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Nothing short of ‘astonishing’ best describes Thomas Tryon’s
multi-faceted career.
Born January 14, 1926 in Hartford, Connecticut, Tom Tryon, son of Arthur Lane Tryon,
co-owner of Stackpole, Moore and Tryon, a prestigious store in Hartford, grew up in Wethersfield, Connecticut. In 1943 he
enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served in the South Pacific until 1946. After his
discharge he enrolled at Yale, earning a BA in Art in 1949. During the summer
months he worked at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachussetts, designing
sets. It was Noel Coward’s partner, Gertrude Lawrence, who encouraged Tom to
try acting. He made his Broadway debut in 1952 in the chorus of the musical
“Wish You Were Here.” He also worked in television at the time, but as a
production assistent. In 1955 he moved to California to try his hand at the
movies, and the next year made his film debut in “The Scarlet Hour” (1956). Tom
was cast in the title role of the Disney TV series “Texas John Slaughter”
(1958) that made him something of a household name. He appeared in several
horror and science fiction films: “I Married a Monster from Outer Space” (1958)
and “Moon Pilot” (1962) and in westerns: ‘Three Violent People’ (1956) and
‘Winchester ’73’ (1967). He was part of the all-star cast in ‘The Longest Day’
(1962), a film of the World War II generation, credited with saving 20th
Century Fox Studios, after the disaster of ‘Cleopatra.” He considered his best
role to be in ‘In Harm’s Way’(1965), which is also regarded as one of the
better films about World War II.
While filming the title role in ‘The Cardinal’ (1962), Tom suffered from Otto
Preminger’s Teutonic directing style and became physically ill. Nevertheless,
Tom was nominated for a Golden Globe award in 1963. He appeared with Marilyn
Monroe in her final film, “Something’s Got to Give” (1962), but the studio
fired Monroe after three weeks, and the film was never finished. That
experience, along with the “Cardinal” ordeal, left Tom wary of studio games and
weary at waiting around for the phone to ring.
After viewing the film “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968) Tom was inspired to write his
own horror novel, and in 1971 Alfred Knopf published “The Other.” It became an
instant bestseller and was turned into a movie in 1972, which Tom wrote and
produced. Thereafter, despite occasional film and TV offers, Tom gave up acting
to write fiction fulltime. This he did eight to ten hours a day, with pencil,
on legal-sized yellow tablets. Years later, he graduated to an IBM Selectric.
The Other was followed by Lady (1975) which concerns the friendship between and
eight-year-old boy and a mysterious widow in 1930s New England. His book
Crowned Heads became an inspiration for the Billy Wilder film “Fedora” (1978),
and a miniseries with Bette Davis was made from his novel Harvest Home (1978).
All That Glitters (1986), a quintette of stories about thinly disguised
Hollywood greats and near-greats followed. Night of the Moonbow (1989), tells
of a boy driven to violence by the constant harassment he endures at a summer
camp. Night Magic, about an urban street magician with wonderous powers,
written shortly before his death in 1991, was posthumously published in 1995.
The dust jackets and end papers of Tom’s books, about which he took unusual
care, are excellent examples of his gifts as an artist and graphic designer,
further testimony to the breadth of his talents.
For the last thirteen years of his life, Tom labored over his masterpiece, a
sprawling historical romance titled Kingdom Come and for which Alfred Knopf
paid the highest advance in history, at the time. While amassing 5,800
manuscript pages, (In a radio interview, Tom claimed he’d measured the pages at
48” high), he took time off to write Night of the Moonbow and Night Magic.
Ultimately, his favorite editor, Robert Gottleib, who had moved to The New
Yorker Magazine, advised Tom to reshape Kingdom Come into a quartette. This he
did, with the titles, Wings Of The Morning/By The Rivers Of Babylon/Gardens of
the Moon/The Song of The Wind. The first and last have been posthumously
published to splendid reviews.
Tryon said that he achieved much more satisfaction and made lots more money
from writing than he ever did from acting.
He died of cancer, at his Los Angeles home on September 4, 1991.
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