In 1949, The New Statesman magazine ran a competition with a prize for the reader supplying the best opening paragraphs of a story written in the style of that famous author GRAHAM GREENE.
The real Graham Greene thought it would be fun to enter under a pseudonym, N. Wilkinson. To his delight, his entry was sufficiently Greene-ish for him to come second (!) and he was given a one Guinea cash prize (below is his telegram sharing the news with Catherine Walston).
But then came another twist.
When Greene’s friend, the Italian movie director Mario Soldati, read The New Statesman parody (without knowing it was by THE Graham Greene) he saw movie potential in the short excerpt. Imagine his delight when he quickly learned that Greene was the author. At Solditi’s prompting, Greene developed a full film screenplay from what had been a bit of silly fun.
The result, in 1954, was the largely Venice-set The Stranger’s Hand, very Greene and very noir-ish with echoes of The Third Man.