Welcome to a hard-boiled and not without noir blog with news and reviews, occasional outbursts of maniacal Autograph Hound activity, plus archival records from the forty-five year run of The Dashiell Hammett Tour. 
The Dashiell Hammett Tour
1977-2022
Arkham House Ephemera
The Classic Years 1937–1973
Death Lit
Essays and Reviews Selected from Fifty Years of Writing 1974–2024
Willeford
The Book
Category Archives: Film
Rediscovered: Buford Pusser
Autograph Hound Saturday once again, and we spotlight a famous lawman. When I was in college at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, I heard Buford Pusser would be signing clubs at a Ford dealership across town. Growing up … Continue reading
Posted in Film, News
Tagged Autographs, Breaker Morant, Brian Leno, Buford Pusser, Buford Pusser Museum, Joe Don Baker, MTSU, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Walking Tall
Mort: In Memoriam Bruce Townley
I didn’t mention it at the time, but Bruce Townley died on October 17, 2024 — one of the more brutal endings I know of, fell in his apartment on Washington near Polk, couldn’t get up (yeah, just like the … Continue reading
Rediscovered: Woman Chaser on Blu-Ray
Got a note from Joe McSpadden that the film version of Charles Willeford’s novel The Woman Chaser, which he produced, is now — finally — on Blu-Ray. Don’t think it ever made it to DVD, only appearing long-ago as a … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Frisco, Lit, News, Willeford
Tagged Joe McSpadden, Patrick Warburton, The Woman Chaser
Rediscovered: Death Lit on the Block
If you picked up my most recent book Arkham House Ephemera: The Classic Years 1937-1973, I am here to slip you the word that no longer is it the latest title to leap to life. The newest of the new … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, DMac, Film, Frisco, Lit, News, REH, SFSC, Tour, Willeford
Tagged Arkham House Ephemera The Classic Years 1937-1973, Book Collecting, Death Lit Essays and Reviews 1974-2024
Rediscovered: House of Bogart
Brian Leno keeps getting new autograph material all the time, every week, sometimes every day — he even has stuff crawling out of his immeasurable horde, practically attacking him. Here he is with another episode pulled straight from the life … Continue reading
Posted in Film, News
Tagged Algernon Blackwood, Autographs, Bogie, Book Collecting, Brian Leno, Doug Fairbanks, Guy Bogart, Lucy Bogart, Valentine
Rediscovered: 50 Years Ago
Usually, I don’t bother going out of my way to meet someone or see something. Only a very few possible high points kick me in the ass. I made sure I went to the screenings in Pacific Film Archive in … Continue reading
Rediscovered: Willeford’s Cockfighter
Fifty years slips past when you’re not even looking. For example, how long ago was it that Warren Oates in Cockfighter hit the silver screen? Fifty years? Correct you are. Based on the novel by Charles Willeford. The blurbage for … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Frisco, News, Willeford
Tagged Betsy Willeford, Four Star Theater, Kier-la Janisse, Warren Oates
Rediscovered: Know The Shadow. . .
Check out that great Chinatown alley. Can’t you just see Lon Chaney as a vicious legless Lord of the Underworld creeping over the stone bricks, enrapt in savage dreams of subjugating the city? But Chaney kept his lair in San … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Lit, News
Tagged Alec Baldwin, Ian McKellan, James Reasoner, John C. Moran, Lon Chaney, Orson Welles, The Shadow, The Shadowed Circle Compendium, Walter B. Gibson, Will Murray
Hammett: Some Thoughts on M. Spade from Kent Harrington
That prolific writer in the Posse McMillan crew, Kent Harrington, asked if I’d seen Monsieur Spade yet. Not yet, but give me a day or two free and I’ll binge my way through. (Meanwhile, I have binged the two seasons … Continue reading
Sinister Cinema: The Oscars
Brian Wallace popped me another tidbit from the historic archives of Noir & Mean Streeting, from which I deduced he must have watched the recent Oscars ceremonies: “Wonderful what Hollywood will do to a nobody. It will make a radiant … Continue reading
