Stuart Palmer (author)

Stuart Palmer (born June 21, 1905 and died February 4, 1968) was a talented mystery novelist and screenwriter. He was most famous for creating the character Hildegarde Withers. In addition, he used the pen names Theodore OrchardsStuart Palmer
entry at isfdb.org and Jay Stewart. for some of his works.

Summary

Palmer was born in Baraboo, Wisconsin in 1905. He was reportedly descended from some of the earliest English colonists and held a variety of odd jobs before turning to fiction."Haining, Peter, ed. ''The Television Crimebusters Omnibus''. London: Orion, 1994, p. 406.

From 1928 to 1931, Palmer was a frequent contributor (sometimes using the pen name Theodore Orchards) to ''Ghost Stories'' magazine, writing short stories, essays, and a serialized novel, ''The Gargoyle's Throat.''

Palmer tried his hand at writing a murder mystery with ''The Penguin Pool Murder'', published in 1931 and filmed the following year by RKO Radio Pictures. Character actress Edna May Oliver starred as Palmer's heroine, Hildegarde Withers, a spinster schoolteacher who was an amateur sleuth—something of an American version of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, although considerably more comic and caustic. He later admitted that he modeled Hildegarde after his former high school teacher, a Miss Fern Hakett. The casting of Oliver for the role was a coincidence, as Palmer had been influenced by her performance in the Broadway production of ''Show Boat'' when creating the character. The film was a hit and Oliver starred in two more Withers films, but she left RKO in 1935. Helen Broderick and ZaSu Pitts played Withers in another three films. A made-for-TV movie, ''A Very Missing Person'', aired in 1972, starring Eve Arden as Withers. This first novel inspired Palmer to collect pictures and statues of penguins and create a personal trademark featuring one of these birds."

Palmer wrote fourteen Hildegarde Withers novels, including ''Murder on the Blackboard'' (1932), ''Murder on Wheels'' (1932), ''The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree'' (1934), ''Four Lost Ladies'' (1949), and ''Cold Poison'' (1954), set in the thinly disguised Walter Lantz animation studio. The short-story collection ''People vs. Withers and Malone'' (1963) was a collaboration with Craig Rice, in which Hildegarde Withers was teamed with Rice's hard-drinking lawyer detective J.J. Malone; one of the stories, "Once Upon A Train, or The Loco Motive," was the basis for the movie ''Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone'' (1950). ''Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene'' (1969) was completed by Fletcher Flora upon Palmer's death and published posthumously. Palmer also featured Withers in dozens of short stories that were published in newspapers and mystery magazines; many of these were collected in ''The Riddles of Hildegarde Withers'' (1947), ''The Monkey Murder'' (1950), and ''Hildegarde Withers: Uncollected Riddles'' (Crippen & Landru, 2002).

Outside the Hildegarde Withers series, Stuart wrote two novels about newspaperman-turned-PI Howard Rook, ''Unhappy Hooligan'' (1956) and ''Rook Takes Knight'' (1968). He also wrote a handful of science fiction and fantasy stories published in ''The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction'' and ''Fantastic Universe''.

Palmer also had a career as a Hollywood screenwriter. In 1936, he penned his first screenplay and would go on to write several others, most of them for B movies. He scripted the first three ''Bulldog Drummond'' films for Paramount and later entries in Columbia's '' Lone Wolf'' and RKO's '' The Falcon'' series. In 1954, Palmer appeared as a contestant on Groucho Marx's TV show ''You Bet Your Life''.

"The Adventure of the Remarkable Worm" was a humorous Sherlock Holmes pastiche that was published in Ellery Queen's ''The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes'' in 1944. In 1950 another pastiche, "The Adventure of the Marked Man", was published in ''Australian Women's Weekly''; the pastiche takes the detective Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. Watson to the seaside town of Penzance in Cornwall, where they investigate the strange warnings given to Allen Pendarvis and a subsequent attempt on his life. "The two pastiches, one serious and one comic, were written while Palmer was marooned at an army post in Oklahoma, where he was serving as an instructor.…."

Stuart Palmer also wrote "The Mystery of David Lang" for Fate Magazine. It wasn't until long after Palmer's death that the affidavits, testifying to the truth of the story and signed by David Lang's daughter and the local justice of the peace, were actually in Mr. Palmer's handwriting (including the signatures).

Palmer served for one year as president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Bibliography

As Theodore Richards

*''The Gargoyle's Throat'' (1930)

As Stuart Palmer

=

Hildegarde Withers series

=
*''The Penguin Pool Murder'' (1931)
*''Murder on Wheels'' (1932)
*''Murder on the Blackboard'' (1932)
*''The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree'' (1934), serialized, ''Los Angeles Times'' (1934)
*''The Puzzle of the Silver Persian'' (1935), serialized, ''Los Angeles Times'' (1934)
*''The Puzzle of the Red Stallion'' (1935) aka ''The Puzzle of the Briar Pipe'' (1936), serialized, ''Chicago Tribune'' (1935)
*''The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla'' (1937)
*''The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan'' (1941)
*''The Riddles of Hildegarde Withers'' (1947)
*''Miss Withers Regrets'' (1948)
*''Four Lost Ladies'' (1949)
*''Monkey Murder and other Hildegarde Withers Stories'' (1950)
*''The Green Ace'' (1950) aka ''At One Fell Swoop'' (1951)
*''Nipped in the Bud'' (1951) aka ''Trap for a Redhead''
*''Cold Poison'' (1954) aka ''Exit Laughing'' (1954)
*''People Versus Withers and Malone'' (1963) with Craig Rice
*''Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene'' (1969) with Fletcher Flora
*''Hildegarde Withers: Uncollected Riddles'' (2002)
**‘The Riddle of the Dangling Pearl’
**‘The Riddle of the Flea Circus’
**‘The Riddle of the Brass Band’
**’The Riddle of the Forty Naughty Girls’
**‘The Riddle of the Whirling Lights’
**’The Riddle of the Tired Bullet’
*''The Adventures of the Marked Man and One Other'' (1973), limited edition booklet containing 'The Adventure of the Marked Man' and 'The I.O.U. of Hildegarde Withers', first published in ''The Baker Street Journal'' in 1948

=Howie Rook series

=
*''Unhappy Hooligan'' (1956) aka ''Death in Grease Paint'' (1956)
*''Rook Takes Knight'' (1968)

=Other works

=
*''Ace of Jades'' (1930)
*''No Flowers by Request'' (1937) aka ''Omit Flowers''

As Jay Stewart

*''Before It's Too Late'' (1950)

References

;Notes

;Bibliography
*''The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'', Penguin Books, 1985,

;External Links
"Stuart Palmer & Hildegarde Withers: An Appreciation"
by Steven Saylor includes a Stuart Palmer bibliography and filmography
*Michael E. Grost'
Stuart Palmer
page

{{DEFAULTSORT:Palmer, Stuart
1905 births
1968 deaths
20th-century American novelists
American male novelists
American mystery writers
People from Baraboo, Wisconsin
Novelists from Wisconsin
American people of English descent
American male short story writers
American male screenwriters
20th-century American short story writers
20th-century American male writers
Screenwriters from Wisconsin
20th-century American screenwriters