Legacy of a miserable life

And not the first.

clipped from www.todayinliterature.com Cornell Woolrich and the Noir Life On this day in 1903 the crime writer Cornell Woolrich was born. Woolrich (sometimes as "William Irish" or "George Hopley") wrote two dozen novels and over two hundred stories, most of them so dark that he has been called "the Poe of the 20th century." Looking at the many movies made from his work -- most famously, Hitchcock's Rear Window and Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black -- many have also dubbed him the "Father of Film Noir." After examining every book, story and movie (and cataloguing over 120 television and radio adaptations), Francis Nevins Jr. titles his biography of Woolrich, First You Dream, Then You Die -- a story title that Woolrich proposed to himself but never used, and that all too appropriately captures his odd, obscure and sometimes creepy life.