Or, The Return of Terry “Pure Texts” Zobeck!
Apparently there’s no end to the fine-tuning on issues in re: pure texts. Take it away, Terry:
Here’s another example of a Hammett story reprinted by Frederic Dannay where the edits predate Dannay’s reprinting of the story, similar to what happened with “Death & Company.”
At the end of February 2025 I noticed in the Rare & Collectable section of the Weekly Update email from the Mysterious Bookshop the following listing for Hammett’s story “The Judge Laughed Last”:
Hammett, Dashiell, “The Judge Laughed Last,” contained in the Feb. 13, 1938 issue of Grit. The first appearance of this story, later collected in They Can Only Hang You Once with the title “The New Racket.” An about fine copy of this fragile and rare publication. $125.00
Interesting for several reasons. First, the original title of the story was “The New Racket,” not “The Judge Laughed Last.” The story was originally published in the February 15, 1924 issue of Black Mask. It was first collected in the Adventures of Sam Spade and Other Stories.
They Can Only Hang You Once became the title of the second edition of ASS.
But this reprint in Grit. . . . Galactic Central notes that Grit is “a weekly newspaper targeted at rural US families.” It is still a going concern. The reprint in Grit is from 1938. Fred Dannay then reprinted the story in the March 1944 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and collected it in ASS that same year.
In my write up of the original text of the story, I stated that Dannay was responsible for the change of the title.
I appear to be wrong, unless Dannay had something to do with getting this story reprinted in Grit.
The edits made to the story as it appears in ASS are minor. I would be interested in learning whether these edits are in the version of the story as published in Grit. But not interested enough to lay out $125 to Otto.
If the edits are in the version from Grit, I wonder who made them? Was Hammett involved? It would suggest that Dannay sourced the version he included in ASS from Grit.
