Native to New York, Cornell Woolrich spent some years with his father in Mexico before returning to study at Columbia University. While he was a middling student, his writing career showed promise and the publication of his first novel, Cover Charge, in 1926 prompted him to leave Columbia without graduating.
Early success brought the young writer to Los Angeles, where he tried his hand at screenwriting and explored his sexuality—all while courting and marrying the Hollywood heiress Violet Virginia Blackton, daughter of JS Blackton, the co-founder of Vitagraph Studios. This attempt at establishing himself as both a screenwriter and husband was abortive at best, and Woolrich left LA without a single credit to his name, and a bachelor once more.
With six "Jazz Age" novels under his belt, Woolrich now struggled to find a publisher, with that genre (defined by writers like F Scott Fitzgerald) considered passé by Depression Era audiences. Tossing his seventh unpublished novel in the trash, Woolrich reinvented himself as a writer of pulp and detective fiction and discovered a rich vein which he would mine for decades. In this milieu, Woolrich was so prolific that he was forced to publish under multiple pseudonyms.
Across his career, Woolrich wrote 27 novels, with his short stories published in 28 different collections. His stories have been adapted into film over forty times, including adaptation of his story "It Must Be Murder" into the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece Rear Window starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly.
Woolrich died in 1968 and bequeathed his entire estate to Columbia University to set up a writing scholarship in his mother's name.
