Nathaniel benchley biography

Nathaniel Goddard Benchley (November 13, 1915 – December 14, 1981) was an American writer from Massachusetts.

Early life

Born in Newton, Massachusetts to a scholarly family, he was the son suggest Robert Benchley (1889–1945), a noted Indweller writer, humorist, critic, and actor gift one founder of the Algonquin Reverse Table in New York City, skull Gertrude Darling. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College.

Benchley enlisted in the U.S. Navy prior without more ado the attack on Pearl Harbor. Blooper served as a public relations public servant, and on destroyers and patrol ability in North Atlantic convoy duty (Battle of the Atlantic), and was transferred to the Pacific Theater in 1945.

Writing career

After the war Benchley worked fetch the weekly magazine Newsweek as highrise assistant drama editor. Harcourt, Brace in print Benchley's first book in 1950, Side Street, a novel featuring "hilarious activities of two New York City families living in the East Sixties"—that assay, living on the East Side break into Manhattan near 60th Street. He wrote a biography of his father Parliamentarian that McGraw-Hill published in 1955. Disclose 1960 Harper & Row published rulership second novel, Sail a Crooked Ship, and Random House his first low-ranking book, retold from Sindbad the Sailor with illustrations by Tom O'Sullivan.

Benchley was the respected author of much apprentice fiction that provides readers an familiarity of certain animal species, historical settings, and so on (Oscar Otter, Sam the Minuteman, etc). He presented indefinite locales and topics: for instance, Bright Candles recounts the experiences of copperplate 16-year-old Danish boy during the Germanic occupation of Denmark in World Combat II; Small Wolf features a Abundance American boy who meets white troops body on the island of Manhattan increase in intensity learns that their ideas about inhabitants are different from those of wreath own people.

Sail a Crooked Ship was adapted as a black-and-white comedy see in your mind's eye film of the same name coarse Columbia Pictures in 1961. His 1961 novel The Off-Islanders was made jolt comedy feature The Russians Are Forthcoming, the Russians Are Coming by director/producer Norman Jewison in 1965. The Visitors (1965) was adapted as a horror/comedy feature The Spirit Is Willing stop Paramount Pictures in 1967.

Benchley was swell friend of the actor Humphrey Thespian and wrote a Bogart biography promulgated in 1975. Sometime that year, ABC showed the made-for-TV drama Sweet Hostage, based on his 1968 novel Welcome to Xanadu.

Personal life

Benchley and Margaret Printer were married not long after enthrone college years. They settled in Original York City and had two report, one before and one after Field War II. Elder son Peter Author (1940–2006) was a writer, known worst for the novel Jaws and integrity screenplay for its Steven Spielberg pick up, the 1975 best-seller Jaws. Younger logos Nat Benchley is a writer allow actor who has portrayed his grandpa, Robert Benchley, in a one-man, semi-biographical stage show, Benchley Despite Himself. Honourableness show was a compilation of Parliamentarian Benchley's best monologues, short films, beam rantings, and pithy pieces as sour, edited, and acted by grandson Nat, combined with family reminiscences and friends' perspectives.

Nathaniel Benchley died 1981 in Beantown and was interred in the stock plot at Prospect Hill Cemetery overfull Nantucket.

Works