Prolific novelist, playwright, and author of screenplays, screen stories, and short stories, Vera Caspary was born in Chicago in 1904. Educated in the Chicago public schools, she attributed the start of her training and career to a want ad for a stenographer in an advertising agency. Having heard somewhere that such work could be a stepping stone to writing, she answered the ad, and for the next few years promoted the sales of sausage, cheese, and rat poison. She moved on to writing for a correspondence school for ballet, and taught herself the principles of dramatic structure by writing for a mail order school of drama. In these early years, she edited Fingerprint Magazine, a monthly journal for amateur crime detectors, an experience that provided rich inspiration for her later mystery works.
Caspary moved to New York in 1925, where she met playwright Samuel Ornitz, who encouraged her to begin writing creatively. In 1929, she produced her first novel, The White Girl, which was followed in 1932 by Thicker Than Water, a semi-autobiographical work. She turned to mystery writing in 1942; the first book in this genre was Laura, immediately a bestseller. Caspary later adapted Laura for the stage and the screen. Other best-selling mysteries and psycho-thrillers followed, including Bedelia (1944), The Murder in the Stork Club (1946), Stranger than Truth (1946), and The Weeping and the Laughter (1950). Later writing included Thelma (1952), False Face (1957), The Husband (1957), Evvie (1960), A Chosen Sparrow (1964), and The Man Who Loved His Wife (1966). She also wrote an autobiography, The Secrets of Grown-Ups (1979).
In her early years of writing, Caspary collaborated on several plays. One of the earliest was Geraniums in My Window (1934), written with Samuel Ornitz. She also took her typewriter to Hollywood and began writing plays on her own. These included Bedelia (1946), Out of the Blue (1947), and Illicit (1961). She received the Screen Writers Guild Award for the best written comedy of 1949 for her screen story adaptation for A Letter to Three Wives. Her screen story for Les Girls won her the Screen Writers Guild Award for the best written American musical of 1957.
In 1946, she journeyed to England for the first filming of her novel Bedelia, produced by Isidore Goldsmith, a leading English motion picture producer. When she returned to Hollywood for the filming of Out of the Blue, Goldsmith followed her to produce it, and the two married in 1949. The couple had no children. Goldsmith died on October 8, 1964; Caspary never remarried.
Throughout her writing career, Caspary was not afraid to tackle touchy social issues. The White Girl, her first novel, is the story of an African-American girl who passes for white. The filming of Bedelia involved her in a lively battle with the Hollywood censors on the issue of suicide. As a result, she wrote two versions of the movie, one for English audiences and one for American audiences. Overall, with her independent female characters, Caspary's work gives the appearance of anticipating the feminist movement of the late 20th century.
Vera Caspary died on June 13, 1987; the cause of death was not disclosed.
