Raymond Chandler’s early writing career was mainly as a poet and essayist for several publications while living in the United Kingdom. But Chandler was not happy with it and returned to the U.S. to become an accountant. After being wounded in the trenches of France, he returned to the U.S. hoping to take up writing. Instead he hired on with… (more…)
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In 1934 at the height of the Great Depression, writer Cornell Woolrich decided to try to reinvent himself as a writer. He had spent most of the late twenties and early thirties attempting to be the next F. Scott Fitzgerald and he was getting nowhere despite a number of novels and short stories behind him some of which had a… (more…)
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Jonathan Latimer was an American crime writer who first was a reporter writing about the likes of Al Capone and Bugsy Moran for the Chicago Tribune and the Herald-Examiner. In the thirties he created a detective character called William Crane in a series of novels Latimer himself referred to as “half-boiled” as his stories were send ups of the likes… (more…)
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A look at the writer, Raymond Chandler. He is considered one of several innovators of the hardboiled American detective story. Most readers know Chandler from his iconic detective – Philip Marlowe. However, the author wrote a number of other stories using other detectives living on hard times. While Dashiell Hammett was a big influence on the writer, Frederick Nebel, another… (more…)
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A previously uncirculated copy of an episode from the radio series, The Adventures of Sam Spade, has surfaced. The copy appears to have been hiding right in front of most eyes but was not in general circulation. It is called “The Dead Duck Caper” from February 2, 1947 and stars Howard Duff as Spade and Lurene Tuttle as Effie. Back… (more…)
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One of Black Mask magazine’s popular writers from 1934-1939 was Dwight V. Babcock. His stories were in keeping with the style developed by Joseph “Cap” Shaw of “hard and brittle” stories with naturalistic elements of street grit. After his stint with Black Mask, Babcock wrote three novels involving “The Gorgeous Ghoul” Hannah Van Doren, who with her friend Joe Kirby… (more…)
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The final episode on the development of the American Detective as heard through radio and fiction. In the early 1920s, pulp writers Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Carroll John Daly, Erle Stanley Gardner and others were creating a new kind of detective: one who was of the streets. Their gritty street smart, tough talking detectives were the first real American detectives… (more…)
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An unusual Raymond Chandler story this time as heard over Suspense. “Pearls Are a Nuisance” was a Chandlerian spoof on the detective genre. Sounding almost Damon Runyon in structure, the story starred William Bendix and Alan Joslyn. This version is very faithful to the original fictional story. It is definitely not what you might expect from Chandler, yet it has… (more…)
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A more indepth look at Raymond Chandler’s iconic private detective, Philip Marlowe. Rising from the pulps of miscellaneous detectives, Chandler hewed his image of his private detective into a Knight Errant, who remained tough, but intelligent. The author’s writings adapted very well to radio as in this radio drama, “The Persian Slippers.” Music under is Night Town from Joni Janak’s… (more…)
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In today’s podcast we’ll look at Dashiell Hammett’s well-known detective … Sam Spade. Probably more than any other writer including Chandler, Hammett defined the no nonsense somewhat anti-woman operative from a detective agency. Sam Spade, as defined by Hammett, was a cool, untrickable, lone sleuth who stood between the cops and the criminals. Hammett calls him “hard and shifty.”
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