Robert Albert Bloch was an American author. He crafted dozens of screenplays, mysteries, fantasies, and essays but was best remembered for his spine-tingling psychological tales of horror and suspense, most notably the classic Psycho (1959).
Background
Bloch, Robert Albert was born on April 5, 1917 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Robert Bloch was the son of Raphael "Ray" Bloch (1884–1952), a bank cashier, and his wife Stella Loeb (1880–1944), a social worker, both of German Jewish descent.
Education
Bloch attended the Methodist Church there, despite his parents' Jewish heritage, and attended Emerson Grammar School.
Career
Bloch began his writing career at the suggestion of horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Bloch admired Lovecraft’s fiction in the pulp magazines of the 1930s and, at the age of fifteen, wrote to Lovecraft for a list of the author’s published works. Lovecraft provided the list and offered to lend Bloch any of his stories he might want to read. He also offered to lend him fantasy books from his personal library. After exchanging a few letters, Lovecraft suggested that Bloch try his hand at fiction. Bloch did. Lovecraft encouraged his efforts and, at the age of seventeen, Bloch made his first professional sale, a horror story to Weird Tales magazine.
As a tribute to Lovecraft, Bloch wished to include the author as a character in a story titled “The Shambler from the Stars” - a character who meets a gruesome death.
Bloch asked Lovecraft’s permission for this inclusion and Lovecraft replied with a letter authorizing Bloch to “portray, murder, annihilate, disintegrate, transfigure, metamorphose or otherwise manhandle the undersigned.” After the publication of “Shambler,” Lovecraft returned the “favor” in his story “The Haunter of the Dark,” in which a young writer named Robert Blake, who happened to reside at the same address as Bloch did at the time, visits Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft’s home town, and meets his death in the study of the house Lovecraft was then living in.
Yet Bloch proceeded to become a writer of considerable stature on his own merits, far more than a footnote to Lovecraft’s career.
Publishing mostly in Weird Tales and Fantastic Adventures, Bloch authored more than one hundred stories in the first decade of his career in the 1930s and 1940s. At first imitative of Lovecraft, he soon developed his own distinctive style, characterized by conversational, seemingly innocent beginnings that quickly develop ominous undercurrents and build to terrifying conclusions. One of Bloch’s most famous stories from this period was “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper.” Based on the notorious crimes of the Victorian-era English murderer, the story was subsequently produced on radio and television many times.
Bloch’s first book, the story collection The Opener of the Way, did not appear until 1945, followed two years later by his first novel, The Scarf.
The novel Psycho, which filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock adapted into the classic suspense motion picture of the same title, was based on Bloch’s research into the life of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein. Of all Bloch’s novels, Psycho is the one for which he is most remembered and acclaimed.
Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, Bloch worked as a copywriter as well as continuing to produce his own fiction. He also had his first experience with nonprint media, scripting thirty-nine episodes of the radio show Stay Tuned for Horror. In the early 1950s he turned to his own creative writing full time, and in 1959, at the invitation and with the help of fellow writer Samuel A. Peeples, he moved to California and began producing scripts for television and eventually feature films.
His television writing credits included episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Star Trek, and Night Gallery, to name only a few; his screen writing work was seen in the films Strait-Jacket, The Psychopath, The House That Dripped Blood, and Twilight Zone - The Movie.
Following his death from cancer in 1994, twenty of Bloch’s most famous short stories, each with an introduction by a friend or colleague of the author, were published in a collection entitled Robert Bloch: Appreciations of the Master. Some of Bloch’s earliest works, which appeared exclusively in the so-called pulp magazines and paperbacks of the 1930’s, 1940’s, and 1950’s, were reprinted in two new collections, Flowers from the Moon and Other Lunacies and The Devil With You!: The Lost Bloch, Volume One.
Bloch was a member of the Writers Guild of America, Mystery Writers of America (president, 1970-71), Science Fiction Writers of America, National Fantasy Association.
Writers Guild of America
Mystery Writers of America
Science Fiction Writers of America
National Fantasy Association
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Bloch specializes in wry, ironic horror stories in which he juxtaposes horror with humor and employs trick endings.” - Tanita C. Kelly
"Bloch’s writing in Psycho was more chillingly effective than any writer might reasonably be expected to be.” - Anthony Boucher
“Bloch’s screenplays, like his work for other media, are all derived from his formula for success - he gives the audience a mixture of humor, irony, and suspense and systematically catches them off guard.” - Tanita C. Kelly
Interests
Writers
H. P. Lovecraft
Connections
On October 2, 1940, Robert Bloch married Marion Holcombe, but they divorced in 1963. Then, on October 16, 1964, married Eleanor Alexander. He had a daughter Sally Ann.
Boucheron, 1971, Dallascon, 1972, Comicon, 1975, First World Fantasy Convention, 1975, premier Festival du roman et cinema policiers, 1979, and at Cinecon One, 1981
Boucheron, 1971, Dallascon, 1972, Comicon, 1975, First World Fantasy Convention, 1975, premier Festival du roman et cinema policiers, 1979, and at Cinecon One, 1981
E. E. Evans Memorial Award
1959
1959
Hugo Award
World Science Fiction Convention, 1959, for short story “The Hell- bound Train”;
World Science Fiction Convention, 1959, for short story “The Hell- bound Train”;
Screen Guild Award
1960
1960
Ann Radcliffe Award
for literature, 1960, and for television, 1966
for literature, 1960, and for television, 1966
Mystery Writers of America Special Scroll
1960
1960
Trieste Film Festival Award
1965, for The Skull
1965, for The Skull
Convention du Cinema Fantastique de Paris Prize
1973
1973
Los Angeles Science Fiction Society Award
1974
1974
Comicon Inkpot Award
1975
1975
World Fantasy ConventionLife Achievement Award
1975
1975
Cannes Fantasy Film Festival First Prize
for Asylum
for Asylum
Bram Stoker Award, Horror Writers of America
1991, for lifetime contribution to the field of horror
1991, for lifetime contribution to the field of horror