37 Facts About James Ellroy

Lee Earle "James" Ellroy was born on March 4,1948 and is an American crime fiction writer and essayist.

James Ellroy's mother, Geneva Odelia, was a nurse.

James Ellroy's father, Armand, was an accountant and a onetime business manager of Rita Hayworth.

James Ellroy's parents divorced in 1954, after which Ellroy and his mother moved to El Monte, California.

James Ellroy struggled in youth with this obsession, as he held a psycho-sexual relationship with her, and tried to catch glimpses of her nude.

In 1962, James Ellroy began to attend Fairfax High School, a predominantly Jewish high school.

James Ellroy joined the American Nazi Party, purchased Nazi paraphernalia, sang the Horst-Wessel-Lied at school, mailed Nazi pamphlets to girls he liked, openly criticized John F Kennedy, and ironically advocated for the reinstatement of slavery.

James Ellroy's "Crazy Man Act", as Ellroy describes it, was a plea for attention and got him beaten up and eventually expelled from Fairfax High School in 11th grade, after ranting about Nazism in his English class.

On enlisting, James Ellroy soon decided he did not belong there and convinced an army psychiatrist he was unfit for combat.

James Ellroy was engaged in minor crimes and was often homeless.

On October 4,1991, James Ellroy married writer and critic Helen Knode.

In 2006, after their divorce, James Ellroy returned to Los Angeles.

James Ellroy frequently tells interviewers that the issue for him is not monogamy, but cohabitation.

In 1981, James Ellroy published his first novel, Brown's Requiem, a detective story drawing on his experiences as a caddie.

James Ellroy then published Clandestine and Silent Terror.

James Ellroy followed these three novels with the Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy.

James Ellroy is a self-described recluse who possesses very few technological amenities, including television, and claims never to read contemporary books by other authors, aside from Joseph Wambaugh's The Onion Field, out of concern that they might influence his own.

James Ellroy then goes on to say that he read works by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

James Ellroy writes longhand on legal pads rather than on a computer.

James Ellroy prepares elaborate outlines for his books, most of which are several hundred pages long.

James Ellroy often employs a sort of telegraphese, a style that reaches its apex in The Cold Six Thousand.

In 1995, James Ellroy published American Tabloid, the first novel in a series informally dubbed the "Underworld USA Trilogy" that James Ellroy describes as a "secret history" of the mid-to-late 20th century.

In collaboration with the Los Angeles Police Museum and Glynn Martin, the museum's executive director, James Ellroy released LAPD '53 on May 19,2015.

Reminiscent of how he investigated his mother's unsolved murder, James Ellroy worked with Glynn Martin, an ex-LAPD officer, the LAPD Museum's current executive director, and co-author of LAPD '53.

James Ellroy wrote about this investigation for The Hollywood Reporter in digital form on December 21,2018, and it appeared in published form in the December 18,2018, issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

James Ellroy added, "Stay stirringly tuned to this website for further updates" and simply signed the finished post James Ellroy, inserting a dog's pawprint below it.

In media appearances, James Ellroy has adopted an outsized, stylized public persona of hard-boiled nihilism and self-reflexive subversiveness.

James Ellroy frequently begins public appearances with a monologue such as:.

James Ellroy has claimed that he is done writing noir crime novels.

James Ellroy has said that the Rodney King beating and Rampart police scandals were overblown by a biased media.

In 2001, James Ellroy stated that he is opposed to gun control.

James Ellroy has frequently shared his thoughts on politicians and political candidates.

In 2022, James Ellroy stated that he no longer followed contemporary politics.

In each instance, screenplays based on James Ellroy's work were written by other screenwriters.

Shortly after viewing three hours of unedited footage for Brian De Palma's adaptation of The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy wrote an essay, "Hillikers", praising De Palma and his film.

James Ellroy co-wrote the original screenplay for the 2008 film Street Kings but refused to do any publicity for the finished film.

In February of 2024, it was reported James Ellroy had signed on with Hollywood talent agency UTA and that producers were shopping a film adaption of his then-latest novel The Enchanters around.