Arthur Hailey

Arthur Hailey, born April 5, 1920, in Luton, England, wasn’t always the publishing powerhouse we remember. He actually kicked off his writing career in the world of TV, thanks to the wild success of his original drama Flight Into Danger in 1956. That one TV script changed everything—suddenly, Hailey was cranking out teleplays for big-shot shows like Playhouse 90, Kraft Television Theatre, The United States Steel Hour, Goodyear-Philco Playhouse, and Studio One. Not too shabby for a guy from Luton. But TV couldn’t contain him for long. Flight Into Danger got the novel treatment as Runway Zero-Eight in 1958, and just a year later, The Final Diagnosis landed him on the bestseller list. By 1961, In High Places made it three in a row. He wasn’t just writing—he was on fire. Hailey wasn’t the type to churn out books just to meet a quota. It took him four years to finish Hotel, which dropped in 1965 and stuck around the bestseller lists for a whole year. Then came Airport in 1968, which didn’t just do well—it owned the number one spot on The New York Times bestseller list for 30 weeks straight. Wheels, The Moneychangers, and Overload all followed, each snatching the top spot and making Hailey a mainstay on every must-read list in the country. By 1979, Hailey decided to retire, but life had other plans. He wound up needing a quadruple heart bypass, and—classic Hailey—the surgery left him feeling more alive than ever. His wife Sheila nudged him to write again, and boom: Strong Medicine was born.