Bernhardt J. Hurwood Papers

Bernhardt J. Hurwood was an author, editor, and researcher specializing in the topics of sex and the supernatural. In 1965, upon release of his book The Golden Age of Erotica, Hurwood was hailed “’The sex-conscious man’s H.G. Wells’” by Playboy magazine.

Hurwood was born on July 22, 1926, in New York City, New York; at the age of eight, he survived spinal meningitis when an attentive hospital aide injected him with adrenaline. Hurwood spent his childhood and adolescence in Chicago, Illinois and Burlingame, California. While still in high school (Lake View High School in Chicago), he began broadcasting in Educational Radio when Chicago Soap Operas were popular. After high school, he enrolled at Northwestern University School of Speech; however, between 1945-1947, he postponed his education to serve in the U.S. Merchant Marines. He traveled to South America, Europe, the Caribbean, Iceland; in the process, he was shipwrecked in shark infested waters between Trinidad and Tobago on Friday, October 13, 1946. He returned to Northwestern and completed his Bachelor of Science degree in 1949. During the same year, he produced a short-lived radio program called “This Musical Planet,” a DJ show of what he called “primitive music.”

After graduation, he became a film editor working on the west coast, in Chicago, and in New York City. His first job in television/film was as an editor working for Jay Ward on the animated cartoon Crusader Rabbit. He would continue working in film editing on various industrials, commercials, newsreels, and TV news specials. By 1950, he was hired at NBC-TV News and Special Events and was part of the staff of the original TODAY Show. In his next job, he edited more than 200 short films, primarily animated cartoons from Eastern Europe. After working on these cartoons both as editor and script writer, he decided to devote his entire career to writing. He would, however, continue to have a life-long interest in film and photography.

Hurwood admitted that he didn’t intend to become a writer. “I became a writer because I got fired from every legitimate job I ever had.” While editing film, he tired of bad scripts and started writing his own around 1959. By 1962, he was a full-time freelance writer and author. Hurwood began his career writing comic book adaptations of old Universal horror films for Dell Publications. Dracula was his first effort and inspired his first paperback publication in 1963, Terror by Night, an abbreviated history of vampires, werewolves, and ghouls. He published numerous edited anthologies, some for young adult readers, within the realm of the supernatural. In 1965, Monsters Galore was published, followed by Monsters and Nightmares (1967), Vampires, Werewolves and Ghouls (1968), Ghosts, Ghouls and Other Horrors (1971), Haunted Houses (1972), Vampires, Werewolves and Other Demons (1972) Chilling Ghost Stories (1973) and Eerie Tales of Terror and Dread (1973). Passport to the Supernatural would also include similar scary subject matter. He had additional works published on vampires including Dracutwig written under his pseudonym, Mallory T. Knight. My Savage Muse: The Story of My Life by Edgar Allan Poe, An Imaginative Work was written in 1980. He published over sixty books throughout his career.

Hurwood admitted that his study of vampires and werewolves led directly to his study of the subject of sex. While researching Terror by Night, it became clear to him that there were “heavy sexual undertones” in the folklore of vampirism and lycanthropy. In the 1960s, he published A Psychiatrist Looks at Erotica with Franklin S. Klaf and The Golden Age of Erotica. One reviewer of Hurwood’s book The Bisexuals commented that the author “made his name in the quick-buck business in the early seventies” when the “quick-sex-book market” was in full swing. Similar titles included The Girls, The Massage, and Everything, The Sensuous New Yorker, Joys of Oral Love, and The Whole Sex Catalogue. Under the pseudonym D. Gunther Wilde, he would publish Deviation (1966) and When Maidens Were Deflowered and Knightly Lost Their Heads (1967). In addition to Mallory T. Knight and D. Gunther Wilde, Hurwood also used the pseudonyms Clay Grant and Father Xavier.

Among his more than sixty published books are mysteries By Blood Alone and Rip-Off and nine Mallory T. Knight “spy spoofs” in The Man From T.O.M.C.A.T. His last book was Writing Becomes Electronic: Successful Authors Tell How They Write in the Age of Computers (1986).

In addition to his books and edited anthologies, Hurwood wrote numerous short stories, articles, book and film reviews, and scripts. Film scripts included The Creatures from the Negative and the Garbitsch Affair (with Constance Willis). Between 1973-1975, he reviewed films for Gallery magazine and Genesis magazine. He published articles on myriad topics for such magazines as Vogue, Saturday Review, New York, and Penthouse. He traveled extensively as part of his research, taking photographs and conducting many interviews.

He was a member of the Writers Guild of America (East), the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Mystery Writers of America, and the Computer Press Association.

In 1958, Hurwood married Laura Fenga in Chicago. She died in 1979. He then married Marci Vitous in 1983. Hurwood died in 1987.