Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s
He was the world’s best-selling author. He was the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood. He didn’t learn to speak English until he was six.
“I’m a businessman, not a writer,” claimed the self-effacing Alistair MacLean. While his narrative skills acquired readers in the millions, his understanding of the publishing and entertainment business made him the most business-savvy author since Charles Dickens invented the cliffhanging chapter ending and the author tour. MacLean had an instinctive understanding of synergy.
In Hollywood, “property” was king. This was real estate of a different commercial kind, an item on which many fates depended, and which could be used to raise the millions of dollars required to make a movie. And, virtually alone among authors of his generation, and certainly unique among screenwriters, his name acquired marquee status, carrying above-the-credit status, often billed above actors involved, ensuring that movies could be marketed as Alistair MacLean pictures, promising to deliver as certain an experience akin as those who embraced a Sherlock Holmes mystery…
…Read the Full Article @ The Magnificent 60s
King of the Action Thriller, Films from the Mind of Alistair MacLean (McFarland Publishing) by Brian Hannan and, as ever, with copious and often rare illustrations, is available from all good bookshops and online via Amazon and other such traders as well as on Kindle.