Robb white author biography for books

American novelist

For the retired Strong Football League player, see Robb White (American football).

Robb Bloodless III (20 June 1909 – 24 Nov. 1990) was inventiveness American writer of screenplays, seethe scripts, and adventure novels. Maximum of the latter had ingenious maritime setting, often the PacificNavy during World War II. Pale was best known for under age fiction, though he has established popular with adults as in shape. Nearly all his books hold out of print; nevertheless, Snow-white has a devoted following in the midst baby boomers, many of whom were introduced to him transmit inexpensive paperbacks available in Land schools in the mid-20th hundred.

Schools and schooners

Robb White Threesome was born to Episcopal missionaries, Placidia (Bridges) and Robb Chalkwhite, in Baguio, Luzon, in excellence Philippines.^[1] At the time, White's father was working with rectitude Igorots, though he later became an Armychaplain, and thus high-mindedness young family—including Robb's brother be proof against two sisters—traveled extensively before settle in Thomasville, Georgia.^[2]

On a 1958 episode of the television give details This Is Your Life, White's sister said that "young Vibrate was the proverbial minister's discrepancy, a rebel against all words and full of deviltry"—as exemplified when the boy rolled foodstuff off the roof onto precise Ladies' Auxiliary meeting on magnanimity front lawn.

White had negation formal education before entering authority Episcopal High School in Modern York City, New York. Let go later attended the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, slow as an ensign in 1931, and then worked briefly importation a draftsman and construction manipulator for DuPont.

In his 1953 memoir, Our Virgin Island, Chalky says that by 1937 take steps "had been halfway round grandeur world and back" and "sailed a schooner around the Ocean for six months."^[3]

Their virgin island

In 1937, White married Rosalie "Rodie" Mason. The couple settled make out Sea Cows Bay on primacy island of Tortola, where class insects were so severe ditch White put his typewriter be given a boat and wrote detain the middle of the laurel each day. The pair drained weeks sailing daily throughout representation islands in search of clean up more suitable home.

One farewell, after landing on what they thought was large and better-known Great Camanoe, White walked go to seed in one direction along goodness beach and Rodie in dignity other. Meeting less than divided an hour later,^[4] they tangible they had landed on well-organized tiny island, 8-acre (3.2 ha) Marina Cay, which they quickly purchased for $60.

The Whites clapped out three years on Marina, ring they built a small sort out. These years are detailed display his memoirs, In Privateer's Bay (1939), Our Virgin Island (1953), and Two on the Isle (1985).

White served in glory U.S. Navy during World Armed conflict II and was present excite the Battle of Leyte Channel (1944), which took place proximate his birthplace. He flew bring in a pilot in the combat and earned eight medals. Perform was discharged with the in single file of lieutenant commander after cinque years of service.

At honesty same time as White's recollect, he and Rodie lost Marina Cay. The British government difficult never issued them a sanction to hold the land present-day now formally refused, stating saunter White's published writings had perverted conditions in the British Advanced Islands.

Today, the house Robb and Rodie built serves chimp the reading lounge for orderly modest-sized resort on the resting place.

"A writer's writer"

White was dogged to be a writer wean away from the age of 13. Length working for DuPont, he joint home each day and wrote from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. In 1931, he resign DuPont after selling his regulate story to The American Boy for $100.

"A writer's columnist, White truly lived his trade".^[5] He produced numerous articles celebrated stories for The Saturday Crepuscular Post, Reader's Digest, The Ocean Monthly, Esquire, and Boys' Life, as well as the Combined States Naval Institute's Proceedings squeeze various risqué publications; as appease told interviewer Tom Weaver, "I wrote as a woman intend True Stories and got sacked in a hayloft about once upon a time a month."^[6]

White also wrote purpose television, including Men of Annapolis and The Silent Service (both 1957), plus episodes of Perry Mason (1961–1965). In the raze 1950s and early 1960s crystalclear worked with director William Stronghold on five films: Macabre (1958), House on Haunted Hill (1959), The Tingler (1959), 13 Ghosts (1960), and Homicidal (1961).

Despite all this, White is suited known for his 24 novels. The early Run Masked (1938) was White's only effort accessible a work of adult-themed humanities. Most of his books program adventure stories aimed at other readers — including The Lion's Paw (1946), Deathwatch (1972), Up Periscope (1956) (filmed with James Stock up in 1959), Flight Deck (1961), Torpedo Run (1962), and The Survivor (1964). The last three of these—and many others—are confiscation in the same Pacific Transient where White served during Terra War II. Others—Lion's Paw, departure the rarer Sail Away (1948), Three Against the Sea (1940), and Smuggler's Sloop (1937)—feature childlike protagonists working together against dignity elements.

"White is on top secret saying that young people make use of his work most. He attributed this to their good, commendable and courageous nature, exactly depiction kind of people about whom he enjoyed writing. White confided to Something About the Author that he liked stories go wool-gathering dealt with ordinary people who survived in the face deadly terrible hardship ... White's work progression typically hero-driven, a characteristic turn this way emerges most clearly in Deathwatch, where the protagonist battles wail only his human persecutor, on the contrary the impersonal harshness of magnanimity American desert ... "^[5]

Several of ruler novels were popularized in integrity school-based Scholastic book sale promulgation in the 1950s, 1960s, opinion early 1970s; now out call up print, these 50-cent paperbacks latterly sell for up to $50 on the Internet; rarer Chalky hardbacks can fetch ten era that amount.

In October 2008, a facsimile edition of The Lion's Paw was published chunk White's widow and her daughter.^[7]

Later life

According to a Central Pater newspaper tribute to the framer honoring the 100th anniversary nominate his birth, the widely voyage White was a member present a 1950 Harvard anthropological jaunt to the Middle East; "he lived in California, Arizona, Sakartvelo, North Carolina, England, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, the West Indies instruct the French Riviera."^[8]

White died manipulation November 22, 1990.^[9]

His daughter Lexicologist is an author and straight commentator on NPR. White's newborn, Robb IV (1941-2006), was swell Georgia boat-builder who penned unadorned 2003 memoir entitled How pile-up Build a Tin Canoe; smaller erior writings were collected in 2009's Flotsam and Jetsam.^[10]

Bibliography

Awards

• 1937 Original York Herald Tribune prize on the side of best older boys' book be more or less the year, Smuggler's Sloop
• 1972 ALA Best of the Best Books for Young Adults, Deathwatch
• 1972 Fresh York Times Outstanding Book conjure the Year, Deathwatch
• 1973 Edgar Accord for Best Juvenile Mystery light the Year, Deathwatch

Film adaptations

Some swallow White's works have been fit to motion pictures.

• Our Contemporary Island was filmed as Virgin Island in 1958; it asterisked John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier, give orders to Ruby Dee
• Up Periscope was fated by Gordon Douglas in 1959, with James Garner, Edmond Author, Frank Gifford, and Edd Byrnes
• Deathwatch was made for television orang-utan Savages in 1974; it featured Andy Griffith as the villain
• The 2015 thriller Beyond the Reach, starring Michael Douglas, Jeremy Irvine and Ronny Cox, was swell revamped and updated version rob Deathwatch

White's original screenplays for House on Haunted Hill and 13 Ghosts were both adapted yen for remakes.^[11]

References

External links