Being considered the underling and the fourth man on the pecking order, after Hammett, Gardner and Chandler, wouldn't deter William Irish, sometimes known as Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968) from his illustrious career as a writer of crime fiction. Though Woolrich emerged on the literary scene with a sextet of Jazz-age novels well on par with that of the works of his greatest influence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, it was indeed his acumen for the psychological thriller that made him one of the most coveted authors to convert to film noir.
1944's Phantom Lady which was famously the first noir directed by Richard Siodmak leaped straight off the pages of Woolrich's eponymous 1942 novel and on to that screen of silver, but perhaps his most recognized work would come with Hitchcock's anthemic Rear Window (1954). Woolrich was prolific with his pen and though he accumulated one of the more impressive canons to date, Woolrich is still woefully underappreciated. On a personal level, Woolrich was a social pariah and lived a reclusive lifestyle and had very few people that he could call friend, sans his Remington Portable typewriter that he dedicated some of his works to. In an ironic exit, Woolrich left all his worldly possessions (a sum under a million US dollars) to the Columbia University writers program,