Norman Bogner is a New York Times Bestselling- author whose range of work has included several novels such as Seventh Avenue, The Deadliest Art, To Die in Provence and The Madonna Complex, as well as stage plays, and movie and television scripts. His writing career spans nearly 50 years, with his first novel, In Spells No Longer Bound, published in 1961 and his most recent novel, 99 Sycamore Place, published in 2009. As of 2001, His books, which explore drama and intrigue as they play out between family members and lovers, have sold over 25 million copies worldwide.

Early Years

Norman Bogner was born November 13, 1935, in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 to Manny Bogner and Rose Schwartz. Bogner grew up in Brooklyn, New York, his parents divorcing in 1942. His mother, Rose, owned a store that sold ladies wear, while his father, Manny, owned a small chain of such shops.

As noted on his website, Bogner says he began reading at the age of three because of his love of sports. He wanted to be able to keep track of the scores, especially baseball, and so needed to be able to read to do that. He and his mother devised a game whereby he would see how many words he would come up using the names of his favorite teams: the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Yankees

New York Yankees

The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...

, and the New York Giants

New York Giants

The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in East Rutherford, New Jersey, representing the New York City metropolitan area. The Giants are currently members of the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League...

 as well as other major league teams. Each day, when she came home from her shop, she checked how many words he had come up with that day and rewarded Bogner with up to a nickel, depending on how many words he had found. He then quickly moved on to reading the dictionary, the encyclopedia, and the bonus set of classics that came with the encyclopedias. He eventually joined the local library. He knew he wanted to be a writer as early as seven years old.

Because his parents were divorced and his mother ran a store and was gone most of the day, Norman Bogner was left mostly to himself. Besides reading and talking sports with his friends and family, he spent much of his time after school traveling around Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

, going to museums, exploring the city, and only checking in with his mother occasionally.

Being a divorcée was rare at the time, so Bogner’s mother’s virtue was called into question on several occasions and Bogner often felt the need to defend her honor, as well as himself from neighborhood and school yard bullies. Because of this and the Friday night fights which his father took him to see at Madison Square Garden

Madison Square Garden

Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...

, Bogner learned how to box. This experience also influenced some of his story lines, including, specifically, his book Arena (1979).

Rose eventually remarried when Norman Bogner was 12 years old, this time to Moe Friedman, a charming bookmaker and addicted gambler who held a running crap game in their home. When Moe was with them (and not in jail), Bogner met many different kinds of people from businessmen to gangsters to con artists and considered this aspect of his life an “invaluable part of [his] ongoing training as a writer.”

As a teenager, Norman Bogner worked for a number of years at the catering business owned by the Friedman family. While working there he was the “chef’s dogsbody” in charge of all the grunt work including keeping an open can of beer ready for the chef at all times. Bogner was also in charge of delivering lunch to his stepfather on those occasions when Friedman was in jail and hadn’t been bailed out yet. According to Bogner, one day while taking Friedman’s pastrami sandwiches to him at the jail, Bogner bumped into a detective who was also his coach on the Police Athletic League (PAL). The policeman invited Bogner to sit in on a murder trial the policeman needed to attend. The surface reason for the murder was supposedly the ownership of a set of flatware, while the true reason ended up being jealousy over an affair. It was at this trial that Bogner picked up on how human drama and intrigue can complicate what appears to be straightforward and simple on the surface.

Career

In 1953, Bogner began his college career attending University of Alabama

University of Alabama

The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....

 through 1954, and then transferring to Syracuse University

Syracuse University

Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...

 where he graduated with a B.A. in English and Humanities (cum laude) in 1957. Bogner went on to do graduate work in English at New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 and the New School for Social Research in 1958-59.

Turning down several teaching fellowships, Bogner chose to go to Europe to explore in person what he had learned in school. According to Bogner, after several trips with his father across the United States, he knew traveling in Europe was what he needed to learn more about the real people he was going to write about. While his mother encouraged him in this decision, his father basically turned his back on Bogner and refused to offer any financial or emotional support, if Bogner chose to be a writer and traveled in Europe, rather than staying in the United States to further his career as a lawyer, doctor, or professor. To earn the money he needed to follow through on his plan, this meant Bogner went back to doing the kitchen work he’d done at resorts and restaurants in the Catskill Mountains and at Cape Cod during the summers while in school. At this point, he worked “on the line” as a chef and saucier.

England/Europe

Starting his tour in Barcelona, Norman Bogner began his European education learning to speak a language that he knew how to read, yet had never used in any real setting. After finding friends to look out for him, a place to live, and settling in, he needed to find work to support himself. He ended up spending his mornings writing and his afternoons teaching English to prostitutes in a brothel where he had been befriended by some madams.

By 1961, Norman Bogner’s first novel, In Spells No Longer Bound, was published by Jonathan Cape, LTD

Jonathan Cape

Jonathan Cape was a London-based publisher founded in 1919 as "Page & Co" by Herbert Jonathan Cape , formerly a manager at Duckworth who had worked his way up from a position of bookshop errand boy. Cape brought with him the rights to cheap editions of the popular author Elinor Glyn and sales of...

, a British publishing company. As noted by Gale’s Literature Resource Library: “According to Susan R. Cox in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, he completed the novel in Spain and then got a job in a department store in England, ‘before leaving his precious manuscript in the front office of the only London publishing house he'd heard of.’”

When his book was published, he was asked to stay on at Jonathan Cape as an editor from 1960 to 1961, and editorial manager from 1962 to 1964. Among the authors whose works he edited were: John Fowles

John Fowles

John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...

, Edna O'Brien

Edna O'Brien

Edna O'Brien is an Irish novelist and short story writer whose works often revolve around the inner feelings of women, and their problems in relating to men and to society as a whole.-Life and career:...

, Ronald Harwood

Ronald Harwood

Sir Ronald Harwood CBE is an author, playwright and screenwriter. He is most noted for his plays for the British stage as well as the screenplays for The Dresser and The Pianist, for which he won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay...

, Arnold Wesker

Arnold Wesker

Sir Arnold Wesker is a prolific British dramatist known for his contributions to kitchen sink drama. He is the author of 42 plays, 4 volumes of short stories, 2 volumes of essays, a book on journalism, a children's book, extensive journalism, poetry and other assorted writings...

, C. Day Lewis, and A.W. Lawrence. In addition, he also edited Derek Walcott's

Derek Walcott

Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...

 first volume of poetry, two novels by Claude Simon

Claude Simon

Claude Simon was a French novelist and the 1985 Nobel Laureate in Literature. He was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, and died in Paris, France....

, and Alan Paton's

Alan Paton

Alan Stewart Paton was a South African author and anti-apartheid activist.-Family:Paton was born in Pietermaritzburg, Natal Province , the son of a minor civil servant. After attending Maritzburg College, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Natal in his hometown, followed...

 book of short stories, Debbie Go Home.

From 1964 to 1966, Bogner was story editor for “Armchair Theatre

Armchair Theatre

Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series, which ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television after 1968....

” at ABC Television Ltd.

Associated British Corporation

Associated British Corporation was one of a number of commercial television companies established in the United Kingdom during the 1950s by cinema chain companies in an attempt to safeguard their business by becoming involved with television which was taking away their cinema audiences.In this...

 (later named Thames-TV

Thames Television

Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....

) in Teddington, England. While there, Bogner was responsible for over 100 hours of network television. He also discovered and commissioned a number of then-unknown writers, including Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard

Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...

, Alan Ayckbourn

Alan Ayckbourn

Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...

, Charles Wood

Charles Wood (playwright)

Charles Wood is a playwright and scriptwriter for radio, television, and film. He lives in England....

, and Dennis Potter

Dennis Potter

Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...

. It was also at this time that he wrote The Waiters, a stage play, directed and produced by Giles Havergal

Giles Havergal

Giles Pollock Havergal CBE is a Scottish theatre director, actor, and playwright. He was artistic director of Glasgow's Citizens Theatre from 1969 until he stepped down in 2003, one of the triumvirate of directors at the theatre, alongside Philip Prowse and Robert David MacDonald.-Early...

, and The Match, a television play directed by Don Leaver for ABC-TV. In 1967, he wrote the screenplay for Privilege.

Bogner’s breakthrough novel, the first to hit the bestsellers lists was Divorce, in 1966. A publisher in the United States picked it up, renamed it Seventh Avenue and published it in 1967 where it soon made the New York Times Bestseller’s list and was eventually made into a television miniseries in 1977. With the success of Seventh Avenue, Norman Bogner was able to concentrate on writing full time.

Other works Bogner published while living in England include: Spanish Fever, Longmans, Green

Longman

Longman was a publishing company founded in London, England in 1724. It is now an imprint of Pearson Education.-Beginnings:The Longman company was founded by Thomas Longman , the son of Ezekiel Longman , a gentleman of Bristol. Thomas was apprenticed in 1716 to John Osborn, a London bookseller, and...

 (London), 1963, reprinted, New English Library

New English Library

The New English Library was a United Kingdom book publishing company, which became an imprint of Hodder Headline.- History :New English Library was created in 1961 by the Times Mirror Company of Los Angeles, with the takeover of two small British paperback companies, Ace Books Ltd and Four Square...

 (London), 1978; The Madonna Complex, Coward, 1968, revised edition, Forge (New York), 2000; Making Love, W.H. Allen (London), 1971; and The Hunting Animal, Morrow (New York City), 1974.

United States

By 1975, Norman Bogner had returned to the United States, making his home in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. He continued writing, publishing Snowman (Dell

Dell Publishing

Dell Publishing, an American publisher of books, magazines and comic books, was founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte, Jr.During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, Dell was one of the largest publishers of magazines, including pulp magazines. Their line of humor magazines included 1000 Jokes, launched in...

, New York, 1978) and Arena (Delacorte, New York, 1979). In 1981, he published California Dreamers saying, “I’d been wanting to write a book about Southern California … It’s taken me six years to get a fix on the area, to understand the way things work here.”

For the next 15 years Bogner worked as a script doctor in the film and television industry, not coming out with another novel until 1998 when he published To Die in Provence (Forge, New York, 1998). This was soon followed by Honor Thy Wife (Forge, New York 1999), and then The Deadliest Art in 2001, a sequel to To Die in Provence.

Bogner’s most current novel is 99 Sycamore Place (Brick Tower, New York, 2009).

Family

On November 15, 1959, Norman Bogner married Felice Gordon (fashion designer, writer, publicist). They had three children: Jonathan Scott, Nicholas Sean and Alexander Evan. Norman and Felice Bogner were divorced April 1, 1975. On June 6, 1975, Norman Bogner married Lorraine Latham. They were married for 14 years before divorcing in 1989. In 1991, he married Bettye J. McCartt (talent and literary agent).

Books

Series with Michel Danton

To Die in Provence (1998)

The Deadliest Art (2001)

Stand alone novels

In Spells No Longer Bound (1961)

Spanish Fever (1963)

Divorce (1966)

Seventh Avenue (1967)

The Madonna Complex (1968)

Making Love (1971)

The Hunting Animal (1974)

Snowman (1978)

Arena (1979)

California Dreamers (1981)

Honour Thy Wife (1999)

99 Sycamore Place (2009)

Various book descriptions

The Madonna Complex (1968) is the story of an obsessed billionaire and the woman he wishes to possess. Teddy Franklin who is accustomed to getting his way in business, meets United Nations translator Barbara Hickman and finds out that he can’t have everything he desires. The climax occurs in the Canadian wilderness where Teddy must rely on Barbara to save him from the police.

California Dreamers (1981) follows the intertwining love lives of three ambitious women who live in Los Angeles. One is a buyer at a department store, one the daughter of a real estate developer, and the third is an aspiring actress.

To Die in Provence (1998), is a thriller about a psychotic serial killer who is terrorizing the French countryside. French police officer, Michel Danton. begins to suspect an American ex-porn star and his wealthy girlfriend.

Honor Thy Wife (1999) is the story of a lawyer, Terry Brett, and how he deals with the return of a lost love, Allison Desmond, who brings along a son Brett never knew he had. Her return brings up conflict between this past family and his current one, as he tries to remain true to both families.

The Deadliest Art (2001) follows Michel Danton once again as he follows he tries to track down someone who is tattooing young teenage girls, willing or not.

99 Sycamore Place (2009) is the story of Rebecca Benjamin as she attempts to track down a neo-Nazi group who murdered her sister right before her sister’s wedding. Rebecca gives up her career as a concert pianist, striking a bargain with Douglas Horne, a former lion hunter, to work together to solve the crime.

Scripts

Privilege

Privilege (film)

Privilege is a British film directed by Peter Watkins. It was released in 1967 being produced by John Heyman. Story: Johnny Speight. Script: Norman Bogner...

(1967)

"Armchair Theatre

Armchair Theatre

Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series, which ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television after 1968....

" (1 episode- The Match, 1966)

"Emerald Soup

Emerald Soup

Emerald Soup is a British children's science fiction television series. Produced by ITV, the series ran for seven episodes from November 9, 1963 to December 21, 1963 on the Associated British Corporation network...

" (1963) TV series (story editor)

A Cold Peace (1965) TV episode (script editor)

The Paraffin Season (1965) TV episode (script editor)

I Took My Little World Away (1965) TV episode (script editor)

The Keys of the Cafe (1965) TV episode (story editor)

"Armchair Mystery Theatre" (script editor) (2 episodes, 1965)

The Lodger (1965) TV episode (script editor)

Man and Mirror (1965) TV episode (script editor)

External links

“Norman Bogner Papers.” (1970). Syracuse University: http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/b/bogner_n.htm

Norman Bogner:One Writer’s Education: http://www.normanbogner.com/edu.html

Privilege (1967): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062155/

Seventh Avenue (mini-series) (1977): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075580/

Interview on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/v/m9Ket14OsOo