Arthur Hailey: Researcher of Human Life
He was known as a king of bestsellers whose books were sold in millions of copies across the world. He wasn’t a favorite of critics but readers adored him. For them, he was a good storyteller and truly researcher of human life who was able not only invent an interesting plot but masterly put it on a backdrop of almost any industry.
First steps in writing
Arthur Frederick Hailey was born in Luton, Bedfordshire on 5 April 1920. His father, George, was a factory worker and mother, Elsie, also was from the working class. She wanted her only child to be a clerk in an office. Such an occupation, in her eyes, was higher than working in a factory.
But young Arthur had another dream — to be a newspaper reporter. His first experience in journalism was a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, in which he proposed to open the public swimming pool on Sundays. When this letter was published he was very glad and had been writing more and more letters to the editor. Also, Arthur wrote little plays for his Sunday school and was an avid reader.
His father didn’t support him in his dreams about writing, thinking that it is „no good aiming too high”. But Arthur tried hard. His first office was the windowless cupboard under the stairs, lit by candle and equipped by home-made intercom system from two old telephones, bought in local junk stall. It is interesting enough that the person who encouraged him to write was his teacher of math in his final year at school. Years later Hailey remembered about him thankfully:
Mister Swallow discovered two things about me early in our relationship. One, I was hopeless at math. Two, I enjoyed writing stories. I suppose he recognized I had some kind of flair in the second direction, so, while others in the class were doing algebra and long division, he encouraged me to write stories instead, giving me a pass mark in math, though I didn’t deserve it. He also guided my reading in the hours out of school and, looking back, that year with Mr. Swallow was the most important educational experience in my life.
That year was final in Hailey’s school education because his parents had no money to pay for his studying in high school. He tried to win a scholarship, but failed. After that, Elsie persuaded her son to learn shorthand and typewriting. These skills were useful for desk job but not enough to be a reporter. In the local newspaper, he was told that journalists must be high-school educated.
World War II
World War II changed his life. Arthur, who was 19 years old, wanted to be a pilot. He had enlisted in the Royal Air Force. Again, his education became an obstacle for a dreamed job. This time his shorthand and typewriting came in useful. Arthur started working as a clerk to the station administration officer. His boss, elderly wing commander, liked flying very much and hated the desk job. So Arthur became indispensable for him.
But the young man didn’t give up his dream to be a pilot. During the Battle of Britain Royal Air Force suffered heavy losses and new airmen were desperately needed. This time Hailey’s apply was accepted and he was sent to the US for pilot training. It turned out that he had airsickness. It caused his failure on first flight check. He had to be automatically disqualified from further training, but his flight instructor gave him a second chance. Later Arthur told his second wife Sheila about it: „He said anyone who had spilled as much of his guts as I had, and then had some left over, should be allowed to take the course again”.
Hailey used his second chance successfully. In 1943, he became a sergeant-pilot and later was commissioned. Arthur was happy because since that moment nobody had asked him about his education. Also, he was lucky. After flying reconnaissance patrols in the Mediterranian, he was assigned to fly military authorities. That job gave him the time to write and he used this opportunity as much as possible. When Arthur was stationed in Perth, Scotland, he became bored. They were waiting for good weather and had a lot of free time. Everything in sight was read and Arthur decided to write his own story. He called it Rip Cord and managed to publish in Curier, a British magazine.
In search of oneself: between writer and manager
After the end of WWII, Hailey worked in the Air Ministry in London. He was writing pamphlets for aircrew training and editing a R.A.F. magazine, Air Clues. The young pilot had not much choice. He had no trade or profession except flying. His savings from wartime pay were enough to buy a small house in Surrey. By this time Arthur was married to Joan Fishwick, whom he met in 1944 when he was on leave in Chicago. She was an English girl, working at the British Consulate, where Arthur was invited to a party for visiting servicemen.
Life in postwar England was not easy. There were many restrictions, including food rationing. This bureaucracy irritated Arthur. He wanted to buy the lumber to make a wooden post for the clothesline. But it was a hard task. Arthur was told he needed to apply for the permit at the local municipal offices and then wait for a decision. This was the last straw. „Is this what the war was all about?” Hailey outraged. He decided to emigrate to Canada.
Joan was glad to return to North America. She had mother, sister and two brothers in Chicago and missed them greatly. But Hailey’s parents were shocked. They really did not understand, why their son wanted to leave a desk job with good pay for emigration. But he was implacable. Hailey sold his house, bought air tickets and soon was in Canada with his wife and one-year child.
Arthur had already known this country. He was there during the war and this knowledge gave him an advantage over other newcomers. Hailey understood that Englishmen were not overly popular in Canada and tried to assimilate as quickly as possible. He bought a new North American suit and a wide-brimmed hat, and even began introducing himself as „Art Hailey”.
Hailey wanted to earn money by writing, but it was not so easy. All employers said that they need someone with more experience. So he had to forget about his dream temporarily and joined small real estate business. This job gave him enough money to get by, but Arthur didn’t give up. From time to time he dropped in to Maclean-Hunter, a large magazine publishing company, which gave him mildly encouragement and reminded that he is still interested to work with them. Three months later Arthur’s dream came true. His persistence won and he was hired as an assistant editor to the trade magazine Bus & Truck Transport.
Hailey put all of his energy into his job and in the fall of 1949 was promoted to editor. But his marriage was collapsing. Joan was tired. They had already had two more sons, John and Mark, and she had to spend all the time with them when he was at work. This lonely life so far out of town with no transportation exhausted her. She broke up with him and went back to her mother in Chicago. It happened just before Christmas of 1949, so Arthur had to spend Christmas alone, with his washing and without wife and children.
Fortunately, his job helped him not to stay alone. Sheila Dunlop, his future wife, also left England because there was no financial freedom. She worked in the stenographic pool of Maclean-Hunter and transcribed the records from Dictaphone wax cylinders (remote ancestors of today’s recorders). It was a hard job. Sheila recalled that half the time she „couldn’t make any sense out of the broad, unfamiliar Canadian accents on the cylinders”. Then she picked up a record made by Arthur. She was amazed. For the first time in this job, she heard such a clear voice which she could understand perfectly. So when Sheila typed the letters, she send a handwritten note with them: „Thought I would let you know how much I enjoyed hearing the first homeland voice since I started this job”. In respond, Hailey asked her boss if she could handle all his correspondence. Later, in January 1950, when Sheila was promoted to a junior editorial job, he invited her to have lunch and their romance started.
Life-changing flight
They both enjoyed writing. But it wasn’t a profitable business. In 1953, Arthur started to work as a sales promotion manager in Trailmobile, a Canadian subsidiary of an American commercial trailer manufacturer. This job gave him good money, but no satisfaction. Hailey had a family to support, so he was resigned to his status and tried to find out if he has some chance for a higher rung on the ladder. Arthur went to a management consulting firm and passed a battery of psychological tests. The results encouraged him but in quite another way. The report stated that he „would do well as a writer and may be wasted in industry”. Arthur decided to follow this advice. But how to do it?
In late 1955, Hailey returned to Toronto from a business trip. Sitting in the airplane, four-engine Trans Canada Airlines North Star, he started to imagine: What would happen if both pilots got sick and couldn’t fly the airplane? The wartime pilot in him woke up and his mind raced on. How could it happen that pilots have been put of action? Maybe, they poisoned from fish in an evening meal. Yes, it’s a good idea. Is there any doctor on board? Yes. And he has to treat some passengers who ate fish too. Who can save the plane? Arthur Hailey, because he ate meat and stewardess who would help him at the controls.
By the end of the flight, Arthur had already had a scenario which he decided to use for television play. For him, this experience was absolutely new. He had never written for television so he wrote his work as a stage play. He advised with a test pilot about technical details and then typed out the text and sent it to Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC). They contacted Hailey a month later and said that the company liked the play and wanted to buy it. Arthur and Sheila were happy.
Flight into Danger, as Hailey called his play became one of the most expensive hour dramas for CBC at that time. The producer, David Greene borrowed a cockpit from real plane North Star, which was eight feet high, nine feet wide and eleven feet long. This thing weighed 1,500 pounds and caused a traffic jam when Greene transported it to Toronto.
Sheila urged Arthur to leave his job in sales promotion. But he was not so convinced as she that this success will be lasting. So Arthur started his advertising agency and his employer, Trailmobile, became his major client. Now he had time to write and a steady income.
“Why didn’t I do this myself?”
Hailey wrote another plays and TV channels had also bought them. Finally, Sheila convinced him to leave advertising and focus on writing. In all, he wrote 12 plays which were shown on TV. But Flight into Danger had another influence on his fate. In 1957, Hailey received a letter from Ernest Hecht, a young businessman who had just started publishing house in London. Hecht was excited by Flight into Danger and thought it would be a fascinating novel. But Arthur was too busy with television writing and not sure that he can write a novel, so he declined. Hecht did not give up. He proposed to find a co-author and split the royalties. Hailey had nothing to lose and agreed. This was his first step on the road to novel-writing. Actually, he saw this book only in galley proofs: two writers, who worked under pseudonym „John Castle”, produced a short novel, using most of the dialogues of Flight into Danger and Hailey had just approved it. “When I read it,” Hailey said later, “my reaction was, ‘Why didn’t I do this myself?’ “
His truly success in novel-writing came a little bit later, in 1959. Ken McCormick, editor-in-chief of Double Day, watched Arthur’s television drama No Deadly Medicine, which won two Emmy nominations and proposed him to write a novel version. Arthur agreed. The weekly series was taking over the television and Hailey wasn’t sure he can write well in this genre. So he was glad to switch to writing books.
Hailey did additional research for his novel. He talked and consulted with professionals from healthcare: radiologists, pathologists, anesthetists, hospital doctors, etc. Artur even watched operations — amputation and open-heart surgery. When all this research was done, he set to write the novel and nine months later it was ready.
For a first novel, Final Diagnosis, as it was called, became remarkably popular. It had good reviews and steady sales and later was translated into more than 20 languages. This book attracted the attention of the Literary Guild of America which chose it as a selection. Moviemakers were also interested in it, and the author sold film rights to United Artists.
Hailey’s next book, In High Places, had a huge success in Canada. It was published in 1962, the year, when the Cuban crisis brought the world to the edge of nuclear war. So it was no surprise that its topic — Canada joining US because of imminent war with the Soviet Union — attracted and intrigued readers. This book won the Doubleday Canada 10,000$ prize novel award and was also selected by Literary Guild. Since that time Hailey’s fame had never faded.
Writing as a process
He produced a new novel about every three years. Arthur’s books revealed various areas of human life: hotel business, aviation, power plants, automotive industry, banks, journalism. Despite the different background, his novels had something in common. It was a wonderfully gripping plot, which held readers’ attention until the last page.
Success allowed Hayley to think about moving from Canada to place with warmer climate. At first, they moved to Napa Walley in California, but later the writer followed the advice of his tax layer and since 1969, the couple lived on the Bahamas because of low taxes.
His writing process was highly organized. “Each novel takes me, usually, three years: a year of continuous research, six months of detailed planning, then a year and a half of steady writing, with many revisions,” Hailey said. He set a task before himself — to write 600 words per day and did not leave his desk until finishing. He compared himself with kiwi, New Zealand’s national bird and had its carving on his desk. “The kiwi eats 600 worms a day, and I write 600 words a day.”
Sheila Hailey explained her husband’s success by three reasons: good storytelling, painstaking research and “an almost uncanny sense of timing in what will be topical at publication time”. She called him newsaholic. When Haileys lived on the Bahamas, he read different local, American, British and Canadian newspapers, listened to radio newscasts from Miami and watched the news on TV. And his novels had really appeared in time. Hotel, where the main topic was the struggle for civil rights, was published in 1965 when this issue was very prominent in the news. Wheels came into the market in 1972 and 1973 when the oil shortage became acute and people began to pay attention to the small cars which the novel’s emphasis was on.
His researching was very meticulous. At first, Hailey read everything about subject. Then he set to gather information from experts. Sometimes he was too much involved in this process. Sheila recalled how he gathered material for the novel Wheels.
This was in 1968, when Arthur was away from home eight-and-half months of the year. He would be in Detroit for three weeks, then come home for about ten days. Each time he’d arrived tense and impatient, snapping at the children, brusque with his secretary, short-tempered with me. I finally blew my top. “I will not put up with this. My God, you’re behaving like an auto executive”.
“You’re right!” he exclaimed. “And I’m beginning to think like one. It’s time to start writing”.
His approach to writing did not change with years. Hailey was 67, when, in order to gather the material for his book Evening News, which was published in 1990, he went to Peruvian jungle and spent time with rebel guerillas there.
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After Evening News, Arthur Hailey announced his retirement. He said he wanted to spend more time with his family. But later the family problems caused him to return to work. Hailey’s daughter Diane became pregnant from his best friend, Bruce Verchere, who had an adulterous affair with her. The couple ran away, but later Bruce returned to his wife and committed suicide. Hailey was shocked and tried to bury himself in work. The result was his last novel Detective about a serial killer. Despite his age and emotional conditions, Hailey managed to do thorough research. The only thing he couldn’t see for the novel was real-life execution in the electric chair. There was a three-year waiting list and writer, of course, did not want to wait so long.
Arthur Hailey died at age 84 in his sleep on November 24, 2004, at his home in Lyford Cay. But his books are still popular and attractive for readers throughout the world. Maybe, it’s because all our life is a researching process and we like everyone who can help us with it and combine this researching with an interesting plot. That was the thing that Arthur Hailey was very good at.
References
Hailey, Sheila. I Married A Best Seller, My Life With Arthur Hailey. 1978.
