Ray Douglas Bradbury Biography

Ray Douglas Bradbury was a novelist, short story writer, essayist, poet, playwright, lecturer, visionary, and screenwriter. In August 22, 1920, he was born in Waukegan, Illinois, United States. His father, Leonard Spaulding Bradbury, was a lineman for telephone and power utilities as well as a technician; His mother, Esther Marie Moberg Bradbury (nee Moberg) was a swedish immigrant. Ray Bradbury was the third son of the family (Shelokhonov). His middle name, Douglas, was given to him by his parents after Douglas Fairbanks (an american actor, director, producer, and screenwriter who lived from May 23, 1883 to December 12, 1939). His grandfather and great-grandfather worked as newspaper publishers.
When he was a child, he was obsessed with magicians …show more content…
He spent his days at his local library while he spent his nights at his typewriter. In 1938, he published his first short story, Hollerbochen’s Dilemma, in Imagination!, a magazine for amateur writer. In 1939, he published four issues of Futuria Fantasia which is his own fan magazine. In 1940, he made his first professional sale - with the help of Robert Heinlein - to Script, a West Coast literary magazine (Weller).
In November 1941, the pulp magazine Science Stories published his story, Pendulum, his first professional piece, and it appeared in Super Science Stories. During World War II, his local draft board did not draft him into the military because of his vision problems. By the end of 1942, he became a full-time paid writer. In 1943, he had many of his short stories in periodicals. In 1947, he published his short stories as a collection of short stories called Dark Carnival.
In 1947, he married Marguerite (nicknamed Maggie) McClure (January 16, 1922 to November 24, 2003). They meet each other when she was working as a clerk at a bookstore. As he was working on his writing, his wife was the breadwinner earlier in their marriage. Together they had four daughters: Susan (1949), Ramona (1951), Bettina (1955) and Alexandra (1958); they eventually had eight grandchildren. Marguerite was the only woman Bradbury said that he has ever …show more content…
In 1964, he started producing his own plays by establishing the Pandemonium Theatre Company (Weller). Ray Bradbury has written 5 episodes (1956-1962) for the TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Also, he was one of the screenwriter for the 1956 film, Moby Dick. In 1986, he made his own HBO TV series to make adaption of his short stories that stopped airing in 1992. For the The Ray Bradbury Television Theater on USA Cable, Ray Bradbury had adapted forty-two of his short stories since 1985.
In 1964, for the New York World's Fair, he was the creative consultant on the United States Pavilion. In 1982, he helped design the interior for Disney World’s Spaceship Earth display at Epcot Center. In Euro-Disney, France, he helped conceptualize the Orbitron space ride. He helped design the San Diego’s Westfield Horton Plaza. Ray Bradbury had received many awards. Those awards include (but not limited to): the Best American Short Story collections (1946, 1948, and 1952); O. Henry Memorial Award; the Benjamin Franklin Award (1954); the Aviation-Space Writer's Association Award (1967); the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement; the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America; the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (2000); the National Medal of Arts (2004)