Marian Brown Cockrell (1909-1999) was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the daughter of a doctor and a nurse. She attended several colleges, including Sophie Newcomb College, now part of Tulane University, where she met her husband, Francis (Frank) Cockrell. They married in 1932, during the Depression, when Frank had quit college because his family could no longer afford it, and began to write short stories for magazines such as College Humor. Marian began to write as well, and published stories in magazines including Redbook, Collier's, MacLean's, and the Saturday Evening Post. After their wedding, they lived in St. Augustine and New Orleans before moving to Los Angeles, where they began to write screenplays. This was interrupted by WWII, when Frank was sent to the Pacific and Marian moved back home to Birmingham. During the war she completed an unfinished novel of Frank's, Dark Waters, which was published as a serial in the Saturday Evening Post, and then made into a film starring Merle Oberon. Among her television credits are a number of scripts for Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the 1950s, and two episodes of the 1960s Batman series, on which she collaborated with Frank. While Frank began to write strictly for the screen, Marian became a novelist. Besides Dark Waters, her adult novels included Lillian Harley, Something Between, Yesterday's Madness, all written in the 40s, and The Revolt of Sarah Perkins, The Misadventures of Bethany Price, and Mixed Blessings, written in the 60s and 70s. Shadow Castle was her only children's book.
