Robert Albert Bloch was an American fiction writer, primarily of crime, psychological horror and fantasy, much of which has been dramatized for radio, cinema and television.
76 Facts About Robert Bloch
2.
Robert Bloch wrote a relatively small amount of science fiction.
3.
Robert Bloch's writing career lasted 60 years, including more than 30 years in television and film.
4.
Robert Bloch began his professional writing career immediately after graduation, aged 17.
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Best known as the writer of Psycho, the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock, Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over 30 novels.
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Robert Bloch was a contributor to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in his early career, and was a prolific screenwriter and a major contributor to science fiction fanzines and fandom in general.
7.
Robert Bloch won the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award.
8.
Robert Bloch served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America and was a member of that organization and of Science Fiction Writers of America, the Writers Guild of America, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Count Dracula Society.
9.
Robert Bloch's work has been extensively adapted into films, television productions, comics, and audiobooks.
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Robert Bloch was born in Chicago, the son of Raphael "Ray" Robert Bloch, a bank cashier, and his wife Stella Loeb, a social worker, both of German Jewish descent.
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Robert Bloch was a precocious child and found himself in fourth grade when he was eight.
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Robert Bloch obtained a pass into the adult section of the public library, where he read omnivorously.
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Robert Bloch considered himself a budding artist and worked in pencil sketching and watercolours, but myopia in adolescence seemed to effectively bar art as a career.
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Robert Bloch had passions for German-made lead toy soldiers and for silent cinema.
15.
Robert Bloch attended Washington, then Lincoln High School, where he met lifelong friend Harold Gauer.
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Gauer was editor of The Quill, Lincoln's literary magazine, and accepted Robert Bloch's first published short story, a horror story titled "The Thing".
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Robert Bloch was involved in the drama department at Lincoln and wrote and performed in school vaudeville skits.
18.
Robert Bloch began his readings of the magazine with the first instalment of Otis Adelbert Kline's "The Bride of Osiris" which dealt with a secret Egyptian city called Karneter located beneath Bloch's birth city of Chicago.
19.
Robert Bloch took up Lovecraft's offer in late April 1933, sending him two short items, "The Gallows" and another work whose title is unknown.
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Robert Bloch submitted these to Weird Tales; editor Farnsworth Wright summarily rejected them all.
21.
However Robert Bloch successfully placed "Lilies" in the semi-professional magazine Marvel Tales and "Black Lotus" in Unusual Stories.
22.
Robert Bloch then wrote a story which promptly sold to Weird Tales.
23.
Robert Bloch met the first Weird Tales writer outside of Derleth he had encountered - Otto Binder.
24.
In 1935, Robert Bloch wrote the tale "Satan's Servants", on which Lovecraft lent much advice, but none of the prose was by Lovecraft; this tale did not appear in print until 1949, in Something About Cats and Other Pieces.
25.
Robert Bloch was the only individual to whom Lovecraft ever dedicated a story.
26.
Lovecraft's death in 1937 deeply affected Robert Bloch, who was then aged only 20.
27.
Robert Bloch began contributing to other pulps, such as the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.
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In 1935 Bloch joined a writers' group, The Milwaukee Fictioneers, members of which included Stanley Weinbaum, Ralph Milne Farley and Raymond A Palmer.
29.
Robert Bloch noted that "I hate everything", but reserved particular dislike for "bean soup, red nail polish, house-cleaning, and optimists".
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In 1939, Robert Bloch was contacted by James Doolittle, who was managing the campaign for Mayor of Milwaukee of a little-known assistant city attorney named Carl Zeidler.
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Robert Bloch was asked to work on Zeidler's speechwriting, advertising, and photo ops, in collaboration with his long-time friend Harold Gauer.
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Robert Bloch ends the story with a wryly philosophical point:.
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Also in 1939, two of Robert Bloch's tales were published: "The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton" and "The Cloak".
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Shortly thereafter, Robert Bloch created the Damon Runyon-esque humorous series character Lefty Feep in the story "Time Wounds All Heels" Fantastic Adventures.
35.
Marx allowed Robert Bloch to write stories in the office in quiet times.
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Robert Bloch published a total of 23 Lefty Feep stories in Fantastic Adventures, the last one published in 1950, but the bulk appeared during World War II.
37.
Robert Bloch gradually evolved away from Lovecraftian imitations towards a unique style of his own.
38.
The story was Robert Bloch's take on the Jack the Ripper legend, and was filled out with more genuine factual details of the case than many other fictional treatments.
39.
Towards the end of World War Two, in 1945, Robert Bloch was asked to write 39 15-minute episodes of his own radio horror show called Stay Tuned for Terror.
40.
In 1948, Robert Bloch was the Guest of Honor at Torcon I, World Science Fiction Convention, Toronto, Canada.
41.
Robert Bloch popularised the "Auction Robert Bloch" at science fiction conventions during the 1950s, a practice in which fans bid on professionals, buying an hour of their time.
42.
Robert Bloch's contribution to Harlan Ellison's 1967 science fiction anthology Dangerous Visions was a story, "A Toy for Juliette", which evoked both Jack the Ripper and the Marquis de Sade in a time-travel story.
43.
Robert Bloch won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story for "That Hellbound Train" in 1959, the same year that his sixth novel, Psycho, was published.
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Robert Bloch had written an earlier short story involving dissociative identity disorder, "The Real Bad Friend", which appeared in the February 1957 Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, that foreshadowed the 1959 novel Psycho.
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Robert Bloch's basing of the character of Norman Bates on Ed Gein is discussed in the documentary Ed Gein: The Ghoul of Plainfield, which can be found on Disc 2 of the DVD release of the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
46.
Robert Bloch was awarded a special Mystery Writers of America scroll for the novel in 1961.
47.
Indeed, Robert Bloch's proposed script for the film Psycho II was rejected by the studio, and it was this that he subsequently adapted for his own sequel novel.
48.
Robert Bloch wrote the screenplay for The Cabinet of Caligari, which is only very loosely related to the 1920 German silent film, and proved to be an unhappy experience.
49.
Robert Bloch was pleased later when the episode was included in the program's syndication package to affiliate stations, where not one complaint was registered.
50.
In 1964 Robert Bloch married Eleanor Alexander and wrote original screenplays for two films produced and directed by William Castle, Strait-Jacket and The Night Walker, along with The Skull.
51.
In 1968, Robert Bloch returned to London to do two episodes for the English Hammer Films series Journey to the Unknown for Twentieth Century Fox.
52.
The last two films featured stories written by Robert Bloch that were printed first in anthologies he wrote in the 1940s and early 1950s.
53.
Robert Bloch meanwhile, penned single episodes for Night Gallery, Ghost Story, The Manhunter, and Gemini Man.
54.
Robert Bloch published another classic story of Jack the Ripper, "A Toy for Juliette" in Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions anthology.
55.
Robert Bloch won a second Ann Radcliffe Award, this time for Literature, in 1969.
56.
In 1971, Robert Bloch served as president of the Mystery Writers of America, meanwhile publishing the novel Sneak Preview, the collection Fear Today, Gone Tomorrow, and the short novel It's All in Your Mind.
57.
In 1973 Robert Bloch was the Guest of Honor at Torcon II, World Science Fiction Convention, Toronto.
58.
In 1975, Robert Bloch won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the First World Fantasy Convention held in Providence, Rhode Island.
59.
The occasion of this convention was the first time Robert Bloch actually visited the city of Providence.
60.
Robert Bloch continued to published short story collections throughout this period.
61.
Robert Bloch's Selected Stories appeared in three volumes just prior to his death, although many previously uncollected tales have appeared in volumes published since 1997.
62.
In 1991 Bloch contributed an Introduction to In Search of Lovecraft by J Vernon Shea.
63.
In 1993, he published his "unauthorized autobiography", Once Around the Robert Bloch and edited the original anthology Monsters in Our Midst.
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On October 2,1940, Robert Bloch married Marion Ruth Holcombe; it was reportedly a marriage of convenience designed to keep Robert Bloch out of the army.
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Robert Bloch's daughter Sally was born on 1943 and elected to stay with him.
66.
Elly remained in the Los Angeles area for several years after selling their Laurel Canyon Home to fans of Robert Bloch, eventually choosing to go home to Canada to be closer to her own family.
67.
Robert Bloch died March 7,2007, at the Betel Home in Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada.
68.
Robert Bloch's ashes have been placed next to Bloch's in a similar book-shaped urn at Pierce Brothers in Westwood, California.
69.
Robert Bloch died on September 23,1994, after a long battle with cancer, at the age of 77.
70.
Robert Bloch survived by seven months the death of another member of the original "Lovecraft Circle", Frank Belknap Long, who had died in January 1994.
71.
Robert Bloch was cremated and his ashes interred in the Room of Prayer columbarium at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
72.
The Robert Bloch Award is presented at the annual Necronomicon convention.
73.
Robert Bloch contributed a script as part of the DC one-shot benefit comic Heroes Against Hunger.
74.
Various recordings of Robert Bloch speaking at fantasy and sf conventions are extant.
75.
Robert Bloch appeared in the documentary The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal produced and directed by Arnold Leibovit.
76.
Many of Robert Bloch's published works, manuscripts, correspondence, books, recordings, tapes and other memorabilia are housed in the Special Collections division of the library at the University of Wyoming.