Lucille Fletcher - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 3/23/11 7:32 PM

Lucille Fletcher

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lucille Fletcher (March 28, 1912 — August 31, 2000) was Lucille Fletcher an American screenwriter of film, radio and television. Her full name was Violet Lucille Fletcher. Her credits include the story "The Hitchhiker", which was later turned into a radio drama by Orson Welles, a memorable Twilight Zone Died August 31, 2000 (aged 88) episode called "The Hitch-Hiker" and more recently inspired Langhorne, Pennsylvania "Roadkill", an episode of Supernatural. Fletcher also wrote the screenplay for the film noir suspense thriller Sorry, Wrong Number, which was an expanded version of her 30- Citizenship "= American minute radio drama script.

Born March 28, 1912 Brooklyn, New York

Nationality MSs American

Alma mater Vassar College Occupation Writer

Contents Known for Author of The Hitch-Hiker (The Twilight Zone) = | Biography

; Spouse John Douglass Wallop III = 1.1 Early life i i p

= 1.2 After college Children Dorothy Louise Herrmann = 1.3 Personal life Wendy Elizabeth Herrmann = 2 Bibliography Parents James = 2.1 Novels Ellen = 2.2 Plays = 2.3 Radio plays Website = 3 References http://www.redwall.org/

= 4 External links

Biography Early life

Fletcher was born in Brooklyn in 1912 to parents Matthew and Violet Fletcher. She attended Vassar College, where she earned a degree in 1933.

After college

After graduation, she got a clerical job at CBS, where she met her future husband, composer Bernard Herrmann. The couple dated for five years, but delayed marriage due to her parents' objections. They finally married on October 2, 1939. Fletcher and Herrmann collaborated on several projects. He wrote the score for the Campbell Playhouse adaptation of her famous story "The Hitch-Hiker," and she helped write the libretto for his operatic adaptation of "Wuthering Heights."

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Lucille Fletcher - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 3/23/11 7:32 PM

As Lucille once explained in an interview, Sorry, Wrong Number was partially inspired by an incident from someone else's life. While Herrmann was sick at home, Lucille went down to the corner drug store for medicine. Innocently striking up a conversation with her pharmacist, a longtime friend, she raised the ire of an elderly woman who had apparently been waiting first. The woman interrupted and approached the druggist, complaining about poor service and demanding to "know who this interloper is?!", referring to Fletcher. Ms. Fletcher, finding the woman's shrill voice and demeanor particularly irritating, went home with the intention of writing a script based around a character with those traits who becomes embroiled in a precarious situation.

The radio drama premiered in 1943 and became one of the most legendary radio plays of all time. Agnes Moorehead created the role in the first performance and again in several later radio productions. Barbara Stanwyck starred in the 1948 film version and, in 1952, performed the original radio play over the airwaves. A 1959 version produced for the CBS radio series Suspense received a 1960 Edgar Award for Best Radio Drama.

Personal life

She married Bernard Herrmann on October 2, 1939. They had two children, Wendy and Dorothy. The couple divorced in 1948, over his affair with her cousin Kathy Lucille (Lucy) Anderson. In 1949, Bernard Herrmann

married Lucy |! Lucille later married Douglass Wallop, and they remained married until he died in 1985.

While married to Herrmann, she adapted the Emily Bronte novel Wuthering Heights into a libretto for her husband's opera of the same name. He completed the opera in 1951, by which time they had divorced.

Bibliography

Novels

Sorry, Wrong Number, 1948, with Allan Ullman Night Man, 1951, with Ullman

The Daughters of Jasper Clay , 1958

Blindfold, 1960

And Presumed Dead, 1963

The Strange Blue Yawl, 1964

The Girl in Cabin B54, 1968

Eighty Dollars to Stamford, 1975

Mirror Image, 1988

Plays

a Sorry, Wrong Number, (broadcast 1944), 1952 a Wuthering Heights, librettist, 1943-51 = Night Watch, 1972

Radio plays a My Client Curley, 1940

=u The Hitch-Hiker, 1941 =u Remodeled Brownstone

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The Furnished Floor

The Diary of Sophronia Winters The Search for Henri Le Fevre Badm Dreams Fugue in C Minor Someone Else

Night Man

Dark Journey and The Intruder

References

^ Music Academy Online (http://www.musicacademyonline.com/composer/biographies php? bid=107)

External links

Lucille Fletcher: Radio's First Queen of Screams

(http://web.archive.org/web/2009 1027 1323 13/http://geocities.com/Vienna/Stage/1045/Features/Fletcher html) Obituary (http://www.obituary.com/fletcherlucille.htm)

Suspense: Diary of Saphronia Winters (http://www.escape-suspense.com/2008/03/suspense---the.html) Suspense: Fugue in C Minor (http://www.escape-suspense.com/2007/10/suspense---fugu html)

Suspense: The Hitchhiker (http://www .escape-suspense.com/2007/03/suspense_the_hi.html)

Suspense: Sorry, Wrong Number (http://www.archive.org/download/SUSPENSE/43 -08- 21_Sorry_Wrong_Number_2.mp3)

Suspense: The Thing in the Window (http://www.escape-suspense.com/2007/05/suspense_the_th.html)

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