Years active 1917–1972 | Died 1976 | |
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Occupation Writerradio presenterfilm criticactor Movies The Purple Dress, The Bearcat, The Gentle Cyclone | ||
Frederick Robert Buckley (1896–1976) was an English writer. He wrote more than 200 short stories for pulp magazines between 1918 and 1953. He was born on 20 December 1896 in Colton, Staffordshire, England, died 1976. He was the son of Robert John Buckley (1847–1938) and Mary (Wakelin) Buckley. His father was music critic for the Birmingham Gazette from 1886–1926. Frederick attended King Edward's School, Birmingham and Birmingham University for journalism. While at King Edward's School, at age 14, he performed in Aristophanes' Peace in the role of Theori. Also in the cast was schoolmate J. R. R. Tolkien playing Hermes. F.R. Buckley's brother-in-law was fellow pulp fiction author Tom Curry.
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Silent film era
In 1915, Buckley emigrated to the United States on the SS St. Louis and worked as a film critic for the Motion Picture Mail, a Saturday magazine supplement of The New York Evening Mail. Starting in 1917, he worked in silent film in Brooklyn for the Vitagraph Studios where he was primarily a screenwriter and occasionally an actor. Between 1917 ands 1918 he wrote or co-wrote the scenarios for The Cambric Mask, By the World Forgot, A Gentleman's Agreement, The Purple Dress, Lost on Dress Parade, The Song of the Soul, The Other Man, The Hiding of Black Bill, A Night in New Arabia, The Last of the Troubadours and The Lovers' Knot. He appeared in principal roles in The Undercurrent and The Unknown Quantity.
Writer
Buckley left Vitagraph after selling Getting It, his first short story to The Black Cat, an American magazine specializing in original short stories of an unusual nature for $20.00.
In 1922 he won the O' Henry Prize for his short story Gold-Mounted Guns published in Red Book Magazine, March 1922. His fiction also appeared in Collier's, Liberty, McClure's and the The Saturday Evening Post, and was extensively published in many pulp magazines including Adventure, Hutchinson's Adventure-story Magazine, Argosy, The Blue Book Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Short Stories , The Story-Teller and Western Story Magazine.
Later some of his short stories would be adapted for film or radio by others. The Bearcat, a 1922 Universal Film Manufacturing Company picture,Peg Leg and the Kidnapper, originally published in Western Story Magazine was used for the 1926 Fox Film Corporation film The Gentle Cyclone and RKO Radio Pictures Stung 1931. His story Habit, honorably mentioned in the O'Henry Memorial Volume for 1923. and published in the April 30, 1923 issue of Adventure was adapted for the July 18, 1948 episode of the CBS radio program Escape.
In the 1930s he returned to England writing film criticism again, now for the Birmingham Evening Despatch.
Broadcaster
He was a writer and on air radio presenter on the BBC from 1934–1970.
Some time between 1947 and 1951 Buckley is credited with bringing actor and comedian Stanley Unwin to the attention of BBC producers Peter Cairns and David Martin who premiered Unwins first broadcast on the radio program Pat Dixon's Mirror of the Month
From 1959 to 1962 Buckley was heard as a regular panelist on the weekly BBC radio program The Guilty Party where a crime play was dramatized, then the panelists would cross-examine the characters in an effort to figure out who was guilty off the crime.
From the 1950s to the time of his death in 1976, Buckley lived in a reportedly haunted historical house in King's Lynn, Norfolk, which is known as The Exorcist's house.