Leslie Elson Waller (1923 - 2007)

Born 1 Apr 1923 in Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States

Died 29 Mar 2007 at age 83 in Rochester, Monroe, New York, United States

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Biography

Leslie was born in 1923. He passed away in 2007.

Illinois, Cook County, Birth Certificates, 1871-1949: Name: Leslie Waller; Sex: Male; Birth Date: 1 Apr 1923; Birthplace: Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States; Race: White; Father's Name: Geo Waller; Father's Sex: Male; Father's Age: 26; Father's Birth Year (Estimated): 1897; Father's Birthplace: Russia; Mother's Name: Ruth Elson; Mother's Sex: Female; Mother's Age: 26; Mother's Birth Year (Estimated): 1897; Mother's Birthplace: Russia; Event Type: Birth Registration; Event Date: 7 Apr 1923; Event Place: Illinois, United States; Event Place (Original): Illinois; Certificate Number: 12292 ^[1]

Leslie Waller's Parents and Siblings:

• Geo Waller, Father, Male, 26, Russia
• Ruth Elson, Mother, Female, 26, Russia

Marriages and Children

Leslie first married Louise H. Hetzel.

They had two children together:

1. Elizabeth
2. Susan

Leslie next married Patricia Mahen on 22 September 1967.

"The marriage of Miss Patricia Mahen, daughter of Mrs. Charles E. Mahen of New Orleans and Nashville and the late Mr. Mahen, to Leslie Waller took place here yesterday morning. The bridegroom is the son of Mrs. George Waller of Chicago and the late Mr. Waller, Justice Sidney A. Fine of the State Supreme Court performed the ceremony in his chambers." ^[2]

Census

United States Census, 1930: Name: Leslie Waller; Sex: Male; Age: 7; Birth Year (Estimated): 1923; Birthplace: Illinois; Marital Status: Single; Race: White; Relationship to Head of Household: Son; Father's Birthplace: Russia; Mother's Birthplace: Russia; Event Type: Census; Event Date: 1930; Event Place Chicago (Districts 0251-0500), Cook, Illinois, United States; Event Place (Original): Chicago (Districts 0251-0500), Cook, Illinois, United States; Line Number 6; Sheet Letter: A; Sheet Number: 17; Affiliate Publication Number T626; Affiliate Name: The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) ^[3]

Leslie Waller's Parents and Siblings:

• Ruth Waller, Mother, Female, 33, Russia
• George Waller, Father, Male, 33, Russia

United States Census, 1940: Name: Leslie Waller; Sex: Male; Age: 17 years; Residence Date: 1935; Residence Place: Same Place; Birth Date: 1923; Birthplace: Illinois; Marital Status: Single; Race: White; Ethnicity: American; Relationship to Head of Household: Son; Event Type: Census; Event Date: 1940; Event Place: Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States; Event Place (Original): Chicago City, Chicago City, Chicago, Ward 7, Chicago, 103-476, Cook, Illinois, United States; Enumeration District Number 103-476 Chicago City Ward 7 (Tract 643 - part); Line Number 19; Sheet Letter: A; Sheet Number: 9; Affiliate Publication Number: T627 ^[4]

Leslie Waller's Parents and Siblings

• Geo Waller, Father, Male, 43, Russia
• Ruth Waller, Mother, Female, 43, Russia

Other People on This Record:

• Rebecca Elson, Female, 65, Russia
• Joseph Elson, Male, 22, Pennsylvania

Wikipedia

"He is a son of Ukrainian immigrants and was born in Chicago, Illinois. He suffered from amblyopia and poliomyelitis as a child, but graduated from Hyde Park High School by the age of 16. He was interested in writing from an early age, and became a police reporter before he went to Wilson Junior College.

"He joined the Army Air Corps in 1942 and continued to write, never leaving the US. His first published novel under his own name was Three Day Pass. Before that, he published Lie Like a Lady under the pseudonym C.S. Cody.

"After World War II, he attended the University of Chicago and earned his M.A. from Columbia University. He married Louise Hetzel. Together, they moved to New York City, where his second novel, Phoenix Island, was published in 1953. The couple had two daughters, Elizabeth and Susan, and divorced in 1968. After the divorce, he married photographer and actress Patricia Mahen, and they moved to Calabria, Italy, in 1978 where they lived for 11 years and later moved to London. After 15 years abroad, they lived in Naples, Florida where he wrote, lectured, and contributed to Florida’s leading cultural magazine, the Naples Review.

"Waller worked as a public relations account executive at Harshe-Rotman and Druck in New York, servicing a variety of accounts, including Hertz Rent-a-Car. In the meantime, he continued to write novels and a children's book series, "A Book to Begin on...". "

"Leslie Waller with his co-author Arnold Drake are credited with having written the first graphic novel, It Rhymes with Lust. It was their idea to pitch a new idea, the "picture novel", a bridge between comic books and "book books", to St John, the publisher who released It Rhymes with Lust. Originally published in 1950, the graphic novel was rereleased by Dark Horse Comics in the Spring of 2007.

"His trilogy, The Banker, The Family, and The American garnered recognition, landing the last title on The New York Times bestseller list. Waller became known as a go-to man for novelizations and produced the novels for Dog Day Afternoon (under the pseudonym Patrick Mann), Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Hide in Plain Sight." ^[5]

Death and Obituary

"Author. He began his writing career at the Chicago Sun-Times as a crime reporter. His first published novel was "Three Day Pass" (1944), followed by more than 54 novels, non-fiction books and illustrated science texts. Several of his works appeared on the New York Times best-seller list, including "The Banker", "The Family", "The Swiss Account", "Mafia Wars", "The American", and "Embassy". He also wrote novelizations of movies under the name Patrick Mann. Among them are "Dog Day Afternoon", "Hide in Plain Sight", and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". His last published work was "Target Diana" in 2001. He died of heart failure." Bio by John "J-Cat" Griffith on Find-a-Grave.

Find-a-Grave: Name: Leslie Elson Waller; Birth: 1 Apr 1923; Place: Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, USA; Death: 29 Mar 2007 (aged 83); Place: Rochester, Ulster County, New York, USA; Burial: Burial Details Unknown; MEMORIAL ID: 18743641 ^[6]

From The Guardian: ^[7]

Leslie Waller, American author, he wrote The Banker and Dog Day Afternoon

Written by Christopher Hawtree, Wed 18 Apr 2007 19.05 EDT

"According to the narrator of an early novel by Leslie Waller, who has died aged 83, just three things spur men to action: money, hunger and love. Waller parlayed that insight into three score books, including bestsellers such as The Banker (1963) and The Family (1968), whose characters exemplify "the big truth about banking" set out in his non-fiction The Swiss Bank Connection (1972): "The same services are available to the honest, to the criminal, and to all the rest of us who inhabit the grey area in between."

"Waller knew about turning a buck. He was as adept at juvenile popular science as he was novelising Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and collaborating on an early graphic novel, It Rhymes with Lust (1950). His pseudonyms included CS Cody and, later, Patrick Mann, whose Dog Day Afternoon was filmed in 1975 by Sidney Lumet with Al Pacino.

"Born to Ukrainian immigrants in Chicago, he contracted polio as a child and read avidly. After Hyde Park high school, he worked as a police reporter before attending Wilson Junior College and Chicago University interrupted by wartime Army Air Corps service in the US. A further year at Chicago brought a degree and marriage, and a move to New York's Columbia University.

"Waller had already published two novels, including Three Day Pass (1944), and he now worked with Arnold Drake on It Rhymes with Lust. Partly inspired by the film noir world of newspapers and industrial shenanigans, Waller and Drake knew from war service that an adult relish of pulp comics could be turned into something else. A cult item, illustrated by Matt Baker, it has recently been reissued.

"A man of the world, Waller eschewed literary life and became a public relations agent at such firms as Harshe-Rotman-Druck, whose accounts, including Hertz, brought him further understanding of the sleek, hard-driving wheels of American society. He had already resumed writing novels, as CS Cody. Among these, a tale of the supernatural, The Witching Night (1952), showed panache: "Abbie brought the body of the slaughtered kitten to her mouth. I could see the lips curl and her teeth gleam fiercely until the furry black corpse masked her face. But I could see her throat, that long, smooth white column, so soft, so delicately modelled in sweeping lines. I saw it pulse as a regular muscular motion within it drew up and down in measured rhythm. I knew what Abbie was doing. She was drinking the kitten's blood."

"In 1963, as Waller again, came The Banker whose hero Woods Palmer resurfaced several times (once prompting Martha Gellhorn to call him "fascinating and well written"). This world of banking and hoods might seem familiar territory, but it is continually charged with such asides as "free will was for the great open spaces America hadn't been for several decades" while, with building work on Lexington Avenue, Manhattan is seen as "a black mass of overconsumption trying to exorcise the shadow of the bomb".

"At his best, Waller could fashion blistering prose. He lived for writing, able to turn from researching a non-fiction account of witness-protection pitfalls - Hide in Plain Sight (1976) - to a novel, The Coast of Fear (1974), about a travel writer who, with more than a sideline in Intelligence, confesses: "My generation has been programmed to get a strong emotional feedback from a depressed person walking toward the sea. We've all wondered about that. If you should ever ask who's afraid of Virginia Woolf walking into the lake until she drowned, a fair scattering of hands would go up in any crowd of my age."

"On the contrary, never tempted by the waves, Waller kept writing, even when he and his second wife, Pat Mahen (they married in 1967) moved to Florida. His best work will endure as a record of the 20th-century twist upon those perennial forces of money, hunger and love.

"He is survived by his wife and two daughters from his first marriage (to Louise Hetzel)."

Leslie Elson Waller, writer, born April 1 1923; died March 29 2007

Sources

1. ↑ "Illinois, Cook County, Birth Certificates, 1871-1949", database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QKM7-BKSY : 6 October 2022), Leslie Waller, 1923.
2. ↑ New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1967/09/23/archives/leslie-waller-marries-miss-patricia-mahen.html
3. ↑ "United States Census, 1930", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XSLS-MM3 : Thu Sep 21 00:02:51 UTC 2023), Entry for George Waller and Ruth Waller, 1930.
4. ↑ "United States Census, 1940", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KWYW-8RD : Sat Jul 22 16:33:57 UTC 2023), Entry for Geo Waller and Ruth Waller, 1940.
5. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Waller
6. ↑ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/18743641/leslie-elson-waller
7. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/apr/19/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries1

• See also: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=156
• https://www.alibris.com/search/books/author/Waller,%20Leslie#