Today in Mystery History: April 2

 

Time for the 14th stop on our tour of the genre's past.

April 2, 1879. Hulbert Footner was born in Ontario.  He explored the northern part of the province (Lake Footner is named in his honor) and then became an actor, traveling across North America in a play called Sherlock Holmes.  He wrote adventure stories and more than 30 detective tales about Madame Rozika Storey who solved crimes with her less-brilliant assistant.  Some of his other crime novels were made into movies.

April 2, 1914.  Alec Guinness was born in London.  He starred in some wonderful films in our genre (Kind Hearts and Coronets, Our Man in Havana, The Lavender Hill Mob) but to me he is immortal for the greatest performance of John LeCarre's master spy, George Smiley, in TV's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People.

 

April 2, 1920. Jack Webb was born in Santa Monica, CA.  In 1949 he starred as an unlicensed private eye in the radio show Pat Novak, For Hire. In 1950 he performed in  two classic genre movies: Sunset Boulevard and Dark City. But you know darned well what he is remembered for: he created and starred in the radio show Dragnet (1952-1957) which also played on TV from 1952-1959.  Yes, he played Sgt. Joe Friday on radio and TV at the same time.  He brought the show back to TV from 1967 to 1970.  The highly-stylized police procedural was much quoted, copied, and mocked.

 

 April 2, 1931. The birth date of another Ontario mystery writer.  Howard Engel wrote sixteen novels about Toronto private eye Benny Cooperman. In Memory Book the detective suffers a blow to his head (as have how many other fictional sleuths?) but this one resulted in his inability to read.  This was based on the results of an actual stroke Engel suffered.

 

April 2, 1950. This Week Magazine featured Ellery Queen's short story "The Sound of Murder."

 

April 2, 1974. The Sting won the Oscar for Best picture.  Can you hear "The Entertainer?"

 

April 2, 1980. The Long Good Friday was released.  The wonderful Bob Hoskins as a gang boss  under attack.  "You don't crucify people! Not on Good Friday!" 

April 2, 199?. On this date Detective Mike Hoolihan tells us about the case she can't let go of.  Thus begins Kingsley Amis' novel Night Train.

 

April 2, 1999. Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune  was released.  Glenn Close and Julianne Moore starred in a movie about the results of an old woman's death on a small town.  It was nominated for an Edgar.

 

April 2, 2002. Henry Slesar died in New York City, where he was born.  In between he wrote  mysteries and science fiction, but is best remembered for the adaptation of his work to Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone.  His first novel, The Gray Flannel Shroud, won the Edgar Award. He also won an Emmy as head writer for the only crime-focused soap opera, The Edge of Night.

 

April 2, 2012.  On this day New Jersey mobster Sal Caetano told a gang of Mafiosi that he wanted a screw-up killed.  Thus begins Greenfellas, written by somebody named Lopresti.

And there we draw the veil.

 

Today in Mystery History: August 7

 

Welcome to episode 13 in our continuing investigation of our genre's history.

Bruce

 August 7, 1885.  Dornford Yates was born.  Besides being a soldier and attorney he was a writer of humor and then of very successful thriller novels, known as the Chandos series.  He was apparently a nasty piece of work, not even accounting for his typical 1920s attitudes toward foreigners and women. 

August 7, 1924.  John E. Bruce died on this day.  He had been born a slave. He grew up to be a journalist and civil rights activist.  His novel The Black Sleuth is one of the earliest mysteries by an African American. 

August 7, 1937. San Quentin premiered.  This movie was actually partially filmed in  the famous prison.  It starred Humphrey Bogart as a prisoner and Pat O'Brien as a guard who is dating Bogie's sister.

August 7, 1940.  "The Case of the Gentleman Poet" was published.  It was the last of the series of stories Eric Ambler wrote while waiting to be enlisted in the British armed forces.  They were collected in a book called, logically enough, Waiting for Orders.

August 7, 1949. Martin Kane, Private Eye premiered on radio.  During the three years it was on the air the P.I. was played by William Gargan, Lloyd Nolan, and Lee Tracy. The TV version started a month after the radio series and starred the same three actors, plus Mark Stevens, all playing the same part (though not in the same episodes, I hope.)  On TV Kane was always smoking a pipe. By sheer coincidence, I guess, the sponsor was a tobacco company. 

August 7, 1951. Ray Bradbury's "The Pedestrian" appeared in Reporter Magazine.  It is sort of science fiction, sort of crime story, and all social commentary.  Still worth reading (you can find it on the web, but I don't know about copyright status so I won't link to it.)  Bradbury, you may remember, said "I'm not trying to predict the future. I'm trying to prevent it."

 August 7, 1953. The Band Wagon premiered. It was a Fred Astaire/Cyd Charisse dance movie.  So why is on my list? Because it includes "GIRL HUNT: A Murder Mystery in Jazz."

August 7, 1962. On this date Archie Goodwin received a blood-stained necktie in the mail.  Thus began Rex Stout's "Blood Will Tell," a Nero Wolfe novella which appeared in EQMM and was reprinted in Trio For Blunt Instruments. (Stout liked that latter title so much he offered the man who suggested it part of the royalties.)

August 7, 1962. On the same day in South Africa, Trompie Kramer met Mickey Zondi.  The unlikely partnership of White and Black police officers fueled James McClure's excellent novels about crime under apartheid.  Confusingly, this meeting was reported in the last McClure novel, The Song Dog.

August 7, 2011. Publication date for Murder in Havana, by Margaret Truman. Or should I say "by" Margaret Truman?   Donald Bain and William Harrington both claimed to be the ghost writer of her Capital Crimes series. 

Today in Mystery History: February 1

 

Today is our 12th exciting journey into the past of our amazing field.  Hang onto your blunt instrument.

February 1, 1878.  H.C. Bailey was born in London.  His most prominent creation was  a surgeon and amateur detective, Reggie Fortune.  He also wrote about an attorney, the unfortunately named Joshua Clunk.

February 1, 1920. British novelist Colin Watson was born.  He wrote about Inspector Purbright and Lucilla Teatime (another interesting name).  He also produced a history of crime novels between the wars called Snobbery with Violence.

 February 1, 1924.  "Night Shots" appeared in Black Mask Magazine.  It was Dashiell Hammett's seventh story about the Continental Op.  

February 1, 1925. Top Notch Magazine featured "The Case of the Misplaced Thumb" (and now the titles are getting weird).  It was Erle Stanley Gardner's first novelette about Speed Dash (another name for the books), a human-fly turned crime fighter.  I don't mean that he was a character from the movie The Fly.  He was an acrobat, able to climb walls unaided.

February 1, 1929. Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest was released.  It was his second novel about the Continental Op.

February 1, 1976. Robert Martin died. In the forties he wrote for Black Mask, Dime Detective, and other pulps.  In the fifties he started writing novels, many about Cleveland private eye Jim Bennett.  Bill Pronzini, who corresponded with him in his later years, called Martin "a genuinely nice man." 

February 1, 1989.  P.D. James' novel Devices and Desires was published.  It was the eighth appearance by Adam Dalgleish.

February 1, 1993. Publication date for Marissa Piesman's Heading Uptown.  Piesman and her protagonist were both Jewish New York attorneys.  The books were funny.  She used to write them on the subway on the way to work but, alas, she changed jobs , shortened her commute, and stopped writing them.

February 1, 2000. Peter Levi passed away.  This English author was an interesting fella.  He was a Jesuit priest until his forties.  He became Oxford Professor of Poetry and discovered (in California!) a poem he claimed was written by William Shakespeare.  Most scholars disagreed.  He  wrote several mysteries starting with the wonderfully titled The Head in the Soup in 1979. 

 

 

Today in Mystery History: January 5

 
This is our tenth adventure in stalking the history of our genre. 

January 5, 1909.   Harry Kurnitz was born on this date in New York City.  He wrote mysteries under the name Marco Page.  MGM bought the rights to his book Fast Company and brought him to Hollywood to write the screenplay.  Among the more than forty movies he wrote were Witness for the Prosecution, and How to Steal a Million.

January 5, 1921.  Friedrich Durrenmatt was born in Bern, Switzerland.  Best known as a playwright, he wrote three crime novels which are considered classics: The Judge and his Hangman, Suspicion, and The Pledge.  The last of these was made into an excellent movie directed by Sean Penn and starring Jack Nicholson as a cop who, on the day he retires, promises parents that he will find the man who murdered their daughter.

January 5, 1932.  Umberto Eco was born in Piedmont, Italy.  He was known as a philosopher until he wrote the astonishingly successful medieval crime novel, The Name of the Rose, in which a monk named William of Baskerville investigates a series of grisly murders in a monastery.

January 5, 1939.  Homicide Bureau was released. Bruce Cabot starred as a cop under pressure to solve crimes without violating suspects' civil rights (hmm... sounds vaguely familiar). Rita Hayworth  plays the head of internal affairs.

January 5, 1946.  Arthur Lyons was born in Los Angeles.  Most of his novels were about reporter-turned-private-eye Jacob Asch.  The movie Slow Burn was based on his novel Castle Burning. 

January 5, 195?. On this date the action begins in John LeCarre's Call For The Dead, which means master spy George Smiley is introduced to the world.  Smiley quits his employment in this book, which is no surprise.  In most of the novels about him he quits the Circus or gets rehired there.  Man can't seem to keep a job.

January 5, 1965.  On this date Mrs. Rachel Bruner came to Nero Wolfe with an impossible assignment: make the FBI stop bothering her.  Naturally, he succeeds and The Doorbell Rang became Rex Stout's biggest success, pushing his fame and sales to unheard of levels.   Reporters who asked the FBI for comments on the book were referred to the Criminal Division, with the implication that something vaguely illegal was involved in criticizing the Bureau and its director.

January 5, 1970.  This date saw something doubly rare: fiction in Sports Illustrated, and a short story by novelist Dick Francis.  "A Carrot for a Chestnut" is one of my fifty favorite crime stories.  If you don't happen to keep half a century worth of old magazines around you can find it in Francis's collection Field of Thirteen. 

January 5, 1974. Vincent Starrett died in Chicago.  Canadian born, he was an early member of the Baker Street Irregulars and wrote "The Adventure of the Unique 'Hamlet,'"  and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.  (No relation to the later movie with the same title.)