WILLIAM PETER BLATTY (1928-2017):
Blatty was born in New York City to parents who had immigrated from Lebanon. After a stint in the Air Force, he entered the Foreign Service, serving as editor of News Review, a United States Information Agency publication, in Beirut. He graduated from Georgetown, then received a master’s in English literature from George Washington U. in 1954.
While dabbling in writing, Blatty worked in PR, serving as public relations director at Loyola U. of Los Angeles and then at USC. To gather material for a humorous article to be published in the Saturday Evening Post, he went about meeting movie stars while masquerading as a Saudi Arabian prince, then appeared as a contestant on Groucho Marx quizshow You Bet Your Life, winning $10,000 — money that allowed him to quit his day job and write full time.
His first novel, Which Way to Mecca, Jack?, a humorous look at his time with the USIA, was published in 1960. Further comic novels followed, to critical success. He got to work with Blake Edwards on the screenplay for A Shot in the Dark, the sequel to The Pink Panther. Other comedy screenplays continued throughout the 60s.
But by the end of the decade, he was in a state of "financial desperation" and finally got around to a novel he had been thinking about for years. He had remembered a Washington Post report from the late 1940s: A 14-year-old boy from Maryland was reportedly possessed, his condition defined by a visiting Duke University official as "the most impressive example of poltergeist phenomena I have ever come across."
The Exorcist hit #1 on the NY Times best seller list, and stayed on the charts for 57 weeks. He and director William Friedkin adapted it for the screen.
From around the world came reports of fainting, puking, epileptic fits, audience members charging the screen and waving rosary beads, and, in England, a boy committing murder and blaming The Exorcist. The Rev. Billy Graham would allege that the film's very celluloid was evil.
"I was standing in the back of a theater in New York at the first public press screening of the film, too nervous to sit down," Blatty told IGN.com in 2000. "And along came a woman who got up in about the fifth or sixth row. A young woman, who started walking up the aisle, slowly at first. She had her hand to her head. And then I could see her lips moving. She got close enough, and I could hear her murmuring, 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.'"
The movie got 10 Oscar nominations, including the first ever Best Picture nomination for a horror film. It's only win was for Best Adapted Screenplay. It continues to top lists of Greatest Horror Movies.
Other novels and films followed, but he couldn't approach the success of The Exorcist. He didn't need to....
Blatty, Linda Blair, and William Friedkin in 2010: