 
Choose another writer in this calendar:
by name: by birthday from the calendar.
TimeSearch |
|
Richard (Thomas) Condon (1915-1996) |
|
American satirical novelist, playwright, and crime
writer, best known for the thrillers The Manchurian Candidate (1959) and Prizzi's Honor (1982).
Richard Condon ridiculed among other things Cold War American politics, President Ronald
Reagan, the U.S. Mafia, Hollywood agents, and fast-food business, all
representing aspects that defined his time. Several of
Condon's books have been made into films. "The American patrol was brought to the Research Pavilion at six-nine the following morning, July 8. Yen Lo had them bathed, then inoculated each of them personally. They were dressed again while they slept and set down, excepting for Raymond Shaw, one man to a cot to a cubicle, where Yen Lo got three implantation teams started on them, staying with each team through the originating processes until he had assured himself that all had been routined with smoothness. When he had assured himself to the point of downright fussiness, he brought his assistant and two nurses with him into the corner apartment where Raymond slept and began the complex work on the reconstruction of the sergeant's personality." (The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon, New York: Pocket Star Books, 2004, p. 35; first published by by McGraw-Hill in 1959) ) Richard Thomas Condon was born in New York City, the son of Richard Aloysius, a lawyer, and Martha Irene (Pickering) Condon, a secretary. At an early age, he developed a bad stammer from which he never fully recovered. Condon himself thought it had been induced by his father, who used to shout at him. Condon was educated in public schools. With his classmate Art Buchwald at DeWitt Clinton High School in New York he later wrote an unproduced story for the screen, Key to Paris. After graduating he worked in miscellaneous jobs, including as a elevator operator, hotel clerk, and waiter. In 1938 he married Evelyn Hunt, a former model; they had two daughters. In the mid-1930s, Condon sold an article to Esquire magazine. He worked briefly in advertising and then from 1936 as a studio publicist in the American film industry for 21 years, among others for Walt Disney Productions (he promoted Fantasia and Dumbo, among other classics), Hal Horne Organization, Twentieth-Century Fox, and other firms. Once he said that during his career, he had watched more than ten thousand movies. After WWII, he ran his own firm, Richard Condon, Inc., for a few years. In 1951-52 Condon was a theatrical producer in New York and wrote a play, Men of Distinction (1953), which was closed after four performances. At the time it was produced on Broadway, he resigned as a vice president of RKO-Radio Pictures to become a writer. As a novelist Condon made his debut with The Oldest Confession (1958). "I am considered a compulsive writer because I spend a seven-hour day and a seven-day week at the typewriter," Condon said. ('Condon, Richard (Thomas)', in World Authors 1950-1970, edited by John Wakeman, New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1975, p. 320) On the proceeds of the film right to his second novel, The Manchurian Candidate, Condon moved to Mexico and then to Europe, where lived with his family in France, Spain, Ireland, and Switzerland. Condon returned
back to America in the 1980s. For the last 16 years of his life, Condon
lived in Dallas, Texas, to be near his grandchildren. With his
daughter Wendy Bennett he published a cookbook, Olé Molé!: Great Recipes in the Classic Mexican Tradition
(1988). "A writer may call himself an artist," Condon said in And Then We Moved to Rossenarra
(1973), "just as an ambulance chaser may call himself a lawyer, but
what is art is not likely to be decided for decades or longer aftert he
work has been produced . . . so we must not feel bad if we think of
literature as entertainment rather than as enlightenment." (Ibid., p. 152) Richard Condon died in Dallas on April 9, 1996. He had suffered
from heart and kidney problems. Condon's autobiography, entitled Stained Glass, has remained unpublished. "I thought that Condon's The Manchurian Candidate
was one of the best books I had ever read. I just couldn't put it down
and after I had read it, I thought, 'I've just got to make a film of
it.' It had great social and political significance for me at the time,
and it has certainly been—unfortunately—a horribly prophetic film. It's
frightening what has happened in our country since that film was
made." (John Frankenheimer in The Cinema of John Frankenheimer by Gerald Pratley, London: A. Zwemmer Limited; New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1969, p. 98) Condon's most famous thriller was inspired in large part by the
1950s stories about the brainwashing of American
prisoners. "A human time-bomb is turned loose on an unsuspecting nation
in this brilliant and startling novel, at once a spy story, a love
story, a fascinating tale of adventure, and a savage satire," declared
the publisher's blurb for the novel. (Richard Condon; https://www.richard-condon.com/the-manchurian-candidate. Accessed 1 July 2025)
However, at the core of book is the
art of mass manipulation. Condon both confirms and questions the
hysteria over Communist infiltration of American society. The author's
critical attitude toward the media
surfacesthroughout the story. Other later examples of the conspiracy novel include Loren Singer's The Parallax View (1960), Joseph DiMona's Last Man at Arlington (1973), William Goldman's The Marathon Man (1974), and Robert Ludlum's The Chancellor Manuscript (1977). In the next ten years Condon published prolifically. A Talent for Loving (1964) was set in the form of a western novel.
"The desire of a mid-19th-century Texas tycoon to marry his daughter
off to the more fit of two suitors leads to all manner of surrealistic
competitions, including an Apache‐hounded race overland to Mexico City
. . . one of the best of Richard Condon's sardonic fairy tales for
adults". ('Paperbacks: New and Noteworthy,' The New York Times, July 9, 1978) The novel made into a
film in 1969, starring Richard Widmark and Cesar Romero. An Infinity of Mirrors (1964) is a story about Paule, a daughter of a great Jewish actor, and Veelee, a descendant of a German military family, who fall in love in Paris. They marry, and Paule concentrates on becoming a good German wife. "She had already read Nietzsche and it had made her giggle, but she reread him with the memory of the storm troopers at earnest work all around the army staff car. She felt at home with Stefan George and von Hofmannsthal, though George's work had been used recently to make the Nazis more palatable in German intellectual circles. She would not read Kafka, the Czech whom the Germans adored; she could not afford hopelessness." (An Infinity of Mirrors, New York: Creat Books, 1965, p. 59) On the eve of World War II their paths separate. When the persecution of the Jews starts, Paule leaves her husband, part of the monstrous machine. Veelee continues his career in the army and Paule finds a new lover. The death of their son, Paul-Alain, finally awakes Paule and Veele to see themselves as puppets of evil. Condon gained critical success again with the Winter Kills (1974), a kind of roman à clef. It paralled the lives of the members of the Kennedy family with a theme that murdering presidents is a good idea for world leaders who wish to better themselves. The story was also filmed, but despite its cast included Anthony Perkins, Dorothy Malone, Sterling Hayden, Elisabeth Taylor (uncredited) and John Huston, it was never satisfactorily released. One of its producers was murdered and the other sent down for forty years on a drugs charge. Jeff Bridges played a likeable dope and the half-brother of President Keegan, who was assassinated in 1960, tries to track down the man who ordered the murder. John Huston is his father (a Joseph P. Kennedy figure) who walks around in red bikini shorts. William Richert wrote and directed the film which has enjoyed a cult status. "The tongue-in-cheek approach makes what could have been a provocative vision of the corrupt American power elite into something quite trivial. Picture was shut down before completion, and in an effort to raise additional money, Richert made The American Success Company with Bridges and Bauer. Revised for a 1982 re-lease." ('Winter Kills,' Guide for the Film Fanatic by Danny Peary, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986, p. 473) The political scene and its scoundrels gave much material for
Condon's novels. "Politics is a from of high entertainment and low
comedy," Condon once said. "It has everything: it's melodramatic, it's
sinister and it has wonderful villains." American presidents are
portrayed in The Star Spangled Crunch (1974) and The Final Addiction
(1991), in which a simpleton from Connecticut, Goodie Noon, succeeds
President Reagan, and a frankfurter salesman, Owney Tompkins Hazman,
tries to find his long-lost mother, Oona Noon, and becomes involved
with political maneuvers. The Verical Smile (1971) recast Richard Nixon as "Funky Dunc," a transvetite Wall Street lawyer torned presidential candidate. Death of a Politician (1978) is a crime thriller which features a Richard Milhous Nixon look-alike character, Walter Bodmor Slurrie, who has been murdered. Through the subsequent investigation of his death Condon takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the post-WWII American political history. "Every book I've ever written has been about abuse of power," Condon said in an interview in 1986. "I feel very strongly about that. I'd like people to kno how deeply their politicians are wronging them." (quoted in Ars Americana, Ars Politica: Partisan Expression in Contemporary American Literature and Culture by Peter Swirski, Montreal; Ithaca: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010, p. 64) Like in the work of Robert Ludlum, the belief that giant corporations and shadowy governmental powers make all the important decision, found an expression Condon's thrillers. In Emperor of America (1990) a private-sector nuclear device explodes in Washington, wipes out the White House. The Royalist Party and the National Rifle Association take the responsibility but Condon's target is Reaganism and its legacy, embodied in the character of an Army colonel, Caesare Appleton, who becomes Emperior Caesare I. Condon wrote: ". . . the Reagan Administration—that shining definition of reigning glamor and romance associated with queens, big money, great dressmakers, great poverty, colorful (moderate) mullahs, glamorous (if shocking) scandals and entertaining South American drug lords—had overtaken the national imagination of a society which had been compartmentalized by money." (Ibid., p. 50) Prizzi's Honor (1982), the first part of Condo's 'Prizzi' saga, was a satiric tale of the Mafia killers, and their romance. The novel was filmed in 1985, directed by John Huston and starring Kathleen Turner and Jack Nicholson. Condon wrote the script with Janet Roach. Huston's adaptation follows the novel fairly closely. Charley Partanna, a friend of pasta and a slow-witted hit man from a close-knit Mafia family, falls in love with a woman, Irene Walker, whose husband he had killed as a traitor. Irene turns out to be a freelance assassin. They start to plan a marriage, but finally the both assassins are hired to kill each other. Condon's
stories often
deal with the theme of loyalty and betrayal. Charley Partanna is
loyal to his employees, although he do not want to marry one of the
Prizzi daughters, Maerose. The role was played by Anjelica Huston, the
director's daughter. John Foreman gave her Condon's book. "I read it
overnight. It was a
wonderful book, a Mob story full of wit and black humor. I went back to
him the next day and said, "It's great." . . . He said, "Yeah. What do
you think about Jack as the hit man, Charley Partanna, and your dad to
direct?" And I thought, "Oh, damn!" because I knew I was going to be
sanddwitched between these two big rocks." (Watch Me: A Memoir by Anjelica Huston, New York: Scribner, 2014, p. 145) Irene wants to keep the money her late husband stole from the Prizzis. "Rest assured, however, Mr. Condon never allows reality to be too great a burden for the reader. Charley and Irene, in different ways, are eventually undone by the author's delightfully preposterous and perverse plot complications, but throughout the novel, Mr. Condon's wicked sense of humor keeps the dealings and double-dealings in proper perspective." ('For love and money' by Robert Asahina, The New York Times, April 18, 1982) Charley learns his lesson – there is no future outside the Family. Prizzi's Family (1986) was a prequel to Prizzi's Honor. Charley Partanna appeared again in Prizzi's Glory
(1988), in which Charley marries Maerose Prizzi, and becomes Charles
Macy Barton. This time he leaves the street operations for politics and
other kind business. Prizzi's Money (1994) told a story of a
woman, Julia Asbury, the daughter of a Prizzi hit man. After a few
double-crosses, she is chased by the Prizzis who want their money back.
Charley is sent after Julia but he falls madly in love with her: "They
made cosmic music together. Why else, Charley asked himself, did he
always wear a jacket and a necktie when he saw her?" (Ibid., p. 290) Though The Manchurian Candidate was
anything but adaption-friendly, it has inspired two film productions
and some run-of-the-mill imitations. First it was turned down by
every studio in Hollywood until the screenwriter George
Axelrod approached the director John Frankenheimer.
They bought the motion picture rights to the book for approximately
$50,000. Axelrod's screenplay is considered one
of the best adaptations from a novel to the screen. He was later heard
to remark that the film "went from flop to classic without passing
through a period of profitability." (Film: The Critics' Choice: 150 Masterpieces of World Cinema Selected and Defined by the Experts, edited by Geoff Andrew, New York: Billboard Books, 2001, p. 90) In
Frankenheimer's Cold War version from 1962 a soldier, Sergeant Raymond
Shaw (Laurence Harvey) comes back with his platoon from the Korean War
with a Congressional Medal of Honour. However, he has been brainwashed
with the rest of his unit by Chinese during his captivity in North
Korea, and primed to kill at the release of a certain code words.
("Raymond, why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?")
Shaw's
primary target is a U.S. presidential nominee, Senator Thomas Jordan.
His own mother, Rosia (Angela
Lansbury) turns out the be the Russian agent, who plans to elevate her
husband to the White House. In the case of Major Marco (Frank Sinatra)
the brainwashing has been only partially successful, and Marco unlocks
Shaw's mind. "137 THE PLATFORM THROUGH THE TELESCOPIC SIGHT Raymond moves the rifle so that the crossed hairs of the sight meet in the center of the Nominee's forehead. They hold there for a second. Then he swings the rifle ever so slightly to the left, till Johnny's shoulder is spotted in the crossed hairs." (from George Axelrod's screenplay, p. 124, in The Cinema of John Frankenheimer, p. 95) Shaw kills his mother, stepfather Senator Johnny Iselin, and then himself. The film was forbidden in Finland during a period of self-censorship, when center-left coalition governments wanted to maintain a good and trusting relationship with the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the book was translated into Finnish in 1960. It has been claimed, that the film was taken out of circulation in the United States after President John F. Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas. Condon's controversial story inspired also Jonathan Demme's screen version from 2004, starring Denzel Washington as the plagued soldier and Meryl Streep as the intriguing mother. In this remake the Operation Desert Storm provided the background for the paranoid story.
Selected works:
|
