Robert Bloch

In 1940, Bloch got married to Marion Ruth Holcombe; it was considered to be a marriage of convenience to keep him out of the army. They had a daughter together – Sally. The couple got divorced in 1963.

He again got married in 1964 to a recently widowed Eleanor Alexander. She was a fashion model and cosmetician. They remained married until Bloch’s death and never had any children.

Bloch died of cancer at the age of 77 in 1994, in Los Angeles. He was cremated and interred in the Room of Prayer columbarium at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

Robert Bloch was born on April 5, 1917, in Chicago to Raphael Bloch and Stella Loeb. His father was a bank cashier while mother a social worker. He was raised in a middle-class Jewish family.

Bloch family moved to Maywood when he was only five and there he attended the Methodist Church even though he belonged to Jewish religion. It was while growing up in Maywood that Bloch inculcated interest in horror.

In 1929, the family moved to Milwaukee as Bloch’s father lost his job. Here Bloch attended the Lincoln High School and wrote for the school magazine, The Quill. After graduating, he started working at drama department of the school.

In 1935, Bloch became a part of ‘The Milwaukee Fictioneers’ - it was a writers’ group, which included other members like, Gustav Mark, Stanley Weinbaum, Raymond Palmer, etc. Mark gave him job in his advertising firm as a copy writer.

Bloch was hired to write and contribute in the campaigning of Carl Zeidler in 1939. He worked on his speechwriting, advertising and photo ops. Although he worked hard for the campaign but he was never paid the promised salary.

Bloch came out with his original take on the fictional character, ‘Jack, the Ripper’, in his story ‘Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper’, which was published in ‘Weird Tales’ magazine in 1943. It was later adapted for the radio and television.

His first thriller novel, ‘The scarf’ was published in 1947, which is a story of a writer named ‘Daniel Morley’ who uses real women as models for his characters and murders them afterwards.

In 1954, Bloch came out with three different thriller novels, ‘Spiderweb’, ‘The Kidnapper’ and ‘The Will to Kill’. He was also chosen to be a weekly guest panelist on the television show, ‘It’s a Draw’.

Bloch’s ‘The Psycho (1959)’ revolutionized his writing career and made him a big name not only in the fiction circle but also in Hollywood after Alfred Hitchcock bought its film rights and turned into in a movie in 1960.