Stanley Ellin

While his novels are acclaimed, he is best known for his short stories. In May 1948, his first sale, and one of Ellin's most famous short stories, "The Specialty of the House" ("Speciality of the House" in England), appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. In the years to come, Ellin's fame as an author grew. He was awarded three Edgar Allan Poe Awards (Edgar Award). His first Edgar was for the short story "The House Party" in 1954, the next for the short story "The Blessington Method" in 1956, and his third for the novel The Eighth Circle in 1959. Several episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents were based on Ellin short stories, and his novels Dreadful Summit, House of Cards, and The Bind were adapted into feature films. Charles Silet writes that Ellin "did much toward erasing the distinctions between traditional genre and mainstream fiction by writing novels more concerned with character and locale than with plot." Ellin was a longtime member and past president of the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). In 1981, he was awarded the MWA's highest honor, the Grand Master Award. Writing in The Times, Marcel Berlins said, "Stanley Ellin is the unsurpassed master of the short story in crime fiction."

Stanley Ellin studied at Brooklyn College and New Utrecht High School. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is literature. Distinctions recorded are Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and The Grand Master.

Stanley, born in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, was the only child of Louis and Rose Mandel Ellin. They were a loving family and he enjoyed a happy childhood. Ellin writes fondly, if a bit sardonically, in the "Introduction" to The Specialty of the House and Other Stories: He garnered a love for reading at a young age. As a boy, Stanley urged his father to read him Beatrix Potter's story The Tale of Peter Rabbit over and over: "I have some vivid memories of that bucolic episode [in Lakewood, N.J.], but most vivid is the memory of my father, on a weekend visit, sitting by my bed filling me with bliss as he read Peter Rabbit to me, patiently read it over and over on demand until I was letter perfect in it. He must have read other stories to me as well, but of them I have no recollection because they lacked the true magic." He eagerly read books in the family library by the likes of Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Guy de Maupassant and Edgar Allan Poe, who were literary influences on his writing. He graduated from New Utrecht High School, where he had been a precocious student. Ellin was educated at Brooklyn College and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1936 when he was 19 years old. He married Jeanne Michael, a freelance editor and former classmate, in 1937; they had one daughter, Sue Ellin (Mrs. William Jacobsen), and a granddaughter, Tae Ellin. Apart from some travel abroad and some time spent in Miami Beach, Florida, he lived his entire life in Brooklyn. To support his family, Ellin worked as a magazine salesman and distributor, boilermaker's apprentice, steel worker, shipyard worker, dairy farmer, and junior college teacher before serving in the US Army in 1944-1945 during World War II. Afterward, Ellin began writing full time while his family lived on his service unemployment allowance and on his wife's editing salary. Lawrence Block reported, "Ellin was a perfectionist, working slowly and deliberately, producing a page of typescript on a good day. He admitted to having rewritten the opening paragraph of a short story as many as forty times before going on to the next paragraph and polishing each subsequent page in similar fashion before proceeding further... He managed only one a year, sent each in turn to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and never had one rejected." "Only one a year" is not precisely accurate, but the Internet Speculative Fiction Database shows it is close. Ellin co-wrote the screenplay for the 1951 film The Big Night along with Joseph Losey, Hugo Butler and Ring Lardner, although Ellin and Losey were the only ones credited for it up until the year 2000. He also wrote book reviews for such venues as The New York Times Book Review, chiefly of suspense novels, as well as essays such as "Mystery Novel or Crime Novel" (Writer, vol. 86, January 1973, pp. 22–24) and "The Destiny of the House" (Armchair Detective, vol. 12, Winter 1979, p. 195). He appeared, along with Frederic Dannay, Brian Garfield, and Denis Healey, on the television show Crime Writers in the episode "Murder for Pleasure" (Season 1, Episode 6, 10 December 1978). Ellin died of a heart attack (complications from a stroke) at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, New York, on July 31, 1986. He and his wife had become Quakers in the late 1960s. His ashes, and those of his wife, lie in the Friends Cemetery in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

"The Specialty of the House" gained acclaim on its 1948 publication and decades later still has enthusiasts. This "macabre little tale about an unusual restaurant in Manhattan and its lonely patrons" earned the Best First Story Award in the Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine contest of 1948. "Laffler, a gourmet, goes with his assistant for a dinner at an exclusive restaurant. The kitchen is what Laffler wants to see – which is a great mistake" because he discovers that the specialty, called lamb Amirstan, is actually made of human flesh. Mystery novelist J. Madison Davis agreed that it is "a dish one shouldn't be too curious about lest one become an ingredient." A reviewer for The Guardian said the story displays "both a debt to Edgar Allan Poe and an acute understanding of human nature that is the key to the success of his work." Cannibalism has been mentioned in several other humorous works, such as the short story "The Two Bottles of Relish" by Lord Dunsany, first published in 1932; the short story "To Serve Man" (1950) by Damon Knight; the story "Pig" (1960) by Roald Dahl; the novel The Only Good Body's a Dead One (1971) by Tony Kenrick; and 1991's film Delicatessen.

• 1948 - Dreadful Summit: A Novel of Suspense (aka The Big Night) (New York: Simon & Schuster) - "Ellin made his debut as a novelist with Dreadful Summit (1948). It dealt with a father-son relationship, when a sixteen-year-old boy obtains a gun and sets out to avenge his father's beating and humiliation. The action is squeezed into twenty-four hours." • 1952 - The Key to Nicholas Street (New York: Simon & Schuster) • 1958 - The Eighth Circle (New York: Random House) (Edgar Award for Best Novel, 1959) • 1960 - The Winter after This Summer (New York: Random House) • 1962 - The Panama Portrait (New York: Random House) • 1967 - House of Cards (New York: Random House) - "a Hitchcockian psychological thriller with international intrigue" • 1968 - The Valentine Estate (New York: Random House) (shortlisted for Edgar Award for Best Novel, 1969) • 1970 - The Bind (aka The Man from Nowhere) (New York: Random House) • 1972 - Mirror, Mirror on the Wall (New York: Random House) - This novel won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1974 and was selected by H.R.F. Keating for his Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1987) • 1974 - Stronghold (New York: Random House) • 1977 - The Luxembourg Run (New York: Random House) • 1979 - Star Light, Star Bright (New York: Random House) • 1983 - The Dark Fantastic (New York: Mysterious Press, c1983) • 1985 - Very Old Money (New York: Arbor House)

• "The Specialty of the House", EQMM, 1948 • "The House Party", EQMM, May 1954; (Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Short Story, 1955) • "The Blessington Method", EQMM, June 1956; (Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Short Story, 1957) • "The Day of the Bullet", EQMM, October 1959; (shortlisted for Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Short Story, 1960) • "The Crime of Ezechiele Coen", EQMM, November 1963; (shortlisted for Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Short Story, 1964) • "The Last Bottle in the World", EQMM, February 1968; (shortlisted for Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Short Story, 1969) • "Graffiti", EQMM, March 1983; (shortlisted for Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Short Story, 1984)

• 1949 - "Help Wanted" - Adapted by Reginald Denham for Suspense, 14 June 1949 (Season 1, Episode 14), starring Otto Kruger, D. A. Clarke-Smith, and Ruth McDevitt. • 1950 - "The Orderly Mr. Appleby" - Adapted for The Web, 11 July 1950 (Season 1, Episode 2), starring Jonathan Harris, Selena Royle and Howard Wierum. • 1956 - "Help Wanted" - Adapted by Robert C. Dennis and Mary Orr for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 1 April 1956 (Season 1, Episode 27), starring John Qualen, Lorne Greene, Madge Kennedy and Malcolm Atterbury. • 1956 - "The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby" - Adapted by Victor Wolfson and Robert C. Dennis for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 15 April 1956, (Season 1, Episode 29), starring Robert H. Harris, Meg Mundy, Gage Clarke, and Michael Ansara. • 1957 - "Broker's Special" - Adapted by Jack Jacobs for The George Sanders Mystery Theater, 3 August 1957 (Season 1, Episode 7), starring Diana Darrin, Mary Lawrence, and Lyle Talbot. • 1958 - "The Festive Season" - Adapted by James P. Cavanagh for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 4 May 1958, (Season 3, Episode 31), starring Carmen Mathews, Richard Waring and Edmon Ryan. • 1959 - "The Blessington Method" - Adapted by Halsted Welles for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 15 November 1959, (Season 5, Episode 8), starring Henry Jones, Dick York, Elizabeth Patterson, and Irene Windust. • 1959 - "Specialty of the House" - Adapted by Bernard C. Schoenfeld and Victor Wolfson for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 13 December 1959 (Season 5, Episode 12), starring Robert Morley, Kenneth Haigh and Madame Spivy. • 1960 - "The Day of the Bullet" - Adapted by Bill S. Ballinger for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 14 February 1960 (Season 5, Episode 20), starring Barry Gordon, Dennis Patrick, Biff Elliot, and John Craven. • 1960 - "Circle of Evil" - Adapted from The Eighth Circle by Robert Blees for Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, 16 March 1960 (Season 2, Episode 13), starring Ken Clark, Robert Clarke, Felicia Farr and Hugh O'Brian. • 1961 - "The Best of Everything" - Adapted by Frederic Raphael for Drama 61-67, 20 August 1961 (Season 1, Episode 12). • 1961 - "Moment of Decision" - Adapted by Larry Marcus and Porter Putnam for Alcoa Premiere, November 1961 (Season 1, Episode 4), starring Fred Astaire, Harry Townes and Oliver McGowan. • 1961 - "You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life" - Adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 21 November 1961 (Season 7, Episode 7), starring Dick York and Carolyn Kearney. • 1962 - "The Faith of Aaron Menefee" - Adapted by Ray Bradbury for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 30 January 1962 (Season 7, Episode 17), starring Sidney Blackmer, Andrew Prine and Maggie Pierce. • 1962 - "The Betrayers" - Adapted by Michael Gilbert for Drama 61-67, 16 December 1962 (Season 2, Episode 21), starring Erica Rogers. • 1967 - "Robert" - Adapted by Jeremy Paul for Half Hour Story, 2 August 1967 (Season 1, Episode 12), starring Robert Langley, Angela Baddeley, Richard Davies, Suzanne Neve and Frank Windsor. • 1972 - "Alter-Ego" - Adapted by D.C. Fontana and Richard Matheson for Ghost Story (later retitled Circle of Fear), 27 October 1972 (Season 1, Episode 6), starring child actor Michael-James Wixted, Sebastian Cabot, Helen Hayes, Collin Wilcox, Gene Andrusco, Charles Aidman, Geoffrey Horne and Phyllis Love. • 1973 - "Death of an Old-Fashioned Girl" - Adapted by Anthony Fowles for Orson Welles Great Mysteries, 24 November 1973 (Season 1, Episode 13), starring Carol Lynley, Francesca Annis, John Le Mesurier, Jack Shepherd and Anne Stallybrass. • 1980 - "The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby" - Adapted by Robin Chapman for Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected, 7 June 1980 (Season 2, Episode 15), starring Robert Lang, Elizabeth Spriggs, and Cyril Luckham. • 1981 - "The Best of Everything" - Adapted by Denis Cannan for Tales of the Unexpected, 26 April 1981 (Season 4, Episode 4), starring Michael Kitchen, Jeremy Clyde, Judi Bowker, Brewster Mason, and Rachel Kempson. • 1981 - "The Last Bottle in the World" - Adapted by Denis Cannan for Tales of the Unexpected, 7 June 1981 (Season 4, Episode 10), starring Nigel Hawthorne, Gary Bond, and Lynette Davies. • 1981 - "Kindly Dig Your Own Grave" - Adapted by Robin Chapman for Tales of the Unexpected, 14 June 1981 (Season 4, Episode 11), starring Micheline Presle, Robert H. Thomson, and Celia Gregory. • 1987 - "The Specialty of the House" - Adapted by Jonathan Glassner for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 21 March 1987 (Season 2, Episode 9), starring John Saxon, Jennifer Dale, and Neil Munro (the characters' names are all changed).

• 1974 - "The Speciality of the House" - Adapted by Barry Campbell for BBC World Service's The Price of Fear, 13 April 1974 (Season 2, Episode 2), starring Vincent Price, Hugh Burden and Francis De Wolfe. • 1988 - "The Speciality of the House" - Adapted by Colin Hadyn Evans for BBC Radio 4's Fear On 4, 20 March 1988 (Season 1, Episode 12), introduced by Edward de Souza, and starring Timothy West and Paul Gregory. • 2018 - "The Speciality of the House" - Adapted by Anita Sullivan for BBC Radio 4's 15 Minute Drama.