When Mary Higgins Clark passed away in the year 2020, she left behind a fortune estimated at $140 million. In the United States alone, Mary Higgins Clark amassed lifetime sales of nearly 100 million copies. Each of Mary’s 51 books was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller in the United States and Europe.
Throughout her career, Higgins Clark was consistently one of the highest-paid authors in the world, earning hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties and advances. Mary was given a $64 million advance in 2011 for her next four books, or $16 million each. Her first suspense novel, “Where Are the Children?” published in 1975, became a bestseller and was turned into a film in 1986.
The novels “The Cradle Will Fall” (1980), “A Cry in the Night” (1982), “While My Pretty One Sleeps” (1989), and “You Belong to Me” (1998) have all been adapted into TV movies. She co-wrote the “Under Suspicion” series of crime novels with Alafair Burke, and her autobiography, “Kitchen Privileges:
A Memoir,” came out in 2001. Mary also produced the 2003 TV movie “A Crime of Passion” and was an investor in the New Jersey Nets. She entered the Irish American Hall of Fame that same year (2011). On January 31, 2020, at age 92, Higgins Clark passed away of natural causes.
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What Was Mary Higgins Clark’s Net Worth?
| Net Worth: | $140 Million |
| Date of Birth: | Dec 24, 1927 – Jan 31, 2020 (92 years old) |
| Place of Birth: | The Bronx |
| Gender: | Female |
| Profession: | Writer, Novelist, Author |
| Nationality: | United States of America |
Higgins Clark’s Early Life
Mary Theresa Eleanor Higgins was born on December 24, 1927, in The Bronx, New York, to parents Thomas and Mary Higgins. Her father, Luke Joseph Higgins, was an Irish immigrant, and her mother, Nora C. Durkin, was from the United States. Mary’s two brothers were named Joseph and John, however, Joseph passed away soon after high school graduation due to spinal meningitis he received while serving in the Navy.
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Higgins Clark began writing poetry at the age of seven, and she frequently penned short plays throughout her childhood. The family ran an Irish pub and lived in a Bronx apartment and a Long Island Sound house until the late 1930s when they ran into financial trouble because of the Great Depression and the inability of many of the pub’s customers to pay their bills.
In 1939, Mary’s father passed away peacefully in his sleep, and her mother subsequently had to evict Higgins Clark from the family’s attic bedroom so that she could rent it out to boarders. Mary received her early education at Saint Francis Xavier Grammar School and then went on to Villa Maria Academy, where she was supported in her desire to write by her professors.
To contribute financially, she began working as a switchboard operator at the Shelton Hotel. After losing their home, the family had no choice but to relocate to an apartment. The Navy promised Nora a lifetime pension after Joseph passed away, thus Mary was relieved of her financial responsibilities toward her daughter.
Higgins Clark’s Career
Higgins Clark began her career as a secretary in the internal advertising department at Remington Rand after graduating from Wood Secretarial School. She studied advertising at night and went on to work for Remington Rand, where she wrote catalog text and posed for promotional materials with future Hollywood actress Grace Kelly.
Mary was a flight attendant for Pan American Airlines afterward, but she left the company in December 1949 to marry Warren Clark. She went on to study writing at New York University, and in 1956, her short story “Stowaway” appeared in “Extension Magazine.” Higgins Clark’s acceptance of a position writing radio plays occurred on the same day that Warren suffered a fatal heart attack in 1964.
His mother later died of a heart attack after learning of her son’s passing. Mary was requested to pen two more radio shows after penning the four-minute scripts for the “Portrait of a Patriot” part. Higgins Clark’s agency suggested that she write a novel because publications had ceased publishing short tales in the late 1960s.
What came out of this was “Aspire to the Heavens,” a fictitious tale of George and Martha Washington’s marriage. The work “remaindered as it came off the press” in 1968, despite being published that year. Mary started attending Fordham University at Lincoln Center in 1971, and she received her degree with honors four years later.
Mary’s second work is a thriller fiction, and it was purchased by Simon & Schuster for $3,000. The paperback rights went for $100,000 three months later. After the success of her first novel, “Where are the Children?,” released in 1975, Simon & Schuster paid her $1.5 million for the rights to publish her second novel, “A Stranger is Watching,” in 1977.
“I’ll Be Seeing You.” I’ve Got You Under My Skin (2014), The Cinderella Murder (2014), All Dressed in White (2015), The Sleeping Beauty Killer (2016), Every Breath You Take (2017), You Don’t Own Me (2018), and Piece of My Heart (2020) are all books in the “Under Suspicion” series written by Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke between 2014 and 2020. In addition to the “Reagan Reilly” series, Mary wrote the “Alvirah and Willy” series, which occasionally shared characters with Carol’s work.
Higgins Clark’s Personal Life
On December 26, 1949, Mary wed her next-door neighbor, Warren Clark. They stayed married until his untimely death from a heart attack in 1964. Marilyn, Warren Jr., David, Carol, and Patty (named after Patricia Schartle Myrer, Higgins Clark’s agent) were the offspring of Mary and Warren.
They both appeared in commercials when they were little; Patty for Gerber and David for the United Way. Following in her mother’s footsteps, Carol too entered the world of mystery writing.
David’s son, David, has the developmental condition Fragile X Syndrome; David was formerly married to Mary Jane Clark, author of the “Key News” mystery books and the “Wedding Cake Mysteries” series.
Higgins Clark married Raymond Ploetz on August 8, 1978, shortly after Warren’s death, although she later canceled the “disastrous” union. Mary married John J. Conheeney, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch Futures, on November 30, 1996. They were married until he died in 2018.
Death
Death came for Mary on January 31st, 2020, in Naples, Florida. The publishing house Simon & Schuster tweeted the sad news, writing, “She passed away quietly last evening at the age of 92 surrounded by family and friends.” The Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York is where findagrave.com reports Higgins Clark to be buried.
Higgins Clark’s Awards and Honors
Higgins Clark earned the Deauville Film Festival Literary Award in 1999 and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1980. While attending the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, she was honored with the Spirit of Achievement Award and the National Arts Club’s Gold Medal in Education in the same year (1994).
Mary has received 18 honorary doctorates in addition to the Gold Medal of Honor from the American Irish Historical Society (1993), the Horatio Alger Award (1997), the Bronx Legend Award (1999), and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor (2001). Higgins Clark was a longtime member of the Mystery Writers of America board of directors and its president (1987), as well as the chairman of the International Crime Congress (1988).
The Mary Higgins Clark Award, presented by Mystery Writers of America to authors of suspense novels, was founded by Simon & Schuster at the time Mary was admitted as a Grand Master at the 55th Annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards.
In addition to being named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, Mary was also named a Dame of Malta, a Dame of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, a Dame of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, and a Dame of the Order of Malta.
She served on the boards of the Catholic Communal Fund and Hackensack University Medical Center and was honored with the Graymoor Award and the Christopher Lifetime Achievement Award, respectively, from the Franciscan Friars.
