Patrick Hamilton Biography and List of Works

English novelist and playwright, whose best-known works were ROPE (1929) and GAS LIGHT (1938), both also adapted to the screen. Hamilton died of cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure after spending to many years in an alcoholic haze.

Born in Sussex, Hamilton was the youngest of three children born to parents who were both divorced. His father Bernard Hamilton was a wealthy barrister, who preferred spending his inheritance on drink and women. He had married a prostitute who subsequently threw herself under a train. Ellen Hamilton was briefly married to an incorrigible womaniser.

Hamilton was educated at Holland House School, Hove, Sussex, Colet Court, London, and Westminster School, London (1918-19). At the age of seventeen he began to work as an actor and assistant stage manager for Andrew Melville. However, he then changed to safer career as a stenographer, having learned the typing and shorthand via correspondence course.

As a novelist Hamilton made his debut with the Dickensian MONDAY MORNING (1925), which was well received. It was followed by CRAVEN HOUSE, which established his reputation on both sides of Atlantic.

"The good Americans usually die young on the battlefield, don't they? Well, the Davids of the world merely occupy space, which is why he was the perfect victim for the perfect crime."
(Brandon in Alfred Hitchcock's film Rope, 1948)

Hamilton's first theatrical success was ROPE (1929), produced in the United States as ROPE'S END. The story depicts two Oxford undergraduates who attempt the 'perfect murder' - they kill a third boy for kicks and to prove that they have superior intelligence. The suspicious James Steward, playing the boys' former headmaster, puts the clues together knowing that if he gives the two enough rope they will hang themselves. The story had similarities with the notorious Leopold-Loeb murder case, although Hamilton denied any connections. One of Shakespeare's plays, Titus Andronicus, features an earlier attempt by a killer to serve a buffet to his victim's family. Later, Alfred Hitchcock made the book into a film. The result did not satisfy the author. The film was shot in a series of eight-minute continuous takes. However, the long takes alienated the audience from any emotional involvement and Farley Granger's performance was a disappointment.

At the peak of his career, Hamilton was accidentally run over by a car, sustaining multiple fractures and requiring plastic surgery.

GASLIGHT in 1938 was a huge success and ran in the United States for almost three years (1942-44). It was a story of a Victorian villain, who marries a woman for her money and tries to drive her mad in order to get his hands on it. George Cukor's film (1944) based on the book was a terrifying study of how a husband can dominate and abuse his wife through manipulative words and actions. Ingrid Bergman as the young bride won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance. An earlier film version of the book was made in England in 1939-40, but MGM kept it out of circulation to benefit its own film.

In 1941 Hamilton's HANGOVER SQUARE appeared. It was a grim and powerful study of a schizophrenic named George Harvey Bone who lives in the lower depths of Earl's Court, London. His miserable existence and his mental deterioration is worsened by his love for a feckless whore, Netta Longdon, who is unfaithful to him with his best friends. Bone's agony forces him to revenge. Along with Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano (1947) the book is among the most penetrating studies of drinking and its contradictory effects.

Hamilton's final series of novels remained unfinished. In THE WEST PIER, MR STIMPSON AND MR. GORSE and UNKNOWN ASSAILANT, he traced the career of another psychopath, Ralph Ernest Gorse. Graham Greene described The West Pier as 'the best book written about Brighton'. The series was presented on British television under the title of The Charmer in 1962. The novel was set along the seafront and pier in Brighton in the early 1920's. There are no murders and no violence, but the atmosphere in the story is menacing and malevolent. Gorse wants to make a fool of a young woman and cause grief and pain for their own sake. The twisted workings of his mind slowly take over the book.

Hamilton was married twice (Lois Martin, Ursula Stewart). He was a heavy drinker and frequently broke despite his success. Hamilton's Marxist views and private admiration of Stalin is reflected only marginally in his works. He died on September 23, 1962.

For further reading: World Authors 1900-1950, ed. by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens (1996); Through a Glass Darkly: The Life of Patrick Hamilton by Nigel Jones (1992); Twentieth Century Mystery and Crime Writers, ed. by J.M. Reilly (1985); The Light Went Out by B. Hamilton (1972)

MONDAY MORNING, (1925)