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Leigh (Douglass) Brackett (1915-1978) |
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American writer of crime novels and short stories, who also wrote screenplays for several highly acclaimed films by Howard Hawks, and television scripts. Shortly before her death, Leigh Brackett finished a draft of Star Warsn II: The Empire Strikes Back (1979) for the director and pulp fiction fan George Lucas. Brackett's major work was in the field science and fantasy fiction (over 200 titles), at that time dominated by male writers. "Howard Hawks sits down with you for a series of chats, giving you all his thoughts on what kind of story he wants, how it ought to go, etc., and then retires to Palm Springs and the golf course, leaving you to come up with a script the best way you can." (From 'The Big Sleep to The Long Goodbye' by Leight Brackett, in Take One, 1974) Leigh Douglass Brackett was born in Los Angeles, California,
the daughter of William Franklin and Margaret Douglass Brackett. On her
mother's side, she had Native American ancestors. Later, in her
stories, Brackett revealed sympathy with tribal peoples. Her father, a
certified public accountant, died in the influenza epidemic of 1918.
After his death, Brackett was raised in Santa Monica by her mother and
grandparents. At an early age, Brackett became a great fan of Robert E.
Howard, C.L. Moore and Edgar Rice Burroughs and his John Carter's
Martian Stories. These swashbuckling fantasies and space operas are
visible also in the short story 'The
Lake of Gone-Forever' (1949): "But it was easy, out of
his childhood memories and those strangely incoherent notes, to build a
romantic mystery around the lonely prospector's discovery of an unknown
world and his subsequent haunted death. Marcia had found it all
fascinating and did not doubt for a moment Conway's statement that he
was seeking to solve that mystery which, he said, had overshadowed his
whole life." Brackett's first short story, 'Martian Quest,' was
published in February 1940 in John W Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction magazine; she
was 25 at that time. Other stories followed: 'The Treasure of Ptakuth' (1940), 'The Stellar Legion' (1940), 'The Tapestry Gate' (1940), 'The Demons of Darkside' (1941), etc. – Hugo Gernsback, Campbell, and many SF magazine editors encouraged women's contributions, or as Brackett summarized in an interview: "editors aren't buying sex, they're buyng stories." ('Introduction' by Liza Yaszek, in The Future Is Female!: 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin, edited by Lisa Yaszek, 2018) From 1939 Brackett worked as a free-lance writer. She was a regular contributor to Planet Stories alongside with Ray Bradbury, and published such interplanetary adventures as 'The Dragon-Queen of Jupiter' (1941), originally set on Venus, 'Interplanetary Reporter' (1941), 'No Star is Lost' (1944), and 'Terror Out of Space' (1944). Throughout the early 1940s, Brackett and Bradbury read each other's manuscripts. They used to meet at the volleyball court at Santa Monica Muscle Beach. Brackett was a beach athlete and good at games; her postcards to him were usually signed "Muscles." Later Bradbury paid back her help by writing the second half of her novella 'Lorelei of the Red Mist' for Planet Stories. In 1946, Brackett married the science fiction writer Edmond
"World Wrecker" or "World Saver" Hamilton (1904-1977). The couple lived half
of each year in her Los
Angeles apartment and half on his family farm in Kinsman, Ohio.
Hamilton earned his nickname by
producing stories in which an imperiled Earth was always saved from
destruction in the final chapter by a scientist-hero. It has been
claimed that Brackett was a positive influence on her husband's writing
– his Captain Future characters became more interesting. Brackett herself specialized in planetary romances and sword and
sorcery tales, such as The Sword of Rhiannon (1953). The
Long Tomorrow (1955), which reflected cold war fears,
had a more serious tone. The story told of a post-nuclear
America. Differing from the 1950s science fiction, there are no mutants
but fanatic religious leaders, who have banned science and technology
as sinful. In the vein of E. R. Burroughs's space adventures, Brackett created Eric John Stark series. The hero is a Tarzan figure who was not raised from infancy by apes but by "half-human aboriginals" in Mercury. The local inhabitants call him N'Chaka, man-without-a-tribe. Stark is tall and his skin has been burnt dark by the terrible sun of his home planet. Although he has been "civilized" by his foster-father Simon Ashton, a representative of Earth's interplanetary empire, deep inside he still has "the brain of N'Chaka that believed in gods and demons and all the sorceries of darkness." (The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction by Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint, 2011, p. 74) Stark wanders in the solar system in the early stories, which appeared later in an expanded book form and were assembled as Eric John Stark: Outlaw of Mars (1982). By the 1950s, when the stories fell out of print, Brackett concentrated more on interstellar space operas. Looking back to the years from 1940 to 1955, when Planet Stories ceased publication, Brackett said that she had the happiest relationship possible with its editors: "They gave me, in the beginning, a proving-ground where I could gain strenght and confidence in the exercise of my fledgling skills . . . They sent me checks, which enabled me to keep on eating. In later years, the provided a steady market for the kind of stories I liked best to write. In short, I owe them much . . . " (The Best of Planet Stories #1, edited by Leigh Brackett, 1975) Michael Moorcock said in his introduction to Martian Quest: The Early Brackett (2002) that in his view Brackett's "finest Martian adventure stories remain superior to all others." The Stark stories were reviewed in the 1970s. Brackett changed the setting from the Burroughsian fantasy Mars to the distant, fictional world of Skaith. The Mariner missions had already made it known that Mars was a barren and lifeless planet. With her husband she wrote the story 'Stark and the Star Kings' for the Harlan Ellison anthology The Last Dangerous Visions, first scheduled to appear in 1972 but which has been delayed for decades. This legendary book wasn't published in 2017 either. Brackett's output of crime fiction was relatively small – three
novels and some
dozen short stories. "I wrote pulp in the morning for the money," she
recalled, "for one or two cents a word, two cents if I was lucky,
and then in the evening I worked on my novel." ('Leigh Brackett: Experiences as a Writer,' in American Science Fiction: Classic Novels of the 1950s) She acknowledged Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett
from the Black Mask school as major influences on her work. Her first novel, No
Good from a Corpse (1944), which appeared from the New York
publishing firm of Coward-McCann, was set in Southern California and
featuring the tough private detective Edmond Clive. The models for Brackett's
hero were obvious, but she also showed her skill in creating colorful,
sharp dialogue. Ed's girlfriend is murdered and during his hunt for the
killer, he is constantly knocked out. In 'So Pale, So Cold, So Fair' (1957) the protagonist, a heir to Western heroes, cleans up a crooked town – a theme that was repeated in her Howard Hawks movie westerns. 'I Feel Bad Killing You' was first published in New Detective in 1944. Curiosly, Brackett never wrote for Black Mask. The protagonist is Paul Channing, a detective who has quit the force. Years later Paul returns to find out who killed his brother, also a police. Paul is a typical hero from Brackett's stories – he has lost his former firm ground and tries to find renewed meaning in his life. "His expression was that of a man who hopes for nothing and is therefore immune to blows." It turns out that he killer is a cunning, treacherous woman, Marge. Paul says, "A smart girl, Marge, and a pretty one. I don't think I'll want to stand outside the window while you die." The sadistic and masochistic elements of the story can be seen as a prelude to the post-war nihilism of Mickey Spillane. In 1946, Brackett ghost-wrote Stranger at Home for
the film actor George Sanders. The Tiger Among Us (1957)
told of a citizen-turned-vigilante, who seeks to revenge himself on a
gang of teenage hoodlums. A kind of early Death Wish story, it
was filmed as 13 West Street starring Alan Ladd. Hawks read No Good from a Corpse and decided to get Brackett to write the screenplay of Chandler's The Big Sleep with William Faulkner and Jules Furthman. However, the director was reportedly shocked when he learned that the hard-boiled writer was a woman. And at the age of 28 she also appeared young compared with Furthman, who was nearly 60. But Hawks especially loved – at least in his films – tough-talking dames, and Brackett was hired for the job. After 1955 Brackett generally preferred to work in films and tv, notably contributing screenplays for several Howard Hawks productions. They both shared the same literary taste, she was sophisticated, dressed in somewhat outdoorsy manner, which the director liked, and she had spent much of her childhood in Pasadena, not far from the Hawks home. Moreover, her portrayal of the spirit of comradeship was of the kind that appealed to him. "There's probably no stronger emotion than friendship between men," Hawks once said. Brackett started to write in Santa Monica Rio Bravo with Jules Furthman in 1957; he was now seventy. She made most of the actual writing, but got only $600 weekly. Furthman, who hated to put anything down on paper, received $2,500 a week. Brackett considered her original script for El Dorado the best she had ever written, but Hawks found it too tragic; from 1930s he had generally avoided killing off his leading characters. For Hatari! Brackett worked at $750 a week in the
beginning, but Hawks also hired the brothers Waldman to write
separately from her with a $35,000 fee. In the romantic farce Man's
Favorite Sport?
(1964), starring Rock Hudson, Brackett's contributions went uncredited,
but she was with the crew throughout the filming, writing
and rewriting scenes. She was denied screen credit by the Writers Guild
of America, although Hawks and the initial writers, John Fenton Murray
and Steven McNeil, were on her side. In Red Line 7000
(1965), about stock car racers, Brackett again toiled uncredited. When
Hawks tried to hire her to write the script for Rio Lobo (1970)
in 1969, Brackett refused because she was just about to leave on a trip
around the world. After returning from her travels in December,
Brackett continued the work of Burton Wohl. "Most of what I did on Rio
Lobo was to try and patch over the holes," she said. "I was
unhappy that he went back to the same old ending of the trade, because
it was done beautifully in Rio Bravo and done over again in El
Dorado." (Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s, edited and with and introduction by Patrick McGilligan, 1997, p. 22) Robert Altman's film The Long Goodbye (1973), scripted by Brackett, was based on the resigned novel, which Chandler published in 1953. However, in twenty years Chandler's knightly private detective, Philip Marlowe, had became too much plagiarized figure, a cliché. When Marlowe is a hero in Hawks's The Big Sleep, he is in Altman's modernized version an unshaven slob, and instead of being the tough-guy, he don't even win a fight and can't track his cat. "A spit in the eye to a great writer," commented Michael Billington Altman's film in Illustrated London News. Brackett's later novels include Follow the Free Wind (1963), a fictional account of James Beckworth, a former slave, an adventurer, who became a legend on the frontier. This work received the Spur Award from Western Writers of America. Her novel An Eye for Eye (1957) was the pilot for the television series Markham, which ran in 1959-60. It starred starring Ray Milland and focused on a globe-trotting attorney, who was also a self-made investigator. The Best of Leigh Brackett (1977), carefully edited by her husband, offered the readers highlights from her long career as a crime, mystery, and science fiction writer. The director George Lucas paid Brackett a flat fee of $50,000 to write the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back. Before she started the work, Brackett brainstormed with Lucas new plot details. Shortly after delivering her first draft, Brackett died of cancer on March 24, 1978, in Lancaster, California. Lucas did not like her script – he thought that it felt wrong and the dialogue was clumsy. (George Lucas by Brian Jay Jones, 2016) Eventually Lawrence Kasdan was hired to complete the screenplay. However, she received screen credit along with Kasdan. Brackett's final work also won her a posthumous Hugo Award in 1981. For further reading: Leigh Brackett, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffey: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography by Rosemarie Arbur (1982); Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton: A Working Bibliography by Gordon Benson Jr. (1986); Leigh Brackett: An American Science Fiction Writer - Her Life and Work (dissertation) by John Leonard Carr (1988); 'Leigh Brackett: Journeyman Plumber,' interview by Steve Swires, in Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s, edited and with and introduction by Patrick McGilligan (1997); 'Brackett, Leigh (Douglass)' by JC [John Clute], in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls (1993); 'Brackett, Leigh,' in Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers by Lee Server (2002); 'Leigh Brackett,' in The Final Frontier by John Hamilton (2007); 'Savagery on Mars: Representations of the Primitive in Brackett and Burroughs' by Diane Newell and Victoria Lamont, in Visions of Mars: Essays on the Red Planet in Fiction and Science, edited by Howard V. Hendrix, George Slusser, Eric S. Rabkin (2011); ''Introduction' by John Betancourt, in The Leigh Brackett Science Fiction Megapack (2023) Screenplays:
Novels, short stories, and other works:
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