Tiffany Thayer

Tiffany Ellsworth Thayer (March 1, 1902 – August 23, 1959) was an American actor, writer, and one of the founding members of the Fortean Society.

Early life Born in Freeport, Illinois, Thayer quit school at age 15 and worked as an actor, reporter, and used-book clerk in Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. When he was 16, he toured as the teenaged hero in the Civil War drama The Coward. Thayer first contacted American author Charles Fort in 1924.

Career In 1926, Thayer moved to New York City to act. Although he continued to harbor ambitions as a movie actor, his only known filmacting credit was in an early full-color feature The Devil on Horseback (1936).

Thayer wrote the 1930 bestseller novel Thirteen Men.

Claude H. Kendall (1890-1937) published four Tiffany Thayer novels, Thirteen Men (1930), Call Her Savage (1931), Thirteen Women (1932), and An American Girl (1933). Between 1934 and 1936, Claude H. Kendall (1890-1937) went into partnership with William Willoughby Sharp (1900-1955), a former stockbroker, as the publisher, Claude Kendall and Willoughby Sharp. In 1936, Sharp left the firm, and it went bankrupt. On Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1937, Kendall was found beaten to death in his $7-a-week (about $125 in 2019 ) room on the eighth floor of the Madison Hotel, 21 East 27th Street, Manhattan. Claude Kendall and Willoughby Sharp also published Wilson Collison, and Daniel Frohman.

Many of his novels contained elements of science fiction or fantasy, including Dr. Arnoldi about a world where no-one can die.

In a profile for Twentieth Century Authors, Thayer was described as "an atheist, an anarchist – in philosophy a Pyrrhonean – and regrets the legitimacy of his birth."

The Fortean Society Magazine (also called Doubt) was published regularly until Thayer's death in Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1959, aged 57, when the society and magazine came to an end. The magazine and society are not connected to the present-day magazine Fortean Times.

Writers Paul and Ron Willis, publishers of Anubis, acquired most of the original Fortean Society material and revived the Society as the International Fortean Organization (INFO) in the early 1960s. INFO went on to incorporate in 1965, publish a widely respected magazine, The INFO Journal: Science and the Unknown, for more than 35 years and created the world's first, and most prestigious, conference dedicated to the work and spirit of Charles Fort, the annual FortFest which continues to this day.

Critical reception Thayer wrote genre romances that were disliked by contemporary literary critics.

Works

Eyewitness!, 1930 Thirteen Men, 1930 New York: Claude Kendall The Greek. New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1931 Call Her Savage (1931) New York: Claude Kendall, Three-sheet, 1932 An American Girl (1933) New York: Claude Kendall. One Woman, 1933 Kings and Numbers, 1934 Doctor Arnoldi, 1934 The Cluck Abroad, 1935 The Old Goat, 1937 Three Musketeers, 1939 One-man show, 1942 Three Musketeers and a Lady, 1950 Mona Lisa: The Prince of Taranto, Volume One. New York: Dial Press, 1956 Mona Lisa: The Prince of Taranto, Volume Two Mona Lisa: The Prince of Taranto, Volume Three

As editor

Thayer, Tiffany, ed. Fort, Charles (1941). The Books of Charles Fort. Henry Holt and Company. Thayer, Tiffany, ed. (1946). 33 Sardonics I Can't Forget. New York: Philosophical Library. Thayer, Tiffany, ed. Adults' companion (1948). New York: Lady Ann Press.

Adaptations Thayer's Call Her Savage (1931), to Katherine McMahon (1914–1999) until his death.