Born in Newton, Massachusetts to a literary family, he was the son of Gertrude Darling and Robert Benchley (1889–1945), the noted American writer, humorist, critic, actor, and one of the founders of the Algonquin Round Table in New York City.
Education
Bachelor of Science, Harvard University, 1938.
Career
He enlisted in the United States. Navy prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor and served as a public relations officer and on convoy duty in the Atlantic on destroyers and patrol craft. He was transferred to the Pacific in 1945. He later worked for Newsweek magazine as an assistant drama editors
Benchley was the highly respected author of many children"s/juvenile books that provided learning for the youthful readers with stories of various animals or through the book"s historical settings.
Benchley dealt with diverse locales and topics such as "Bright Candles", which recounts the experiences of a 16-year-old Danish boy during the German occupation of his country in World World War World War II And "Small Wolf", a story about a Native American boy who meets white men on the island of Manhattan and learns that their ideas about land are different from those of his own people.
He wrote a biography of his father Robert in 1955. His first novel Sail a Crooked Ship (1960) was filmed by Columbia Pictures in 1961. He was a close friend of actor Humphrey Bogart and wrote his biography in 1975.
Benchley"s novel Welcome to Xanadu was made into the 1975 motion picture Sweet Hostage.
Nathaniel Benchley died in 1981 in Boston, Massachusetts and was interred in the family plot at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Nantucket. Partial bibliography, children/juvenile books:
Sinbad the Sailor (1960)
Red Fox and His Canoe (1964)
Oscar Otter (1966)
The Strange Disappearance of Arthur Cluck (1967)
Ghost Named Fred (1968)
Sam the Minuteman (1969)
The Several Tricks of Edgar Dolphin (1970)
Feldman Fieldmouse: A Fable (1971)
The Magic Sled (1972)
Small Wolf (1972)
Only Earth and Sky Last Forever (1972)
The Deep Dives of Stanley Whale (1973)
Bright Candles: A Novel of the Danish Resistance (1974)