Gaston+Leroux+(author)

Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was born in Paris on May 6, 1868. He went to school in Normandy and studied law in Paris, graduating in 1889. After leaving school, Leroux worked as a clerk in a law office and, in his free time, began writing essays and short stories. By 1890 he had become a full-time journalist. From 1894 to 1906 he sailed the world as a correspondent, reporting back to Paris various adventures that he took part in, especially during the Russian Revolution of 1905. In the early 1900s he began writing novels. Leroux published several novels and a few plays but never achieved wide fame as a writer of horror and crime stories.

His breakthrough work was Le mystère de la chambre jaune (1907, The Mystery of the Yellow Room), which introduced the teenager crime reporter Joseph Rouletabille with a bullet-shaped head. Leroux's other series character was Cheri-Bibi, who appeared in such detective novels as Cheri-Bibi, Cheri-Bibi: Mystery Man, Missing Men: The Return of Cheri-Bibi, and The Dark Road; Further Adventures of Cheri-Bibi. In 1911, he published Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera). The inspiration for this book was supposed to have come from Leroux's visit to the Paris Opera (presently housing the Paris Ballet) and tour of its cellars which were used to hold prisoners of the Paris Commune. Leroux's French detective fiction novels are considered a parallel to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's in the United Kingdom and Edgar Allan Poe's in the United States.

Leroux's books first started coming to the screen in 1913, when his novel (Balaoo) became the basis for a movie. It wasn't until six years later that his story, Mystery of the Yellow Room, made it to the screen. Leroux had written a screenplay in 1916, and had become partner in a film company in 1919 that had lasted for three years, but his involvement in film was limited. Universal Pictures was in search of another mysterious and thrilling story to make a movie about. The Phantom of the Opera seemed like a logical choice and it became a classic. It was produced on a large scale on sets built specifically for the film (some of which were still standing into the new millennium), with images that are still familiar today. Leroux died on April 15, 1927, at age 59, from complications following surgery. His death came only two years after The Phantom of the Opera's release. In the 1980s, Leroux's story came to the London and Broadway stages, where the multi-year runs of the musical version led to the republication of the novel and multiple efforts at restoring the 1925 movie.

Leroux was a celebrated journalist, an international adventurer, and one of the most popular authors of mysteries and dark thrillers in the entire world. He also liked to gamble quite a bit. His novel The Phantom of the Opera and its Broadway adaptation is by far his most famous piece of work. The play can be seen in many countries around the world still today.