Sinister Cinema: Cagney Kills Time with Otis Adelbert Kline

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Don

For his previous Pulps in the Movies post, John Locke spotlighted a flick starring James Cagney. All well and good, but Jimmy wasn’t the guy holding a pulp in that one.

Did Jimmy himself ever read a pulp in a motion picture, you might ask.

Come on, spill with the dope. Did he?

John snappy-patters an answer:

Here’s Cagney on a train reading the January 4, 1930 Argosy. He appears to be absorbed in the third installment of Otis Adelbert Kline’s Maza of the Moon (no relation to ERB’s The Moon Maid, of course).

Standing by, with other things on his mind, is co-star Edward G. Robinson.

The film Smart Money was released on July 11, 1931, so it’s unlikely that the prop department snagged the pulp fresh off the newsstand. If they didn’t have it in their inventory of useful objects, they could easily have bought it for half-price (5¢) from any bookshop that carried used magazines.

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Hammett: “A Fast-Moving Gripping Mystery Yarn”

Posted on March 3, 2020 by Don

The pulp expert John Locke was just telling me he got his hands on a trove of Photoplay issues from the 1930s, and figured everyone would like to see how the trade mag blurbed the very first movie version of Sam Spade’s big case.

Whoever knocked out the review liked the flick a lot more than most people do — but it offends the local Shaolin Temple that the anonymous bozo doesn’t even mention Dwight Frye’s turn as Wilmer. Come on!

“Here’s a review of the 1931 Maltese Falcon,” John reports. “Nothing earth-shaking, but it’s a nice bit of ephemera not to be found in Layman’s Discovering The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade.”

And in the event you have trouble reading from the image, John sends along the text of the review:

THE MALTESE FALCON — Warners

ARE you one of those who delight in a fast-moving gripping mystery yarn? Does your spine tingle in response to the clever machinations of the screen detective?

Then this picture is your dish, and you’ll love it. See if you can untangle the mystery before the last reel. It’s a great game.

Ostensibly, this is a starring picture for Bebe Daniels, but her part isn’t one, two, four, compared to that handed Mr. Ricardo Cortez, the sleek young gentleman who is now doing the best screen work of his career. What a performance Cortez gives in this picture, playing the demon detective who is also a first-rate Don Juan.

The story, made from the well-known novel of the same name, concerns the desire of several people to possess a jewel-encrusted statuette of an enameled falcon, worth fabulous sums. Cortez is the lad who turns the trick.

Bebe does excellent work in a part that doesn’t give her nearly enough elbow-room. Cortez, as we’ve said, is thoroughly fine, and good helping performances are given by Una Merkel, Dudley Digges and Otto Matiesen.

This is as fine a piece of film mystery — with chills and thrills — as the screens have held in some months. You’ll like it, you mystery fans!

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Rediscovered: Belknapius Comicbookmanius

Posted on March 2, 2020 by Don

The other day we ran a 1946 inscription from Frank Belknap Long — Young Belknapius of Lovecraft Circle fame — in a copy of his first release from Arkham House, The Hounds of Tindalos.

But it turns out there is more to that story, and Steven Rowe dropped me a note with the info:

“The autographed book is interesting,” Steven said, “but it’s also worth noting that Richard Hughes, who the book is signed to, was Long’s editor at ACG Comics, when Long wrote stories for Adventures Into the Unknown #1 Fall 1948.

“Hughes had been editor for Ned Pines’ comic book line, where he also wrote many of the stories. It is not known if Long wrote anything for Hughes prior to 1948.”

The fact that Long had done some comic book work had slipped from my active memory (I’m not that big a fan of FBL’s writing), but his pal and fellow Lovecraft Circle stalwart Don Wandrei also did some comic scripting — I did a little note on the subject in an early issue of Studies in Weird Fiction. And a few writers more associated with comics — Gardner F. Fox, for one — also did some prose fiction for the pulps. Fox even cracked Weird Tales, where the Lovecraft Circle made its name. (I think of Fox as an example because I always liked his scripts — Hawkman, for one — and because a recent biography has brought him back onstage.)

Reminds me of the conversation I once had on the pulps transitioning over to comics with Mike Friedrich — from the Pulp Jungle to the Comic Book Jungle.

But now the idle thought comes up that if Lovecraft himself hadn’t died in 1937, just as the comic book medium was forming, would there have been any chance his pals Long and Wandrei might have dragged him into doing a little something?

No, probably not.

Then again. . . .

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Rediscovered: Stilson to Davis

Posted on March 1, 2020 by Don

You might be wondering what sort of correspondence Charles B. Stilson — author of Polaris — of the Snows — engaged in 96 years ago today.

Or perhaps the thought hadn’t crossed your mind.

In either case, the noted book and pulp collector Kevin Cook is here with an archival sampling from his vast holdings, offering a look at “an exchange of letters between Stilson and Bob Davis regarding book publication of ‘The Black Wolf of Picardy,’ originally serialized in Argosy from June 15-July 20, 1918.

“The same time that Stilson was writing his lost race novels for All-Story he was separately writing a series of historical novels for Argosy.

“Following these letters the novel was indeed published by G. Howard Watt in 1924 under the title of The Ace of Blades. The front cover as above.

“The ‘RHD’ initials for Davis’ name represents his full name of Robert Hobart Davis.”

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Hammett: #MeToo

Posted on February 27, 2020 by Don

Evan Lewis keeps poking around in the newsprint of yesteryear, digging up a little of this and more of that on Hammett — a writer who became enough of a celebrity in Hollywood to grab continual coverage, once he made his name.

Evan’s post yesterday is worth checking out. Couldn’t be more timely, with Cosby locked up and Weinstein also headed for the slammer.

Yes, I refer to the notorious lawsuit where actress Elise De Viane accused Hammett of beating her up. Kind of in the same ballpark. Surf over to Evan’s blog and read some of the coverage, if interested.

Glancing over the articles — the incident isn’t news, it’s in all the biographies — I found this especially pointed and yet droll comment from the July 7 1932 Manhattan Kansas Republic: “Probably he was only studying her reaction and gathering material for a modern novel.”

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Sinister Cinema: Taxi!

Posted on February 26, 2020 by Don

For the sixth adventurous outing into his new series Pulps in the Movies, John Locke picks up on one of those reliable newsstand scenes he’s mentioned.

Too bad Cagney himself isn’t killing time in the frame, but for movie buffs I think the spotlighted actor will do just fine: an uncredited Nat Pendleton, whose mug any Hammett fan ought to know from his role as Inspector John Guild in the Thin Man series.

Take it away, John:

Here’s a scene from Taxi!, a 1931 Jimmy Cagney film. I had a hunch that this streetwise story would cough up some pulp and, sure enough, I didn’t have to wait long.

This newsstand shot appeared just after the six-minute mark.

The image occurs early in the shot. Within moments, another character enters the scene, obscures the view, and the camera rises, losing the logos along the bottom row: All-Story Love, Sport Story Magazine, and Flying Aces.

Pulps were often used as cheap sight gags that upended audience expectations: the nice little old lady is reading a grisly murder story mag, or the tough old buzzard is reading a romance pulp.

The usage here seems to fit that pattern.

The film is set in New York City, the world’s most built-up metropolis, but the hardboiled city boys dream of the wide-open spaces of the West, represented by western pulps being featured on the stand.

Both the Far West Stories and Triple-X Western are the October 1931 issues, which went on sale in September. The film’s earliest release was in the UK on December 29, 1931. All of which probably means that the prop department bought the magazines fresh off the newsstand just before the scene was shot.

Films traveled from set to theater a lot faster in those days, a point further confirmed by the movie’s semi-coherent plot.

But you can’t go wrong with Cagney.

And thanks as always to Galactic Central for providing their extensive galleries of cover images, without which the pulps in these movies would be really, really hard to identify.

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Rediscovered: Belknapius Auto from 1946

Posted on February 23, 2020 by Don

We’ve done John Hancocks from Frank Belknap Long before, but recent ones, where it seemed Young Belknapius of Lovecraft Circle fame leaned more toward printing out his name.

Kevin Cook, noted book and pulp collector, and I got to wondering if his older signatures were more holographic, fancier — courtesy Kevin’s pal Dave Kurzman we’ve got a sample from 1946.

Yeah, some flow of ink between some of the letters, but not that different from his pensmanship in the 1980s.

To further Super today’s Super-Sunday Autograph Hound (Revisited) presentation, here you go.

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Rediscovered: E. Charles E. Vivian

Posted on February 23, 2020 by Don

Autograph Hound Super-Sunday (Revisited), and the noted book and pulp collector Kevin Cook returns to one of his favorite authors, “Viv.”

The shots of the dustjacketed books were taken by Victoria Cook in the wilds of Kevin’s library.

Take it, Kevin:     

On a visit to the London home of legendary British science fiction and fantasy collector/dealer/ publisher and researcher extraordinaire George Locke, I was shown a pile of dust jackets and advertising material from the files of British publisher Hodder & Stoughton that George had purchased.

He told me to look through to see if there were any dust jackets that I wanted to purchase. I already had a copy of The Lady of the Terraces in dust jacket so I initially started to skip past, but my eyes seemed stuck to it.

There was something different with the jacket in my hand.

I examined it carefully.

The author’s name on the right side of the jacket was incorrect.

Instead of E. Charles Vivian, it read Charles E. Vivian. Otherwise, the jackets are completely identical except for the placement of the “E.” 

I showed it to George but he simply dismissed it as a mistake that H&S obviously corrected prior to the book’s publication. Yes, no disagreement there.

I saw something more desirable, though, purchased it, and placed it on a jacket-less copy of the book. I think that I can state that I have the only “Charles E. Vivian” dust jacket in existence.

Probably the only copy of a book with the author named as Charles E. Vivian — and Viv had a lot of pen names.

It would also have to be the first state of the jacket.

Just another one of many treasures that I can thank George for from our decades of book trades and purchases with each other.

The inscription is from the E. Charles Vivian copy.

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Rediscovered: Woolrich and Mom

Posted on February 22, 2020 by Don

Autograph Hound Saturday yet again, and I think this round we’re going to go with the theme of Revisited — John Hancocks you’ve seen here before, but different. Can’t call them new, because they’re hauled forth from Out of the Past.

Different.

Noted book and pulp collector Kevin Cook has been raining Cornell Woolrich cheques on us the last few months. Woolrich, one of the most noir of the noir guys.

But of all the Woolrich signatures in his files, Kevin has been talking about one different than all the others, and presents it today.

Kevin says, “The ‘unique’ Cornell Woolrich check in my collection is one signed by both Woolrich and his mother, Claire.

“I won it in an auction and there was no explanation for the two signatures, although the obvious supposition is that they kept at least one joint bank account.”

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Sinister Cinema: The Mummy’s Ghost

Posted on February 19, 2020 by Don

Now I’ve caught the Pulps in the Movies bug!

The other night I fell into an impromptu Mummy marathon, and personally spotted a woodpulp in the cinematic wild.

The Mummy’s Ghost (1944) with Lon Chaney Jr, John Carradine, even Barton MacLane (Inspector Dundy from the Bogie Falcon) — roughly halfway in, the museum sequence. Oscar O’Shea as the museum watchman does his rounds, then sits in a chair and picks up what appears to be Detective Tales (1935-1953). And yes, soon enough the Mummy grabs his neck in that lefty stranglehold and chokes all the joy out of him, as a gloating Carradine looks on.

I checked with John Locke to see if he had that one in his queue, and of course he did. I mean, The Mummy’s Ghost — for this sort of thing, it’d be like not spotting a pulp in Citizen Kane.

And also of course, John knew which exact fictionmag pulled the cameo: “It’s the March 1942 Detective Tales.”

IMDb trivia reports the movie was shot between August 23 and September 1, 1943, so it was not quite hot off the newsstand.


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