Gaston Leroux


Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was a French journalist and author of detective fiction.
In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel The [Phantom of the Opera (novel)|The Phantom of the Opera], which has been made into several film and stage productions of the same name, notably the 1925 film starring Lon Chaney and Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical. His 1908 novel The Mystery of the Yellow Room is one of the most celebrated locked room mysteries.

Life and career

Leroux was born in Paris in 1868, the illegitimate child of Marie Bidaut and Dominique Leroux, who married a month after his birth. He claimed an illustrious pedigree, including descent from William II of England, son of William the Conqueror, and social connections such as having been the official playmate of Prince Philippe, Count of Paris at the College d'Eu in Normandy. After schooling in Normandy and studying as a lawyer in Caen, He inherited millions of francs and lived wildly until he nearly reached bankruptcy. In 1890, he began working as a court reporter and theater critic for L'Écho de Paris. His most important journalism came when he began working as an international correspondent for the Paris newspaper Le Matin in 1893. He was present at, and covered, the 1905 Russian Revolution.
He left journalism in 1907, after returning from covering a volcanic eruption and being immediately sent on another assignment without vacation time, and began writing fiction. In 1919, he and Arthur Bernède formed their own film company, Société des Cinéromans, publishing novels and turning them into films. He first wrote a mystery novel titled Le mystère de la chambre jaune, starring the amateur detective Joseph Rouletabille. Leroux's contribution to French detective fiction is considered a parallel to those of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the United Kingdom and Edgar Allan Poe in the United States.
Leroux published his most famous work, The Phantom of the Opera, as a serial in 1909 and 1910, and as a book in 1910. Balaoo followed in 1911, which was made into a film several times.
Leroux was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur in 1909. He died at age 58 in Nice, France, in 1927.

Personal life

Leroux married twice, first to Marie Lefranc from whom he separated in 1902. Following his separation, he then lived with Jeanne Cayatte from Lorraine, with whom he had a son, Gaston, nicknamed Milinkij, and a daughter named Madeleine; they married in 1917 after Lefranc's death. In 1918, he founded a film production company, Société des Cinéromans with René Navarre, and debuted two films, Tue-la-Mort and Il etait deux petits enfants, in which his daughter played the lead role.

Novels

The Adventures of Rouletabille">Joseph Rouletabille">Rouletabille

  • 1907 – Le mystère de la chambre jaune
  • 1908 – Le parfum de la dame en noir
  • 1913 – Rouletabille chez le Tsar
  • 1914 – Rouletabille à la guerre consisting of
  • * Le château noir
  • * Les étranges noces de Rouletabille
  • 1917 – Rouletabille chez Krupp
  • 1921 – Le crime de Rouletabille
  • 1922 – ''Rouletabille chez les Bohémiens''

Chéri Bibi

Other novels

  • La double vie de Théophraste Longuet
  • Le roi mystère
  • Le fauteuil hanté
  • Un homme dans la nuit
  • La reine de Sabbat
  • Le fantôme de l'Opéra
  • Balaoo
  • L' épouse du soleil
  • La colonne infernale
  • Confitou
  • L' homme qui revient de loin
  • Le capitaine Hyx
  • La bataille invisible
  • Tue-la-mort
  • Le coeur cambriolé
  • Le sept de trèfle
  • La poupée sanglante
  • La machine à assassiner
  • Les ténébreuses: La fin d'un monde & du sang sur la Néva
  • Hardis-Gras ou le fils des trois pères
  • La Farouche Aventure
  • La Mansarde en or
  • Les Mohicans de Babel
  • Mister Flow
  • Les Chasseurs de danses
  • ''Pouloulou''

Short stories

  • 1887 – "Le petit marchand de pommes de terre frites"
  • 1902 – "Les trois souhaits"
  • 1907 – "Baïouchki baïou"
  • 1908 – "L'homme qui a vu le diable"
  • 1911 – "Le dîner des bustes"
  • 1912 – "La hache d'or"
  • 1924 – "Le Noël du petit Vincent-Vincent"
  • 1924 – "La femme au collier de velours"
  • 1924 – "Not' Olympe"
  • 1925 – "L'Auberge épouvantable"

Plays

  • 1908 – Le Lys
  • 1913 – ''Alsace''

Filmography

Screenwriter

Misattributions

The Gaston Leroux Bedside Companion, an anthology published in 1980 and edited by Peter Haining, as well as the Haining-edited The Real Opera Ghost and Other Tales By Gaston Leroux, include a story attributed to Leroux entitled The Waxwork Museum. A foreword alleges that the translation by Alexander Peters first appeared in Fantasy Book in 1969. Neither "Alexander Peters" nor "Fantasy Book" appear to exist, and the text of the story is, in fact, a word-for-word copy of the story Figures de cire by Andre de Lorde which was published as Waxworks in the 1933 anthology Terrors: A Collection of Uneasy Tales, edited by Charles Birkin. The confusion has sometimes caused Leroux to be erroneously credited with the stories from the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum, the 1953 film House of Wax or, particularly, the 1997 Italian film Wax Mask. No such story by Leroux exists, though some confusion may have been the result of chapter IX in Leroux's novel La double vie de Théophraste Longuet, which is entitled, Le masque de cire.