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
Tag Archives: Autographs
Rediscovered: The Vampire
Brian Leno keeps the Halloween inbox hopping: Sharp photo with a signed card by John Beal. Poor guy better get a shave if he wants to have any chance at romance with the fainting beauty. Released in theatres as The … Continue reading
Rediscovered: Another Bride
Brian Leno pulls another auto from the cast of James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein: Valerie Hobson, also known as Baroness Frankenstein in Universal’s 1935 classic The Bride of Frankenstein. The signature is a little shaky, as it’s on a … Continue reading
Rediscovered: Dr. Pretorius
Another arcane John Hancock from the vaults of Brian Leno: Dr. Pretorius, Ernest Thesiger, from The Bride of Frankenstein. It’s a great movie but the scene with the little people created by Pretorius is just downright silly. Painful to watch. … Continue reading
Posted in Film
Tagged Autographs, Brian Leno, Bride of Frankenstein, Dr. Pretoruius, Ernest Thesiger, James Whale
Rediscovered: The Gorgon
Brian Leno continues his Halloween cornucopia: The autograph of Prudence Hyman, who played the Gorgon in Hammer’s aptly titled The Gorgon, from 1964. Prudence doubled in the monster scenes for Barbara Shelley, supposedly because she could glide effortlessly across the … Continue reading
Rediscovered: The Halloween Knell
This year Halloween snuck up on me on little cat’s feet, but Brian Leno remembered the annual tradition we’ve had going on with eldritch John Hancocks, year after year. He’s begun popping them in for interested eyeballs: “Pigeons from Hell” … Continue reading
Posted in Film, REH
Tagged Autographs, Boris Karloff, Brian Leno, John Newland, Ottola Nesmith, Thriller
Hammett: At the Commodore
Gary Romeo, perhaps best known in recent years as a staunch booster of L. Sprague de Camp, pops in some history, illustrated: “About 15 years ago I went to the Harry Ransom Center and scanned a bunch of de Camp … Continue reading
Posted in Dash
Tagged 4th American Writers Congress, Autographs, Commodore Hotel, Gary Romeo, Harry Ransom Center, L. Sprague de Camp
Rediscovered: Abe & Roy
Autograph Hound Saturday once more, and that notable maniacal Autograph Hound Brian Leno brings the John Hancock of the famous pulpster Abraham Merritt back to These Mean Streets. Plus the artist Roy Hunt also makes a return, after showing up … Continue reading
Hammett: “D. Hammett”
Autograph Hound Super-Sunday once more, and the noted book and pulp collector Kevin Cook asked if I’d like to put up images from a very recent acquisition to his shelves, “signed by a guy named D. Hammett.” Sure. Why … Continue reading
Posted in Dash
Tagged Autographs, Book Collecting, Hillary Waugh, Kevin Cook, Mysterious Bookshop, Otto Penzler
Two-Gun Bob: June 11, 1926 — 1936 — 2022
Today marks the anniversary of the suicide by gunshot at age thirty of Texas author Robert E. Howard, sitting in his Chevy outside the family home in Cross Plains. Our resident Autograph Hound Brian Leno lays out another John Hancock … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Frisco, Lit, News, REH
Tagged Autographs, Book Collecting, Boris Karloff, Brian Leno, Collier's, Hugh Wiley, literary suicides, San Francisco Mysteries, Steve Eng
Rediscovered: The Death of Kafka and the Triumph of Brod
Brian Leno returns with an autograph to memorialize another anniversary — “an autograph from 1932 with a quotation from a certain Rabbi Tarfon, a saintly man who lived around 100 A.D. The translation is beyond my attempts.” Here’s Brian: On … Continue reading
Posted in Lit, News
Tagged Autographs, Brian Leno, Dora Diamant, Franz Kafka, Gregor Samsa, Max Brod
