Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson was born in Allendale, New Jersey, United States on February 20th, 1926 and is the Screenwriter. At the age of 87, Richard Matheson biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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Richard Burton Matheson (February 20, 1926 – June 23, 2013) was an American author and screenwriter, mainly in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres.
He is best known as the author of I Am Legend, a 1954 science fiction horror book that has been adapted for the television four times, the first of which, The Last Man on Earth, was co-scripted by him.
Matheson also wrote 16 television episodes of The Twilight Zone, including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "Steel," as well as many versions of Edgar Allan Poe stories for Roger Corman and American International Pictures - House of Terror, Tales of Terror, and The Raven.
He adapted his 1971 short story "Duel" as a screenplay directed by Steven Spielberg for the television film Duel that year.
Seven of his books and short stories have been turned into motion pictures: The Shrinking Man (filmed as The Legend of Hell House), What Dreams (filmed as Somewhere in Time), A Stir of Echoes, Steel (filmed as Real Steel), and Button, Button (filmed as The Box).
The movie Cold Sweat was based on his book Riding the Nightmare, and Les seins de glace ("Icy Breasts") was based on his book Someone is Bleeding.
Early life
Matheson was born in Allendale, New Jersey, to Norwegian immigrants Bertolf and Fanny Matheson. When he was eight years old, they divorced, and his mother raised him in Brooklyn, New York. Dracula (1931), Kenneth Roberts' books, and a poem in the newspaper Brooklyn Eagle, where he published his first short story at age eight were among his early writing influences. He enrolled in 1939, graduated in 1943, and served with the Army in Europe during World War II; this served as the basis for his 1960 book The Beardless Warriors. He obtained his Bachelor's degree at the University of Missouri and then migrated to California, where he went to Missouri.
Personal life and death
Matheson married Ruth Ann Woodson, who lived in California in 1952. Bettina Mayberry, Richard Christian, Christian Matheson, and Ali Marie Matheson were among the four children. Richard, Chris, and Ali became writers of fantasy and screenplays.
Matheson died on June 23, 2013, at his Los Angeles, California, at the age of 87.
Career
Hunger and Thirst, his first-written book, was rejected by publishers for many decades before finally being published in 2010, but his short story "Born of Man and Woman" was published in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Summer 1950, the new quarterly's third issue, drew notice. It's the tale of a monstrous child chained by its parents in the cellar, played in a narrative English as the creature's diary is written in a nefarious way. A new monthly publication that will be published later this year. He had stories in the first and third numbers of Galaxy Science Fiction. In 1954, his first anthology of work was published. He wrote hundreds of stories between 1950 and 1971, often mixing elements of the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres.
He was a member of the Southern California Sorcerers in the 1950s and 1960s, including Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury, George Clayton Johnson, William F. Nolan, Jerry Sohl, and others.
Several of his stories, including "Third from the Sun" (1950), "Deadline" (1959), and "Button, Button" (1970), are simple sketches with twist endings; others, such as "Button, Button" (1954), "Being" (1954), and "Mute" (1962), explore their characters' dilemmas over 20 to 30 pages. "The Doll that Does Everything" (1954) and "The Funeral" (1955) two stories in a satirical vein are embedded in an overblown prose very different from Matheson's usual pared-down style. "The Test" (1954) and "Steel" (1956) two examples, rather than the now ubiquitous scientists and superheroes, depict everyday life in situations that are both futuristic and everyday. Several others, including "Mad House" (1954), "The Curious Child" (1954), and, perhaps most importantly, "Duel" (1971), are stories of confusion in which the present day's everyday life becomes inexplicably alien or threatening. The term "duel" was later developed into a 1971 TV movie of the same name.
Someone Is Bleeding, Matheson's first book to be published, appeared in Lion Books in 1953. Matheson's non-fantastic, autobiographical book about teenage American soldiers in World War II appeared in 1960. It was shot as The Young Warriors in 1967, but Matheson's plot was undid, although the majority of Matheson's plot was scrapped. He published a handful of Western stories in the 1950s (later collected in By the Gun); in the 1990s, he published Journal of the Gun Years, The Gunfight, The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickok, and Shadow on the Sun.
The Shrinking Man (1956, filmed in 1957 as The Incredible Shrinking Man), and I Am Legend (1954) (filmed as The Last Man on Earth in 1964, The Omega Man in 1971, and I Am Legend in 2007).
Matheson created screenplays for several television shows, including the Westerns Cheyenne, Have Gun Will Travel, and Lawman. He is best known for his writing "Steel" (1963), "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (1963), and "Megath Ship" (1963). Matheson penned the opening and closing statements for all of his Twilight Zone scripts. He adapted five works of Edgar Allan Poe for Roger Corman's Poe collection, including House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and The Raven (1963).
In 1966, he wrote "The Enemy Within," a Star Trek episode (1966).
He wrote the screenplay for Fanatic (1965) for Hammer Film Productions; the United States premiere: Die!Die!
My Darling!)
Nightmare by Anne Blaisdell, starring Tallulah Bankhead and Stefanie Powers; also adapted for Hammer Dennis Wheatley's "The Devil Rides Out (1968).Matheson received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1973 for his teleplay for The Night Stalker, one of two Matheson-directed television movies (the other was The Night Strangler, which predated the TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker). Matheson spent a long time with Curtis; the 1977 television movie Dead of Night features three tales by Matheson: "Second Chance" (based on Matheson's account of the same name); and "Bobby," an original script written for Matheson's "Bobby." As the second segment of Trilogy of Terror II, "Bobby" was later refilmed with new actors.
Three of his short stories were shot together as Trilogy of Terror (1975), including "Prey" (initially published in Playboy magazine in April 1969) with its famous Zuni warrior fetish doll. In the last segment of the belated sequel to Terror II's first film, the Zuni fetish doll reappeared.
Bid Time Rewind (as Somewhere in Time), and The Legend of Hell House (as Matheson himself) are two other Matheson novels that have been turned into famous films in the seventies.
Matheson wrote several screenplays for the television show Amazing Stories in the 1980s and then began to publish short fiction in the 1980s.
Matheson's four western books in this decade include the suspense thriller Seven Steps to Midnight (1993), as well as the blackly comic lock-room mystery book Now You See It (2000), which was aptly dedicated to Robert Bloch (1995).
Loose Cannons, the offbeat comedy and box-office flop, as well as segments of Rod Serling's Lost Classics and segments of Terror II's Trilogy. Short stories began to flow from his pen, and he saw the adaptations by other hands of two more of his books for the big screen—What Dreams May Come and A Stir of Echoes—as Stir of Echoes. Matheson's Non-fiction book The Path was published in 1999, sparking his fascination with psychic phenomena.
Matheson's early works, as well as various collections of his work and previously unpublished screenplays, appeared later in his career. Hunted Past Reason (2002), he also wrote new works, including the suspense novel Hunted Past Reason. Abu and the Seven Marvels, the children's illustrated fantasy.
Matheson cited specific sources for several of his creations. Duel was born out of an accident in which he and a friend, Jerry Sohl, were hurried by a huge truck on the same day as John F. Kennedy's assassination attempt.
Matheson's scientific approach to the supernatural in I Am Legend and other books from the 1950s and early 1960s "anticipated pseudorealistic fantasy books such as Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist," according to film critic Roger Ebert.