Richard Mason (novelist 1919–1997)
Richard Mason (16 May 1919 – 13 October 1997) was a British novelist. His novels usually concerned Britons' experiences in exotic foreign locations, especially in Asia.
Personal life and career
Born near Manchester, he was educated in Dorset, then worked first on a film magazine and later for the British Council. The Second World War gave him a chance to learn Japanese, and he became an interrogator of prisoners of war. In 1948 he married Felicity Anne Cumming (1917–1993), who had previously been married to Henry Landall Lyon Young.[1] Richard and Felicity Mason separated in 1958 and were later divorced.[2]
Mason's first novel was The Wind Cannot Read (1946), finished during the Burma Campaign. It was based partly on his wartime experiences learning Japanese. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1958 film version, starring Dirk Bogarde. His novel The Shadow and the Peak, set in Jamaica, was filmed in 1958 as Passionate Summer (alternately titled "Storm over Jamaica"). He also produced films and wrote several scripts. With W.P. Lipscomb, he wrote the screenplay for the 1956 film version of Nevil Shute's novel "A Town Like Alice." Mason's 1962 espionage novel The Fever Tree was set in India and Nepal.
Mason's observations while living in Hong Kong inspired him to write his best-known book, The World of Suzie Wong (1957), a tale of an artist's surprisingly tender romance with a Hong Kong prostitute. It became a bestseller and added a somewhat controversial expression, "Suzie Wong" (a seductive East Asian woman), to the English language. It was adapted into a 1958 Broadway play starring William Shatner and France Nuyen, and the 1960 film The World of Suzie Wong, starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan. It was Kwan's first film role.
Mason, a cigarette smoker, died of throat cancer in Rome, Italy, where he had lived for nearly 40 years.
Bibliography
Fiction
- The Wind Cannot Read, 1946; screenplay 1958
- The Shadow and the Peak, 1950
- The World of Suzie Wong, 1957
- The Fever Tree, 1962
References
- ↑ "A lecture to the Royston Pike group: Part 2", The Elmbridge Hundred.
- ↑ Richard Davenport-Hines, "Cumming, (Felicity) Anne (1917–1993)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, October 2009, accessed 21 January 2015.
External links
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