[[File:Michael Mallory at LATFOB 2012.jpg|thumb|Michael Mallory in 2012]]
Michael Mallory (born 1955) is a writer on the subjects of
animation and post-war
popular culture, and the author of the books
X-Men: The Characters and Their Universe,
Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror The Science Fiction Universe and Beyond, and
Essential Horror Movies. As an animation and film historian he has written over 600 articles, frequently for
Variety, the
Los Angeles Times and
Animation Magazine, and has been featured in documentaries and DVD extras about animation. He co-authored the memoirs of animation legend
Iwao Takamoto, which were published in 2009 as
Iwao Takamoto: My Life with a Thousand Characters. He has also written the script for the annual
Annie Awards ceremony, the Oscars of the animation industry, since the mid-1990s.
Life
Mallory was born in Port Huron, Michigan, and was raised in Pontiac, Michigan. As a teenager he appeared in summer stock plays with the Kenley Players and went on to receive a degree in Speech, with a theatre/broadcasting emphasis, from Drury College (now
Drury University) in Springfield, Missouri. After a stint as a radio newscaster in Springfield he relocated to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. He made numerous appearances on the local stage and played bit roles in films such as
Frances,
Staying Alive and
Eleanor: First Lady of the World (all 1982) and on television in
Days of Our Lives,
Santa Barbara and
General Hospital, as well as a handful of commercials and industrial films. More recently he has appeared on
Mad Men,
Vegas, and
Mob City, in which he played Abe "Greenie" Greenberg, whose murder propels the plot of the series,
Angie Tribeca, and
NCIS. In the late 1980s Mallory made writing his primary pursuit and for a while he served as a writer for
Disneyland and other theme park venues. He scripted the large-format, 3-D attraction film
Haunts of the Olde Country, which premiered at
Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1993 and played there for several years. His 2009 book
Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror, a history of Universal horror film series, earned an honorable mention from the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards, and
Marvel: The Expanding Universe Wall Chart took the Silver 2009 Book of the Year Award from ForeWord Reviews. He lives with his wife in Glendale, California.
Mystery writing
Mallory also writes murder mysteries, often featuring "Amelia Watson",
the second (and previously unheralded) wife of Dr. Watson of
Sherlock Holmes fame. Five volumes of Amelia Watson stories have appeared to date: the 2000 collection
The Adventures of the Second Mrs. Watson, the 2004 novel
Murder in the Bath, a second collection,
The Exploits of the Second Mrs. Watson, published in 2008, a novel
The Stratford Conspiracy, published in 2012, and a third collection,
The Other Mrs. Watson, published in 2016 in England. A second series featuring Hollywood-based detective Dave Beauchamp began in 2013 with the novel
Kill the Mother!. The most recent Dave Beauchamp adventure is
Dig That Crazy Sphinx!, published in 2022. Mallory has written more than 190 short stories for adults and children, including a series of mysteries starring an eleven-year-old sleuth named "Scotty," which appeared periodically in the Los Angeles Times. He was the creator and co-editor (with
Lisa Seidman and
Rochelle Krich) of the mystery anthology
Murder on Sunset Boulevard, which was published through the auspices of the Los Angeles chapter of the national organization, Sisters in Crime, and also co-edited (with Harley Jane Kozak and
Nathan Walpow) its follow-up,
LAndmarked for Murder. He was among the first recipients of a Derringer Award, winning in 1998 for Best Flash (short-short) Mystery Story, and his story "What the Cat Dragged In" was included in
The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best American Mystery Stories, 2023, edited by
Amor Towles and
Otto Penzler. He has been nominated for a
Pushcart Prize three times, for both fiction and nonfiction.
Horror writing
Mallory has written horror stories for both young readers and adults. His novella
Night Shocker was published in 1997 by Baronet Books as part of their "FrightTime" series, a string of books along the lines of the then-popular
Goosebumps series. He contributed more short horror tales for kids for the "Chiller" page of the website MysteryNet.com. In 2012, he came out with his first horror novel for adults,
The Mural, which is published by
Borgo Press. A second horror thriller,
The Book of Diagom was published under the pseudonym Gordon Turcott, but Mallory retained his original byline for
The Ambulance.
Journalism
Mallory has written more than 650 magazine, newspaper, and online articles about film, animation, and pop culture, for publications such as
The Los Angeles Times,
Variety,
The Hollywood Reporter,
Animation Magazine,
Mystery Scene, and scores of others.
Selected bibliography
Novels
-
Freeze a Jolly Good Fellow!
-
The Ambulance
-
Dig That Crazy Sphinx!
-
Ebenezer Scrooge and the Battle for Christmas
-
The Book of Diagom (as Gordon Turcott)
-
Bada-Bing, Bada-Tomb!
-
Death Walks Skid Row
-
Dead and In Person!
-
Eats to Die For!
-
Kill the Mother!
-
The Mural
-
The Stratford Conspiracy
-
Murder in the Bath
Collections
-
The Celebrated Clients of Sherlock Holems
-
The Other Mrs. Watson
-
The Exploits of the Second Mrs. Watson
-
The Adventures of the Second Mrs. Watson
Nonfiction
-
Hanna-Barbera Cartoons
-
Marvel: The Characters and Their Universe
-
X-Men: The Characters and Their Universe
-
Marvel: The Expanding Universe Wall Chart
-
Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror
-
Iwao Takamoto: My Life with a Thousand Characters (co-writer)
-
The Science Fiction Universe and Beyond
-
Essential Horror Movies
-
The Art of Krampus
-
The Vampire Diaries: Unlocking the Secrets of Mystic Falls
-
Marvel's Black Widow
As editor
-
LAndmarked for Murder (anthology)
-
Murder on Sunset Boulevard (anthology)
Short stories
-
"The Sacred White Elephant of Mandalay" (2010, published in Sherlock Holmes: The American Years)
See also