Got some notes in from Terry Zobeck, who is deep into the forgotten mags of the early 1920s on a Hammett hunt. Big game bibliography at its finest.
But he’s not always prowling the primeval pagination, like a regular guy he can watch some tube, too.
And so he noticed the intersection of three Black Mask writers, Erle Stanley Gardner, Dashiell Hammett and Jonathan Latimer:
“My wife and I have taken to watching reruns of the original Perry Mason on MeTV. They are on at 9:00 am and 11:30 pm each weekday.
“Central to the plot of this morning’s episode was a Nevada casino.
“The boss had a tough-guy enforcer type.
“His name was Ned Beaumont.
“Coincidence? I don’t think so.
“The writer was Jonathan Latimer, so he would certainly know and probably be amused at the little inside joke.
“And I suspect many in the original audience would have smiled too.
“Today, not so many.”
I wonder if Latimer kept up the schtick from Hammett’s novel The Glass Key — when Beaumont is mentioned, he is always referred to as Ned Beaumont. Both names.
Might have been tougher to bring off on TV.
