AMONG THE CREATORS
HARLAN ELLISON
Harlan Ellison, who wrote the screenplay for “The Oscar” with Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene, is a new and brilliant creative talent on the motion picture scene.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, May 27, 1934, he made his first literary sale, a four-part serial, to the Cleveland News at the age of 12. At 13, he ran away from home and joined a carnival. As an adult (18) he sold his first story, “Infinity,” to Science Fiction.
His higher education was a year and one-half as an English major, geology minor, at Ohio State University.
Along the way, he has been a floorwalker in a department store, a bookseller on Broadway, itinerant crop-picker, logger, fisherman, short order cook, lithographer, publisher, editor (founded Regency Books), lecturer at the University of California and New York University, advertising copywriter, jazz critic, fashion writer, door-to-door brush salesman, driver of a dynamite truck and WRITER.
Contemporary Authors say of him, “Ellison’s work has been praised by such diverse personalities as Steve Allen, Anthony Boucher, Leonard Bishop, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Elvis Presley and Bennett Cerf. Dorothy parker has called his writing style ‘good, clean, honest and no sensationalism about it.’ The range and variety of the jobs he has held illustrate what he calls his almost pathological need to live what he writes.”
At 19, and looking even younger, he joined a kid gang in Brooklyn in the interests of a novel he was writing on juvenile delinquency. The book, “Rumble” was published by Pyramid the year Harlan Ellison turned 21, and he later wrote the screenplay for the motion picture filmed by American-International.
Among other published works have been, “The Deadly Streets,” a collection of short stories; “The Man With Nine Lives,” “A Touch of Infinity,” short stories; “The Juvies,” short stories; “Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation;” “Memos From Purgatory;” Rockabilly” and “Ellison Wonderland.”
Among television programs for which he has written scripts have been “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” “Burke’s Law,” “Outer Limits” and “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.”