Alistair MacLean

Alistair MacLean
Alistair Stuart MacLean (21 April 1922 – 2 February 1987) was a Scottish novelist who wrote popular thrillers and adventure stories. Many of his novels have been adapted to film, most notably The Guns of Navarone (1957) and Ice Station Zebra (1963). In the late 1960s, encouraged by film producer Elliott Kastner, MacLean began to write original screenplays, concurrently with an accompanying novel. The most successful was the first of these, the 1968 film Where Eagles Dare, which was also a bestselling novel. MacLean also published two novels under the pseudonym Ian Stuart. His books are estimated to have sold over 150 million copies, making him one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time.
According to one obituary, "he never lost his love for the sea, his talent for portraying good Brits against bad Germans, or his penchant for high melodrama. Critics deplored his cardboard characters and vapid females, but readers loved his combination of hot macho action, wartime commando sagas, and exotic settings that included Greek Islands and Alaskan oil fields."
Early life
Alistair Stuart Maclean was born on 21 April 1922 in Shettleston, Glasgow, the third of four sons of a Church of Scotland minister, but spent much of his childhood and youth in Daviot, south of Inverness. He spoke Scottish Gaelic.
In 1941, at the age of 19, he was called up to fight in the Second World War with the Royal Navy, serving with the ranks of ordinary seaman, able seaman, and leading torpedo operator. He was first assigned to PS Bournemouth Queen, a converted excursion ship fitted for antiaircraft guns, on duty off the coasts of England and Scotland. Beginning in 1943, he served on , a Dido-class light cruiser. There, he saw action in 1943 in the Atlantic theatre, on two Arctic convoys and escorting aircraft carrier groups in operations against , and other targets off the Norwegian coast. He took part in Convoy PQ 17 on Royalist. this cannot be so if he joined Royalist in 1943 as PQ17 sailed in 1942 In 1944, Royalist and he served in the Mediterranean theatre, as part of the invasion of southern France and in helping to sink blockade runners off Crete and bombard Milos in the Aegean. During this time, MacLean may have been injured in a gunnery-practice accident. In 1945, in the Far East theatre, MacLean and Royalist saw action escorting carrier groups in operations against Japanese targets in Burma, Malaya, and Sumatra. (MacLean's late-in-life claims that he was captured by the Japanese after blowing up bridges, and tortured by having his teeth pulled out, have been dismissed by both his son and his biographer as drunken ravings). After the Japanese surrender, Royalist helped evacuate liberated POWs from Changi Prison in Singapore.
MacLean was discharged from the Royal Navy in 1946. He then studied English at the University of Glasgow, working at the post office and as a street sweeper. He lived with his mother at 26 Carrington Street, at St Georges Cross, Glasgow while attending the university. He graduated with an MA (Hons.) in 1950, briefly worked as a hospital porter, and then worked as a schoolteacher at Gallowflat School (now Stonelaw High School) in Rutherglen.
Early writing career
First works
Whilst a university student, MacLean began writing short stories for extra income, winning a competition in 1954 with the maritime story "Dileas". He sold stories to the Daily Mirror and The Evening News. The wife of Ian Chapman, editor at the publishing company Collins, had been particularly moved by "Dileas" and the Chapmans arranged to meet with MacLean, suggesting he write a novel. MacLean responded three months later with HMS Ulysses, based on his own war experiences and credited insight from his brother Ian, a master mariner.
MacLean later described his writing process:
MacLean was paid a large advance of $50,000, which made the headlines. Collins were rewarded when the book sold a quarter of a million copies in hardback in England in the first six months of publication. It went on to sell millions more. Film rights were sold to Robert Clark of Associated British for £30,000, though a film was never made. This money meant MacLean was able to devote himself to writing full-time.
Guns of Navarone
His next novel, The Guns of Navarone (1957), was about an attack on the fictitious island of Navarone (based on Milos). The book was very successful, selling over 400,000 copies in its first six months. In 1957, MacLean said, "I'm not a literary person. If someone offered me £100,000 tax free, I'd never write another word."
MacLean was unhappy at the tax paid on earnings for his first two novels, so he moved to Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, where he would pay less tax. He planned to write one novel a year. "It's all the market can stand," he said, adding it took him three months to write it.
MacLean followed it with South by Java Head (1958), based on his experiences in the seas off Southeast Asia in World War Two, and The Last Frontier (1959), a thriller about the Hungarian uprising of 1956. Film rights for Java Head were sold, but no movie resulted.
His next novels were Night Without End (1959) and Fear Is the Key (1961). The Last Frontier was turned into a movie, The Secret Ways (1961), which was not very successful, while the film version of The Guns of Navarone (1961) was hugely successful.
Ian Stuart
In the early 1960s, MacLean published two novels under the pseudonym "Ian Stuart" to prove that the popularity of his books was due to their content rather than his name on the cover. These were The Dark Crusader (1961) and The Satan Bug (1962). He also said it was because "I usually write adventure stories, but this is a sort of Secret Service or private eye book. I didn't want to confuse my readers."
The Ian Stuart books sold well, and MacLean made no attempt to change his writing style. He also continued to publish novels under his own name such as The Golden Rendezvous (1962) and Ice Station Zebra (1963).
"I'm not a novelist", he once said. "That's too pretentious a claim. I'm a storyteller, that's all. I'm a professional and a craftsman. I will make that claim for myself." MacLean also claimed he wrote very fast (35 days for a novel) because he disliked writing and the "sooner he finished, the better." He never reread a book after it was finished. His novels were notable for their lack of sex. "I like girls", he said. "I just don't write them well. Everyone knows that men and women make love, laddie – there is no need to show it."
Retirement
In 1963, MacLean decided to retire from writing, saying he never enjoyed it and only did it to make money. He decided to become a hotelier and bought the Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor and then bought two more hotels, the Bank House near Worcester and the Bean Bridge at Wellington in Somerset. MacLean focused on his hotel career for three years. It was not a success, and by 1976, he had sold all three hotels. During this time, a film was made of The Satan Bug.
Return to writing
Screenwriter
MacLean returned to writing with When Eight Bells Toll (1966).
Cinema producer Elliot Kastner admired MacLean, and asked him if he would be interested in writing an original screenplay. MacLean agreed to the proposition, and Kastner sent the writer two scripts, one by William Goldman and one by Robert and Jane Howard-Carrington, to familiarize himself with the format. Kastner said he wanted a World War Two story with a group of men on a mission to rescue someone, with a "ticking clock" and some female characters. MacLean agreed to write it for an initial $10,000 with $100,000 to come later. This script was Where Eagles Dare.
In July 1966, Kastner and his producing partner Jerry Gershwin announced they had purchased five screenplays from MacLean: Where Eagles Dare, When Eight Bells Toll, and three other unnamed ones. (Kastner made four MacLean movies.) MacLean also wrote a novel for Where Eagles Dare, after the screenplay, which was published in 1967 before the film came out. The book was a bestseller, and the 1968 film version was a huge hit.
"MacLean is a natural storyteller", said Kastner. "He is a master of adventure. All his books are conceived in cinematic terms. They hardly need to be adapted for the screen; when you read them, the screen is in front of your mind." MacLean wrote a sequel to Guns of Navarone, Force 10 from Navarone (1968). A film version was announced in 1967, but did not result for another decade. The same year, an expensive film based on Ice Station Zebra was released.
Producer
In 1967, MacLean formed a partnership with Geoffrey Reeve and Lewis Jenkins to make films for MacLean to write and Reeves to direct. They planned to make a sequel to Guns of Navarone, only to discover that Carl Foreman, producer of the original film, had registered the title After Navarone. This led to a falling-out with Foreman, and a delay in the Navarone sequel.
Maclean wrote a thriller about narcotics, Puppet on a Chain (1969), and Caravan to Vaccarès (1970). These books all began as screenplays for Kastner. Maclean said Puppet was "a change of style from the earlier books. If I went on writing the same stuff, I'd be guying myself."
When Puppet on a Chain was made, Maclean said, "I've been connected with it for three years and it's too much for me. All those entrepreneurs and promoters who aren't creative. All that time wasted."
"There is nobody to touch him," said Ian Chapman. "But he is a storyteller, not a film man."
MacLean then wrote Bear Island (1971), the last of his first-person narratives.
MacLean moved to Switzerland in 1970 as a tax exile. That year, he said, "there's Harold Robbins, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, and me." He added, "I'm a storyteller, that's all. There's no art in it, no mystique. It's a job like any other. The secret, if there is one, is speed. That's why there's so little sex in my books – it holds up the action." He said he enjoyed the plotting "but the rest is a pain."
In 1970 MacLean, whose hero was Raymond Chandler, said "give me ten years, a few more books, and maybe, maybe I'll be half as good as Chandler."
Kastner produced a film version of When Eight Bells Toll (1971), based on a script by MacLean, and Fear Is the Key (1972), adapted by another writer. Another producer made Puppet on a Chain (1971), directed by Reeves, from a script by MacLean. Neither performed particularly strongly at the box office.
Mary MacLean
In 1972, MacLean married his second wife, Mary Georgius. She planned to produce three films based on his books, but the box-office failure of the last three MacLean adaptations put these on hold. One of these proposed films was The Way to Dusty Death, which was to star Jackie Stewart. It ended up being a 1973 novel and a 1995 film.
In 1973, MacLean was looking at moving to Jamaica. He also considered moving to Ireland, but decided to stay in Switzerland.
Geoffrey Reeve directed a film of Caravan to Vaccarès (1974). By 1973, MacLean had sold over 24 million novels. "I am not a writer," he said in 1972. "I am a businessman. My business is writing." MacLean had spent a number of years focusing on screenplays, but disliked it and decided to return to being predominantly a novel writer. "Hollywood destroys writers," he said. He wrote a biography of Captain James Cook, which was published in 1972. He wrote Breakheart Pass (1974), Circus (1975), The Golden Gate (1976), Seawitch (1977), Goodbye California (1979) and Athabasca (1980).
"I read a lot, I travel some," he said in 1975. "But mostly what I don't know, I invent." In 1976, he was living in Los Angeles and said he wanted to write a four-volume serious piece called "The Rembrandt Quarter" based on the painting The Night Watch. These books were never published.
In 1977, it was announced MacLean, then worth £5 million, would divorce Mary, who said the author was impossible to live with.
In 1978, MacLean said he "just can't understand" why people bought his novels. "It's not as if I write that well: I do feel my English isn't very good. In fact, I'd rather write in Gaelic or Spanish than English."
He said his stories tended to pit "character against character as a kind of intellectual chess game" and that he found writing "boring" and "lonely", but "I guess it all boils down to that rather awful philosophy of take the money and run." "I am just a journeyman," he said. "I blunder along from one book to the next always hopeful that one day I will write something really good."
Films were still being made out of his novels, including Breakheart Pass (1975) (from Kastner), Golden Rendezvous (1977), Force 10 from Navarone (1978), and Bear Island (1979), but none did very well.
In 1976, MacLean's second wife Mary formed a company with producer Peter Snell, Aleelle Productions, which aimed to make movies based on MacLean novels, including Golden Gate, Bear Island, The Way to Dusty Death, and Captain Cook. This company still owned these film rights after MacLean divorced Mary in 1977, but the rights soon passed to Snell.
MacLean decided to focus on American television, writing a novella titled Air Force One is Down, which was turned down by the American television network NBC (it would be produced in 2012). He then pitched six new ideas to networks, each with a 25– to 30-page synopsis to see which was commercially viable before The Hostage Tower was approved by CBS, and aired on American television in 1980.
Later career
His later works include River of Death (1981) (filmed in 1989), Partisans (1982), Floodgate (1983), and San Andreas (1984). Often, these novels were worked on by ghost writers specializing in drama, with MacLean providing only the plots and characters. His last novel was Santorini (1986), which was published after his death. His estate left behind several outlines. One of them was filmed as Death Train (1993). His later books were not as well received as the earlier publications, and in an attempt to keep his stories in keeping with the time, he sometimes lapsed into unduly improbable plots.
Death
MacLean died of heart failure at the age of 64 in Munich on 2 February 1987; his last years were affected by alcoholism. According to one obituary, "A master of nail-chewing suspense, MacLean met an appropriately mysterious death; when he died in the Bavarian capital after a brief illness, no one, including the British Embassy, knew what he was doing there."
Personal life
He was married twice and had three sons (one adopted) by his first wife, Gisela: Lachlan, Michael, and Alistair. He married for a second time in 1972; that marriage ended in divorce in 1977.
His niece Shona MacLean (also published under S.G. Maclean) is a writer and historical novelist.
MacLean was awarded a doctor of letters by the University of Glasgow in 1983.
Critical appraisal
Writer Algis Budrys described MacLean's writing style as - "hit 'em with everything but the kitchen sink, then give 'em the sink, and when they raise their heads, drop the plumber on 'em".
Screenwriter Derek Kolstad, who wrote the John Wick film series, cited MacLean and Stephen King as among his primary influences.
List of works
Novels
Source for The New York Times Best Seller list: Figures are for the Adult Hardcover Fiction lists, 1956 through 1987: highest position reached and total number of weeks on list. A "—" indicates it did not make the list. Note that the Times list consisted of a Top 10 from 1963 through 1976, but a Top 15 or 16 before and after; thus, books during that middle period may have had longer stays relative to the others.
UNACO books by other authors
Golden Girl series by other authors
Films with screenplay contribution
Other films
See also
Hammond Innes
References
Bibliography
Lee, Robert A. Alistair MacLean: The Key is Fear. Borgo Press, 1976. .
Webster, Jack. Alistair MacLean: A Life. Chapmans Publishers, 1991. . (Alternative title: Alistair MacLean: A Biography of a Master Storyteller.)
"Maclean, Alistair". Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Liam Rodger and Joan Bakewell. London: Chambers Harrap, 2011.
External links
Harper dares with Alistair MacLean reissue, 2009.09.11
1922 births
1987 deaths
20th-century British biographers
20th-century British dramatists and playwrights
20th-century British novelists
20th-century British screenwriters
20th-century British short story writers
Alumni of the University of Glasgow
British thriller writers
People educated at Hillhead High School
People educated at Inverness Royal Academy
Royal Navy personnel of World War II
Royal Navy sailors
Scottish biographers
Scottish Gaelic language
Scottish non-fiction writers
Scottish screenwriters
Scottish short story writers
Scottish thriller writers
Writers from Glasgow
People from Shettleston