Derek Marlowe

{{Short description|English author, playwright, screenwriter (1938–1996)}} {{Use British English|date=August 2014}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2026}} {{Infobox writer  | name = Derek Marlowe | image = Derek-marlowe-1984.jpg | imagesize = | caption = | pseudonym = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{birth date|df=yes|1938|5|21}} | birth_place = Perivale, Middlesex, England | death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|1996|11|14|1938|5|21}} | death_place = Los Angeles, US | occupation = Author & screenwriter | period = 1960–1996 | genre = Mystery, recent history | subject = | movement = | notableworks = | signature = | website = }}

'''Derek William Mario Marlowe''' (21 May 1938 – 14 November 1996) was an English playwright, novelist, screenwriter and painter.

== Life == Derek Marlowe was born in Perivale, Middlesex, and lived there and in Greenford as a child. His father was Frederick William Marlowe (an electrician) and his mother Helene Alexandroupolos. He had early education at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in Holland Park.<ref>{{cite book | last=Reilly | first=John M| title=Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers | publisher=Springer | date=25 December 2015 | isbn=978-1-349-81366-7 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_U6vCwAAQBAJ&q=derek%2520marlowe&pg=PA1000 | access-date=4 September 2025 | page=1000}}</ref>

In 1959 Marlowe went to Queen Mary College of the University of London to study English literature. Marlowe calls his time spent there the unhappiest years of his life.{{sfn|Hamilton|2012|p=85}} He never finished his degree course – Alex Hamilton claims he was expelled for "satire and kindred villainies".{{sfn|Hamilton|2012|p=85}} Marlowe wrote and edited an article for the college magazine, a parody of J. D. Salinger's novel ''The Catcher in the Rye'' which reflected what Marlowe called "the boredom of college seminars."<ref name="Gallagher (2010)" /> However, the college had a particularly fine theatre (the former People's Palace in Mile End Road) and Marlowe became part of a core theatre group there. In 1960 the college group formed a semi-professional theatre company, the ''60 Theatre Group'', and took their production of Tennessee Williams' play ''Summer and Smoke'' to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with Marlowe in the leading role opposite Audrey "Dickie" Gaskell.

At college, Marlowe was a contemporary of the poet Lee Harwood, and after leaving he shared a flat with fellow writers Tom Stoppard and Piers Paul Read.<ref name="Gallagher (2010)">{{cite web|url=http://uncapp.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/writing-a-fan-letter-to-derek-marlowe/|title=A Dandy in Aspic – A Letter from Derek Marlowe|date=7 July 2010|last=Gallagher|first=Paul|publisher=Planet Paul|access-date=11 March 2013|archive-date=14 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160314101056/https://uncapp.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/writing-a-fan-letter-to-derek-marlowe/|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name="Gallagher 2 (2010)">{{cite web|url=http://dangerousminds.net/comments/a_dandy_in_aspic_letter_from_derek_marlowe|last=Gallagher|first=Paul|title=A Dandy in Aspic – A Letter from Derek Marlowe (revised)|date=14 November 2010|publisher=Dangerous Minds}}</ref>

Marlowe also painted. A 1962 work entitled ''A Slight Misfit'' featured fragments of a portrait of actress Marilyn Monroe that Marlowe had painted then torn up. He then "pasted the pieces into a jumble of newspaper and magazine clips." Marlowe told ''Life magazine'' that he created this collage because "I just wanted to get this misfiting face... on a background of the press."<ref>{{cite magazine|author=anonymous|title=Pieces of a larger-than-life Life|magazine=Life|date=25 January 1963|page=90|volume=54|issue=4|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EEgEAAAAMBAJ&q=%22derek+marlowe%22&pg=PA90}}</ref>

He married Susan Rose "Suki" Phipps, daughter of Veronica Nell Fraser-Phipps and stepdaughter of Sir Fitzroy Maclean, in 1968; together they had a son, Ben, to add to Suki's two sons and two daughters from a previous marriage. They divorced in 1985 and in 1989 he moved to Los Angeles, where he wrote a number of scripts for television, including the award-winning ''Two Mrs. Grenvilles'', ''Abduction of Innocence'' and an episode of ''Murder, She Wrote''.

While working there, he developed leukemia, and died of a brain hemorrhage after a liver transplant. He was cremated in California, but his ashes were brought back to England by his sister, Alda. At the time of his death he was planning to return to England and complete a tenth novel, ''Black and White''.

Novelist Nicholas Royle calls Marlowe one of the two biggest influences on him as a writer. "Both flit in and out of genres, appealing to genre readers and mainstream readers at the same time. And both write beautifully, which I aspire to do."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.neg-press.com/interview-nicholas-royle/|title=Q&A Nicholas Royle|author=anonymous|work=Negative Press London |date=14 September 2012}}</ref>

==Career==

===Theatre=== In 1960 he adapted a story, ''The Seven Who Were Hanged'' by Leonid Andreyev, for the stage. The 60 Theatre Group first produced the play at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1961, and later took it to a student theatre festival in Zadar, Croatia (then Yugoslavia). It was produced in London as ''The Scarecrow'' in 1964, and won the Foyle award. In 1962 Marlowe adapted Maxim Gorki's book The Lower Depths for the London stage.

===Novels=== Marlowe also wrote nine novels and a fragment of a tenth. Alex Hamilton believes that "the notion of the successful man who loses his way is the key preoccupation in Marlowe's books."{{sfn|Hamilton|2012|p=86}}

He published his first novel ''A Dandy in Aspic'' in 1966. The idea for the book began when he travelled to Berlin on a Ford Foundation grant to attend a "colloquium on creative writing" with Günter Grass and Uwe Johnson.<ref name="Cross (1966)">{{cite news|last=Cross|first=Leslie|title=No Aspic for James Bond|newspaper=The Milwaukee Journal|date=4 December 1966|page=4 (part 5)|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=UGAaAAAAIBAJ&pg=4663,1973104&dq=derek-marlowe+james+bond&hl=en}}</ref> Marlowe wrote the books in four weeks while working as a clerk at National Benzole and struggling with a play that he'd been attempting to write.{{sfn|Hamilton|2012|p=84}} The book was a best-seller and was subsequently filmed.<ref name="Royle (2013)" /> Spy author Alan Furst calls the book wonderful and terrific.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.crimetime.co.uk/interviews/alanfurst.html|title=Writing for the Maverick Reader: Alan Furst|date=n.d.|publisher=Crime Time|last=Haut|first=Woody}}</ref> Nicholas Royle cites the novel as the fifth greatest debut novel ever written, though adding that Marlowe would go on to write "even better novels".<ref name="Royle (2013)">{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/27/nicholas-royle-top-10-first-novels|title=Nicholas Royle's top 10 first novels|last=Royle|first=Nicholas|date=27 February 2013|work=The Guardian}}</ref> According to Alex Hamilton, the American and British editions have different endings owing to the American publisher's dislike for the protagonist's death in a car accident.

According to a 1976 interview, Marlowe believed that his 1969 novel ''A Single Summer With L.B.: The Summer of 1816'' was his finest.{{sfn|Hamilton|2012|p=86}} In 1979 actor Robert Powell said that he intended to produce and star in an adaptation of the novel; Powell would play Lord Byron.<ref>{{cite news|last=Fanning|first=Win|title=On the Air: Artist Has Last Word In 'Jesus of Nazareth'|newspaper=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette|date=28 March 1979|page=31|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=HstRAAAAIBAJ&pg=6855,4329470&dq=derek-marlowe&hl=en}}</ref>

Marlowe returned to the world of espionage in his 1970 novel ''Echoes of Celandine'' which was subsequently filmed as ''The Disappearance'' starring Donald Sutherland.

Marlowe's 1972 novel ''Do You Remember England?'' is a semi-autobiographical work.{{sfn|Hamilton|2012|p=86}}

To research his 1975 supernatural novel ''Nightshade'', Marlowe and his wife visited Haiti. There, Aubelin Jolicoeur – "a black dwarf dandy with a white suit and cane" – escorted them everywhere. The novelist Graham Greene had fictionalised Jolicoeur as Petit Pierre in his novel 1966 ''The Comedians''.{{sfn|Hamilton|2012|pp=86–87}} The novel ultimately took a year to write.{{sfn|Hamilton|2012|p=84}}

Despite his admiration for his earlier novel ''A Single Summer With L.B.'', Marlowe ultimately believed that his 1979 novel ''The Rich Boy From Chicago'' – another partly semi-autobiography work – was his finest and the "quintessence of all I have written."<ref name="Gallagher (2010)" />

Marlowe died before he could finish ''Black and White''. A fragment appears in an anthology published by Nicholas Royle.

In a letter to an aspiring teenage writer, Marlowe wrote "Never think too hard about what you are going to write – just jump in. I've never known the end of my book, nor even the middle until after I am halfway through."<ref name="Gallagher (2010)" />

Nicholas Royle finds it baffling "that a writer of Marlowe's quality, his style and sensibility setting him apart from all competition, has been out of print for so long."<ref name="Royle (2013)" />

===Screen work=== His first work for the screen was as co-author with Larry Kramer of a semi-documentary about swinging London called ''Reflections on Love'' (1966) which featured some of the Beatles. Around this time Marlowe and Joe Massot – who had directed ''Reflections of Love'' – collaborated on a story for a film project called ''The Mercenary''. This eventually became the 1971 film ''Universal Soldier''.{{sfn|Souza|1996|p=104}}

In 1968 he wrote the screenplay of his own novel ''A Dandy in Aspic'', directed by Anthony Mann and starring Laurence Harvey as the double agent ordered to assassinate his own alter ego. Marlowe felt Harvey was miscast and did a terrible job finishing the film after director Mann died during production.<ref name="Gallagher (2010)" />

He wrote four episodes of the BBC television series ''The Search for the Nile'' in 1971, which subsequently won him an Emmy{{sfn|Hamilton|2012|p=85}} and a Writers' Guild of Great Britain "Best British Documentary Script" award.{{sfn|British Broadcasting Corporation|1972|p=32}} Owing to a novel Marlowe was working on, Michael Hastings wrote the two remaining episodes.{{sfn|Hamilton|2012|p=85}}

Other screenplays include ''Jamaica Inn'', ''Nancy Astor'', ''A Married Man'', ''The Two Mrs Grenvilles'', and ''Grass Roots''. His last work was a feature-length episode of ''Murder, She Wrote'' produced posthumously in 1997. The episode contained an ''In Memory''-note for him in the closing credits.

Several of his screenplays remain unfilmed. These include a draft script for the 1977 James Bond film ''The Spy Who Loved Me''.{{sfn|Rubin|1981|p=139}} His screenplay ''The Knight'' is set during the Crusades about a knight seeking vengeance against those who killed his family.<ref name="Ryan (1979)">{{cite news|last=Ryan|first=Desmond|title=No shortage of movies to watch this summer|newspaper=Boca Raton News|date=9 July 1979|page=3B|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=0_RTAAAAIBAJ&pg=2979,1628582&dq=derek-marlowe&hl=en}}</ref> The project was to have been shot in England, Ireland and France in 1980 for EMI Solo Films. Ridley Scott was to have directed.<ref name="Ryan (1979)" />

==Works==

===Theatre=== *''The Seven Who Were Hanged'' (adapted from Leonid Andreyev's novel of the same name),<ref name="Cross (1966)" /> produced in Edinburgh (1961); produced in London as ''The Scarecrow'' (1964) *''The Lower Depths'' (adapted from Maxim Gorky's play of the same name),<ref name="Cross (1966)" /> produced in London (1962) *''How Disaster Struck the Harvest'', produced in London (1964) *''How I Assumed the Role of a Popular Dandy for Purposes of Seduction and Other Base Matters'', produced in London (1965)

===Books=== ;Novels * ''A Dandy in Aspic'' (1966) * ''Memoirs of a Venus Lackey'' (1968) * ''A Single Summer With L.B.: The Summer of 1816'' (1969; published in the US as ''A Single Summer With Lord B'' in 1970) * ''Echoes of Celandine'' (1970) (re-published as ''The Disappearance'' in 1978) * ''Do You Remember England?'' (1972) * ''Somebody's Sister'' (1974) * ''Nightshade'' (1975) * ''The Rich Boy from Chicago'' (1979) * ''Nancy Astor'' (1982; based on Marlowe's own screenplay; published in the US as ''Nancy Astor, the Lady from Virginia: A Novel'') ;Short fiction * "1916 Was a Very Good Year" (unknown year), published in Vogue * "Sweet Nothing" (1991) * "Digits" (1992) * "Black and White" in {{cite book|editor=Nicholas Royle|editor-link=Nicholas Royle|title=Neonlit: Time Out Book of New Writing|volume=1|publisher=Quartet|location=London|isbn=0704380900|year=1998}}

===Magazine articles=== * {{cite journal|last=Marlowe|first=Derek|title=Soliloquy on James Dean's Forty-Fifth Birthday|journal=New York|date=8 November 1976|page=41 (google books 361)|volume=9|issue=45}}

===Films and television=== * ''Reflections on Love'' (1966; short film) * ''A Dandy in Aspic'' (1968; based on his own novel) * ''Omnibus: A Requiem for Modigliani'' (1970) * ''Universal Soldier'' (1971; story only) * ''The Search for the Nile'' (1971) * ''A Month in the Country'' (1978; based on the Ivan Turgenev play) * ''Nancy Astor'' (1982) * ''A Married Man'' (1983; based on the Piers Paul Read novel) * ''Jamaica Inn'' (1983; based on the Daphne du Maurier novel) * ''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Greek Interpreter'' (1985; based on the Arthur Conan Doyle story ''The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter'') * ''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Resident Patient'' (1985; based on the Arthur Conan Doyle story ''The Adventure of the Resident Patient'') * ''First Among Equals'' (1986; based on the Jeffrey Archer novel) * ''The Two Mrs. Grenvilles'' (1987; based on the Dominick Dunne novel) * ''Jack the Ripper'' (1988; with David Wickes) * ''Grass Roots'' (1992) * ''The Corpse Had a Familiar Face'' (1994; with Dennis Turner) * ''Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan'' (1995, certain characters only) * ''Abduction of Innocence'' (1996) * ''Murder, She Wrote: South by Southwest'' (1997)

==References== {{Reflist}}

==Bibliography== *{{cite book|author=British Broadcasting Corporation|author-link=BBC|title=BBC Handbook 1972|year=1972|publisher=British Broadcasting Corporation}} *{{cite book|last=Hamilton|first=Alex|title=Writing Talk: Conversations with Top Writers of the Last Fifty Years|publisher=Troubador Publishing Ltd.|year=2012|pages=83–87|isbn=9781780883397}} *{{cite book|last=Rubin|first=Steven Jay|title=The James Bond Films: A Behind the Scenes History|url=https://archive.org/details/jamesbondfilmsbe0000rubi|url-access=registration|year=1981|publisher=Arlington House|isbn=978-0-87000-523-7}} *{{cite book|last=Souza|first=Raymond D|title=Guillermo Cabrera Infante: Two Islands, Many Worlds|year=1996|publisher=University of Texas Press|isbn=9780292785786}}

== External links == * {{IMDb name|id=0549270|name=Derek Marlowe}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marlowe, Derek}} Category:1938 births Category:1996 deaths Category:English male screenwriters Category:English television writers Category:Alumni of Queen Mary University of London Category:People from Ealing Category:Writers from the London Borough of Ealing Category:20th-century English novelists Category:20th-century English dramatists and playwrights Category:English male novelists Category:English male dramatists and playwrights Category:20th-century English male writers Category:English male television writers Category:20th-century English screenwriters