Charles Leslie McFarlane was a Canadian journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and filmmaker, who is most famous for ghostwriting many of the early books in the very successful Hardy Boys series, using the pseudonym Franklin W Dixon.
10 Facts About Leslie McFarlane
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The son of a school principal, McFarlane was raised in the town of Haileybury, Ontario.
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Leslie McFarlane became a freelance writer shortly after high school.
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Leslie McFarlane wrote books in several other juvenile series, published in pulp magazines, novellas or novels over his fifty-year career, at one point writing six novels in one year.
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Leslie McFarlane earned as little as $85 per book during the Great Depression, yet he continued because he had a growing family.
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However, Leslie McFarlane was not bitter about not earning a cut of the enormous revenues generated by his work.
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Leslie McFarlane's attitude was, 'Look, I took these on and I was glad to get the deal.
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Leslie McFarlane wrote the first four volumes of The Dana Girls series for the Stratemeyer Syndicate under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, which the Syndicate used for the Nancy Drew series of books.
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Leslie McFarlane wrote the documentary titled Herring Hunt, nominated for an Academy Award for Live Action Short Film.
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Leslie McFarlane was the subject of the 2004 book The Secret of the Hardy Boys: Leslie McFarlane and the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Marilyn Greenwald.