Remembering the Forgotten - Angus Hall

                                   

Angus Hall (1932-2009) was born in Jesmond to Timber merchant Angus Henry Hall and Ann Calvert. He spent his teenage years visiting the local cinema and filling up notebooks with the films he had watched. His first job was as a reporter in the Scottish Borders at the Kelso Chronicle. He was paid £2 10s. a week, the travel to and from work costing £2 a week. He then worked for the Newcastle Evening Courier earning £7 10s. a week before his big break, working for the Mirror in Manchester. His last job was in Fleet Street, working as the film and theatre critic for the Daily Sketch. He then decided to quit journalism with an eye on Hollywood, noting that he was more intellectual and interesting than the people he was sent to interview.

His first professional sale was Love in Smoky Regions (Constable, 1962) which was a considerable success and followed by The High-bouncing Lover and  The Come-Uppance of Arthur Hearne, a gypsy who marries a lady. Angus married the following year to Theresa Geraldine Garcia and their only child, Andrew Henry Hall was born in 1962.

                                                       

                                         
                                         



1968 saw the publication of  Deathday, a rather fun romp about Adam Crosse, who may or may not be a psychopathic killer 
                                                   

Devilday (1969) saw the first appearance of Paul Toombs, Hollywood star who flees the US after his involvment in an unsolved murder, the popular character would again appear in the lesser novel To Play the Devil
 

These books would see Angus' dream of his work being turned into movies- and I can reveal this previously unknown story- Angus had told Vincent Price that he would write Price a character he could play in a film when the two had met in a party in Hollywood in 1961. When the two met during the filming of Madhouse, the film version of Devilday, Vincent Price recalled their conversation much to their mutual delight.

The money that the film brough Angus bought him a flat in Hampstead and a family home in Hastings.

Rights for his novel The Late Boy Wonder were sold for £10,000 and it was turned into the film Up in the Cellar which was seen by many as a near-sequel to Three in the Attic. Other adaptations were the 1993 film Sweet Killing based on his novel Qualthrough and an episode from Out of the Unknown based on Deathday.

His only Hammer horror tie-in came in 1971, the faithful The Scars of Dracula was reprinted in 1987 by Severn House.
 

He spent his retirement in Devon and died in 2009. I'd like to find out a little more about his later years, so if anyone can help me, please leave me a message.

Bibliography:


Love in Smoky Regions (Constable, 1962)
The High-bouncing Lover (Hammond, 1966)
Live Like a Hero (Hammond, 1967)
The Come-uppance of Arthur Hearne (Hammond, 1967)
Qualtrough (Herbert Jenkins, 1968)
Deathday (Sphere, 1969)
Devilday (Sphere, 1969)
The Late Boy-Wonder (Herbert Jenkins, 1969)
To Play the Devil (Sphere, 1971)
The Scars of Dracula (Sphere, 1971)
A Long Way to Fall (Sphere, 1972)
The Gentle Sex (Sphere, 1972)
On the Run (Harrap, 1972)
Signs of Things to Come (Harrap, 1974)
Monsters and Mythic Beasts (Aldus Books, 1975)
The Crime Busters (Aldus Books, 1976)
The Supernatural: Strange Cults (Aldus Books, 1976)
Crimes of Horror (Spring Books, 1976)
Mysterious Monsters w/Daniel Fasron (Aldus Books 1978)
Mysteries of Prediction w/Francis King (Aldus Books, 1978)
The Rigoletto Murder (Hale, 1978)
Mysterious Cults w/Jeremy Kingston (Aldus Books, 1979)
Self-Destruct (Severn House, 1985)