13 Facts About Richard Jessup

Richard Jessup was an American author and screenwriter.

Mr Jessup spent his early years in and out of a local orphanage before running away to sea as a merchant seaman.

Richard Jessup designed and built a home in Connecticut, where he lived until moving to Florida a few years ago.

Mr Richard Jessup wrote more than 60 books, most of them paperback originals about crime, detectives, Indians and adventure.

Richard Jessup wrote under several pseudonyms, including Richard Telfair, and he wrote radio shows and television scripts.

Mr Richard Jessup has brilliantly enlarged the microcosm of the gambling table, to make it a genuine setting for a novel, said the reviewer.

Mr Richard Jessup attributed much of his outlook to a chance meeting with Albert Camus in Marsailles in 1945, during which they drank together for hours and the philosopher impressed upon the 20-year-old seaman his existential philosophy.

Mr Richard Jessup wrote the book and the screenplay for Chuka, about the lone survivor of a massacre by Arapahoe Indians in the 1870s.

Mr Richard Jessup wrote Foxway, a novel published in 1971 about a psychologically distraught young combat veteran of Vietnam.

Richard Jessup's first published novel was The Cunning and the Haunted published in 1954 based on his experiences in orphanages.

The novel was filmed as The Young Don't Cry in 1957 with Richard Jessup writing the screenplay for the film with Sal Mineo as the lead.

Richard Jessup began writing Westerns in 1957 with Cheyenne Saturday and finishing with Chuka where he wrote the screenplay for the film of the same name for actor and producer Rod Taylor.

Richard Jessup used the name Telfair for an original novel based on the TV series Danger Man called Target for Tonight in 1962.