Stuart Palmer

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Stuart Palmer (June 21, 1905 -February 4, 1968) was a popular mystery novel author and screenwriter, best known for his character, Hildegarde Withers.

Palmer was born in Baraboo, Wisconsin. His first novel, "The Penguin Pool Mystery" was published in 1931 and filmed the following year by RKO Radio Pictures as "Penguin Pool Murder." Character actress Edna May Oliver starred as Palmer's heroine, Hildegarde Withers, a spinster schoolteacher who was an amateur sleuth -- something of an American version of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple although considerably more comic and caustic. Oliver's casting was a happy coincidence as Palmer had been influenced by her performance in the Broadway production of "Showboat" when creating the character. The film was a hit and Oliver starred in two more Withers films, but she left RKO in 1935. The series foundered, with Helen Broderick and later ZaSu Pitts in the role for another three films.

Several of Stuart Palmer's stories were made into motion pictures. In 1936, he penned his first screenplay and would go on to write several others, most of them B movies. Palmer wrote for many B mystery series, scripting the first three Bulldog Drummond films for Paramount, and later entries in Columbia's Lone Wolf and RKO's The Falcon series.

Palmer wrote several Hildegarde Withers mystery novels, including "Murder on the Blackboard" (1932), "Murder on Wheels" (1932), "The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree" (1934), "Four Lost Ladies" (1949), "Cold Poison" (1954, set in the thinly disguised Walter Lantz animated-cartoon studio), "The People vs. Withers and Malone" (1963), and "Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene" (1969) which was completed by Fletcher Flora upon Palmer's death and published posthumously. Palmer also featured Withers in short stories that were published in mystery magazines; some were anthologized in "The Riddles of Hildegarde Withers" (1947).

Palmer also wrote a few detective novels with the lead character of Howie Rook and served one year as present of the Mystery Writers of America.