EQMM 1953-05 by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

Author:Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Nothing so hard as a diamond

by Henry Myers

We welcome the first appearance in EQMM of Henry Myers — with whose work you are much more familiar than you may thinks… Mr. Myers was born in Chicago, but he has been a New Yorker since the age of one. He attended Public School Number 6, Townsend Harris High School, and then Columbia University, where he studied music. He went to Berlin to continue his musical career, but out of the blue he decided to become a writer. His breaks from music was gradual — he began by composing words and music for opera. Then, after a hiatus as press agent for Lee and J. J. Shubert, Mr. Myers wrote a play. It became Lorenz Harts first theatrical venture — “The First Fifty Years.”

The rest might be said to be history. Author of nearly 50 plays and musicals (some with Oscar Hammer stein, Otto Harbach, and others), Mr. Myers has also written for television (notably for Studio One) and has an impressive record in Hollywood — his motion picture scripts include that fine Western, “Destry Rides Again.” And that isn’t all: Mr. Myers has conquered the novel too; his book, the utmost island, was a Book; of the-Month Club selection for October 1951.

And yet, despite his success in almost all phases of writing, there has been one that, in his own opinion, has baffled him. He never seemed to be able to conquer the short story — at least, he never wrote one that satisfied him. So what did Mr. Myers do? Let it beat him? No, indeed. He joined a class in short-story writing at New York University, and at one of the sessions, Mr. Hollis Alpert, the teacher, read W. Somerset Maugham’s “Mr. Know-All ” which deals, you will remember, with the appraisal of a string of pearls. This reading led to a class assignment in which the students had to write a short story about a precious stone. “Nothing So Hard As a Diamond” is Henry Myers’s homework and it won a Third Prize in EQMM’s Eighth Annual Contest.

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