Richard Sale

Richard Sale (1911-1993) was an American pulp writer, screenwriter, and film director. In the 1930s he became one of the highest-paid contributors to pulp magazines such as Detective Fiction Weekly, where his Daffy Dill detective series appeared regularly, alongside work for Argosy and Double Detective; he wrote several hundred short stories over his career before moving into mainstream outlets including The Saturday Evening Post. His 1936 novel Not Too Narrow ... Not Too Deep became the basis for the 1940 film Strange Cargo, starring Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. Sale transitioned into screenwriting and directing for studios including Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, and Columbia, later co-creating the Western television series Yancy Derringer with his wife, Mary Loos. His career spanned detective fiction, adventure, and Western genres across print, film, and television.