Charles Beaumont - Illness and Death

Illness and Death

When Beaumont was 34 and overwhelmed by numerous writing commitments, he began to suffer the effects of what has been called "a mysterious brain disease". He began to age rapidly. His speech slowed and his ability to concentrate diminished.

"He was rarely well," his friend and colleague William F. Nolan (who went on to co-write the science fiction novel Logan's Run) would later recall. "He was almost always thin, and with a headache. He used Bromo-Seltzer like most people use water. He had a big Bromo bottle with him all the time." The disease also affected his work. "He could barely sell stories, much less write. He would go unshaven to meetings with producers, which would end in disaster. got to be able to think on your feet, which Chuck couldn't do anymore; and so the producers would just go, 'We're sorry, Mr. Beaumont, but we don't like the script.'"

The condition might have been related to the spinal meningitis he suffered as a child. On the other hand, his friend and early agent Forrest J Ackerman has asserted that Beaumont suffered simultaneously from Alzheimer's and Pick's diseases. The former diagnosis was echoed by the UCLA Medical Staff, who subjected Beaumont to a battery of tests in the mid-1960s, indicated that it might be either Alzheimer's or Pick's. Nolan recalls that the UCLA doctors sent Beaumont home: "There's absolutely no treatment for this disease. It's permanent and it's terminal. He'll probably live from six months to three years with it. He'll decline and get to where he can't stand up. He won't feel any pain. In fact, he won't even know this is happening." Nolan summed up what happened: "Like his character 'Walter Jameson,' Chuck just dusted away."

Several fellow writers, including Nolan and friend Jerry Sohl, began ghostwriting for Beaumont in his final years, so that he could meet his many writing obligations. Privately, he insisted on splitting these fees.

Charles Beaumont died in Woodland Hills, California at the age of 38. But at that time, said his son Christopher later, "he looked ninety-five and was, in fact, ninety-five by every calendar except the one on your watch." Beaumont's last residence was in nearby Valley Village, California. He left behind his devoted wife Helen, and two sons and two daughters. One son died in 2001 of colon cancer. The other, Christopher, is a successful writer in his own right.