Daniel Mainwaring

Writer, Additional Credits

Born July 22, 1902Died January 31, 1977 (74 years)

Daniel Mainwaring (aka Geoffrey Homes) (July 22, 1902 – January 31, 1977) was an American novelist and screenwriter. A native of Oakland, California, he began his professional career as a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle and enjoyed a successful career as a mystery novelist (under the name Geoffrey Homes). He worked as a film publicist and eventually abandoned fiction for a successful career as a screenwriter.

His first novel (and the only one he ever published under his own name), One Against the Earth, was a proletarian novel about a young man born on a California ranch who becomes a drifter and is eventually unjustly accused of attacking a child, was published in 1932. He made his real mark, however, with a string of hard-boiled mystery novels (mostly with small-town California settings), the first of which was The Man Who Murdered Himself (1936).

His final published novel, Build My Gallows High (William Morrow & Co., 1946), is generally regarded as his best—and its adaptation (by "Homes" himself) into the film noir classic Out of the Past assured his place in film history. Mainwaring explained to interviewer Pat McGilligan that he regarded the novel as a departure from his earlier literary efforts:

With Build My Gallows High, I wanted to get away from straight mystery novels. Those detective stories are a bore to write. You've got to figure out "whodunit". I'd get to the end and have to say whodunit and be so mixed up I couldn't decide myself.

(Wikipedia)

Movies & Shows on Plex

The Hitch-Hiker
The Last Outpost
Dangerous Passage
Big Town After Dark
Swamp Fire
The Californians

Known For

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Out of the Past
Against All Odds
The Big Steal
The Phenix City Story
The Hitch-Hiker
Atlantis: The Lost Continent
The Gun Runners
The Lawless
The Tall Target
A Bullet for Joey
Dangerous Passage
Roughshod
Roadblock
This Woman Is Dangerous
The Eagle and the Hawk
The Last Outpost
The Revolt of the Slaves
Space Master X-7
Swamp Fire
Scared Stiff
Bugles in the Afternoon
Southwest Passage
They Made Me a Killer