperate poverty while he tried to earn a living as a writer. Fisher finally found some success by the mid-1930s by publishing his stories in pulp magazines such as Underground Detective, Hardboiled, Black Mask, and Detective Tales. Most of these contributions were in the mystery and detective fiction genres, and here he introduced such ongoing characters as Kip Muldane, Mr. Death, and Sheridan Doome. Doome was one of the most successful of these. Katherine M. Restaino, writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, describes Doome as "a naval intelligence officer whose face was badly mutilated in an explosion that shattered his nerve endings, thereby depriving him of the ability to show facial expressions. He had a slit for a mouth and blotches for eyes and his body was held upright by steel braces, but his brain functioned brilliantly." Fisher hoped to take his character Doome to the movies, but producers felt he would be too ugly on screen to have audience appeal.

At the same time he was beginning to find financial security by writing for the pulps, Fisher started to write novels. The first couple of books did not find a large audience, but two novels featuring Doome, which he wrote under the pen name Stephen Gould, Murder of the Admiral and Murder of the Pigboat Skipper, received positive reviews, according to Restaino. Part of this success can be attributed to Fisher's writing style. "Fisher's stories were direct and simple in plot," observed Restaino, "and the characters, while well defined, were neither complex nor stereotypical. In short, the plots and the people were believable because Fisher had the gift, evident in all of his writing, of focusing on what he knew. In his short stories he usually drew on either his navy years or the excitement and ambience of New York City in the 1930s and 1940s. Later, after he moved back to Los Angeles, he captured the feel of that city in the post-World War II years."

One of Fisher's best-known novels is I Wake up Screaming. This noir tale concerns the murder of a former secretary, Vicky Lynn, whom several Hollywood promoters had been grooming for stardom. In a strange twist, homicide detective Ed Cornell frames a screenwriter for the death, even though he knows the real killer is a switchboard operator who worked in Vicky's building. He does this to punish the writer for having a relationship with Lynn, with whom Cornell has himself become bizarrely infatuated. A disturbing scene in the story comes when a kind of shrine to Lynn, including photos and one of the aspiring actress's handkerchiefs, is discovered in Cornell's apartment. Noting that Fisher drew inspiration from fellow mystery writer Cornell Woolrich, Restaino wrote, "The intensity of Cornell's obsession with the murdered girl and his relentless efforts to frame the wrong man for the murder, even to the point of Cornell's willingness to find a sanctuary for the real murderer, show Fisher's ability to understand and capture the repressed sexual sensibilities of both Wool-rich and his fictional counterparts."

After I Wake up Screaming, Fisher's writing took "on darker, more morbid tones," according to Restaino. In Winter Kill, for example, five men rent out the same office space for their various occupations. When one of the men, Loomis, kills a cop and tries to frame one of his officemates, he is killed and the four remaining characters take his money to rent better offices for themselves. The Sheltering Night is a sad tale about a woman named Ronnie who runs away from her mother to find a life of her own as a model in New York City. Ironically, the scar inflicted upon her face by her mother when she was a child is seen as lending her a mysterious appearance that brings her success. "The novel is a psychological study of a young woman in deep distress because of her love-hate relationship with her mother and her inability to reclaim her daughter, who is being raised by Ronnie's grandmother," said Restaino.

Fisher turned to Hollywood in the late 1930s in the hope of making more money to support his children. His first sales included the stories "If You Break My Heart" and "Shore Leave," which became the movies Nurse from Brooklyn and Navy Secrets respectively. In 1940 his wrote the first of his many screenplays, Typhoon, which was filmed starring Robert Preston and Dorothy Lamour. He continued writing original film scripts and adaptations through the 1940s and 1950s, as well as pumping out contributions to the pulps. When the pulp magazine market began to collapse, Fisher found himself struggling because his film work was not pulling in enough income. Selling his Beverly Hills home and moving into an apartment, the late 1950s and 1960s proved difficult years, although he still managed to write some screenplays and a few novels.

Fisher's last two novels, Saxon's Ghost and The Hell-Black Night are suspense stories. In the former, Joe Saxon, one of the world's best stage magicians and under the name "The Great Saxon," finds himself involved in the occult arts when his beautiful, young assistant, Ellen Hayes, disappears. Saxon has to use all his arts of legerdemain to arrive at the chilling truth: the ESP powers he and Ellen fooled audiences into believing in are real. Saxon uses these ESP powers to reach out to Ellen from beyond the grave.

The Hell-Black Night is set during one rainy night and features a desperate woman who has run out of money to support herself. She turns to her ex-husband for help, but when he tries to kill her he is shot instead. "The novel has less dialogue than Fisher's other books," noted Restaino, "but the suspense generated by the plot, the atmosphere of psychic and psychological terror, and the amorality of the protagonist make The Hell-Black Night a haunting book."

By the 1970s, things were looking up for Fisher, who found a new career writing for television, the medium that had helped cause the demise of the pulps. He spent the last decade of his life writing for such series as Barnaby Jones, Starsky and Hutch, and Fantasy Island.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 226: American Hard-boiled Crime Writers, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2000.

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, November 1, 1991, review of I Wake up Screaming, p. 56.