If not the most celebrated of noir private dick pictures, The Big Sleep is a pretty tall stick on the way there. Right from the get-go, you know what country you're in, the leads in silhouette, Bogart lighting Bacall's cigarette, behind the titles, the foreboding Max Steiner score. The mansion, the butler, Carmen with her up-from-under look, the general in the hothouse full of orchids, "nasty things, ...like the flesh of men." Not a lot of wasted motion.
It was shot in 1945, right after To Have and Have Not, but Warners didn't release it until '46. In the meantime, they did some reshoots - the famous horse-racing exchange, for one - and Hawks re-cut the picture. The first edit actually makes more sense, and there isn't much difference in the run-times, but the finished product is paced so fast you never get a chance to catch your breath.
People complain the story's too hard to follow. Fair enough. Did the Sternwood chauffeur drive himself off the pier or was it staged? It's a dropped stitch, there's more than one, and nobody gets that worked up over it. Some of this is because of the Production Code. There was stuff they were never going to get away with. The biggest for instance is that Carmen can't have killed anybody, at least not and walk away, so they have to blame it on Eddie Mars. (In the book, Eddie lives to fight another day, and Marlowe even respects him on certain levels.) The book dealer, Geiger, sells pornography to a very select client list that he also blackmails, and the Lundgren kid is his boy-toy. That didn't make it into the picture. Big sister Vivian of course wants to help Carmen out of a jam, but she's not an accessory to murder. And so on. The problem being that if you subtract a key piece, the puzzle falls apart.
On the other hand, it mostly doesn't matter. The movie's all misdirection. It's character, and dialogue. How many pictures have so many amazing bits of business? The script is credited to William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman, with an uncredited assist from Philip Epstein. More than a little comes straight out of Chandler. Can you beat it?
The cop, Bernie Ohls, describing Sean Regan: "The ex-legger Sternwood hired to do his drinking for him."
"I don't like your manners."
"I don't like 'em, either. I grieve over them, long winter evenings."
"Is he as cute as you are?"
"Nobody is."
"You know what he'll do when he comes back? [Canino] Beat my teeth out, then kick me in the stomach for mumbling."
"You're a mess."
"I'm not very tall, either."
Hawks later said the picture proved something he'd already suspected, that with enough foreground razzle-dazzle, you didn't have to worry about narrative logic. "I never figured out what was going on," he told an interviewer, and at the end of the day, nobody else could, either.
Bacall gets the last word, right before the fade-out, after Bogart hangs up on the cops.
"You've forgotten one thing," she says. "Me."
He looks at her. "What's wrong with you?" he asks.
"Nothing you can't fix," she tells him.
Showing posts with label Raymond Chandler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Raymond Chandler. Show all posts
27 June 2018
06 March 2018
Book ’Em, Paulie
A weird thing happened the other day. It’s not a unique thing. It’s not something I’ve never done before—in fact I’ve done it many times. But quite honestly I don’t do it as often as I used to (get your minds out of the gutter here).
I went to a bookstore. And it was almost a revelatory experience.
Now, I have to admit it wasn’t a quirky little independent bookstore. It was a Barnes and Noble. And it was a wonderful experience. The feel of the books. The ability to read the jacket flaps. To see books on display that I might not come across online. And while checking out the clerk had some interesting things to say about one of the books I was buying, A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window.
One of my favorite pastimes is meandering through bookstores. And I'm not a snob about it. I like both the big chain stores and the small independents. Each has strengths and weaknesses. The independents often carry a more eclectic stock or are sometimes dedicated to a single genre, such as mysteries. Their staffs are usually more knowledgeable and well read. The big box stores often have more variety and selection.
But either way, I look at going to bookstores as a social experience. Even if I say no more than "Hello" and "Thank you" to the clerk checking me out, I have a social experience with hundreds of authors and books. And that “hello” is more than I get when shopping online.
Also, on the social level I’ve met women I ended up dating at bookstores (before I was married, of course!) and have seen authors I like do signings and readings. Check out a James Ellroy event some time if you want to see insanity in motion. And I've done signings and speaking gigs at bookstores myself.
I like bookstores that stay open late. That I can run to when an urge for something in particular strikes at an odd hour—and I keep pretty odd hours. It was a place to go. A destination. Before moving out of the city proper (Los Angeles) to a more rural area, I would often hop in the car at all hours to go find a book to satisfy my addiction. But from here, everything is a trek.
But that's getting harder and harder to do, even in the city as there are less bookstores. And yes, I also patronize Amazon, so in that sense I’m part of the problem. But I also still patronize brick and mortar bookstores when I can. And there is nothing like browsing through one, discovering new books and authors. And that’s what it’s all about: Discovery, with a capital D. Whenever I see a bookstore, I want to go in. Whenever I go in, I buy at least one or two things, hoping to help keep the stores afloat and also just cause I like books. And if you saw our house you’d know what I’m talking about. Books everywhere, including on shelves in the garage.
Before my mom got sick for many years, we would often go to lunch and then to a bookstore together. We’d peruse the aisles, not always the same aisles, and both of us would leave with armloads of books. That’s one of my fondest memories of her.
In the olden days, Los Angeles had a ton of bookstores. Specialty stores and general bookstores. Westwood alone (in West Los Angeles, between Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, home of UCLA and the Bruins for you non-Angelinos) had a ton of bookstores. It was so much fun just walking the streets of that little neighborhood and hitting all of them, and maybe getting something to eat and going to a movie as well.
Westwood also had the Mystery Bookstore, which began life as the Mysterious Bookshop in West Hollywood, the West Coast branch of Otto Penzler’s famous Mysterious Bookshop in New York. Both places were treasures in more ways than one and I’m truly sorry that they are no more. Luckily, while in NYC last April I got to visit the original Mysterious Bookshop and it was an amazing amalgam of mystery books. I can’t wait to go back.
Unfortunately, all those Westwood bookstores are gone now.
Other specialty stores that are still with us include, Larry Edmunds for film and TV books and Samuel French that specializes in theatre books.
Back in the day, on Hollywood Boulevard near Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and definitely worth the trip, was Pickwick Books, three stories of book lovers’ delights. And way back in the day, Fitzgerald, Chandler, Faulkner, Bogart, Marlene Dietrich and many other celebs would haunt this place. Though I’m sure F. Scott wished he hadn’t one time. He went into the store and asked if they had The Great Gatsby by one F. Scott Fitzgerald. The clerk told him, “We don’t stock the work of dead authors on this floor. You’ll have to try upstairs [where used books, bargains and the like were kept].” The clerk later said, “I didn’t even recognize him and it’s been making me sick ever since. Especially since he died shortly after that. Another customer who knew him told me my not recognizing him and thinking he was dead had a catastrophic effect on him.”
There were also used book stores (and still are). Down in Long Beach was Acres of Books, a mere 12,000-square-feet. I went there several times but it was a bit of a drive. Closer to home and one of my faves was Book City on Hollywood Boulevard. Partly because of the books and partly because they had one of my favorite pix of the Beatles outside (see pic). They would order hard to find books for me and always came through. And in West Hollywood was the very independent George Sand Books. A small store that held a lot of readings. And even as I put the polish on this piece another one bites the dust: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-caravan-last-chapter-20180301-htmlstory.html
Even most of the mall bookstores are gone. Dalton’s and Walden. And Crown Books. It was always good when I had to go to a mall for one reason or another to be able to duck into a bookstore and pick up something.
There’s still bookstores, of course, though maybe not as many. But hopefully things will shake out and people will want the human and tactile experience of going to bookstores.
I was thinking about including a list of now-gone bookstores, but for many of you, especially outside of LA it wouldn’t really mean anything. Suffice to say there’s a ton of them. But there’s also a bunch (both new and used bookstores) still around, so if you’re in LA you might want to check them out. But remember L.A. is very spread out and even though some places might seem close to one another they might not be. And if I’ve left any off this list, I’m sorry, it’s not intentional:
$10 or Less Bookstore – Tampa Ave., Northridge
Book Soup – Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood
Bookstar – Ventura Blvd, Studio City (owned by B&N)
Chevalier Books – Larchmont Avenue, Hancock Park/Los Angeles
Eso Won Books – Degnan Avenue, Leimert Park (Los Angeles)
Gatsby Books – Spring Street, Long Beach
Iliad Bookshop, The – Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood (near Universal Studios)
Larry Edmund’s – Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood
Last Bookstore, The – Spring Street, downtown L.A.
Mysterious Galaxy – Balboa Avenue, San Diego
Mystery Ink Bookstore – Warner Ave., Huntington Beach
Mystery Pier Books – Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood
Open Book, The – Soledad Canyon, Canyon Country/Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County)
Pop-Hop Bookstore, The – York Boulevard, Highland Park (Los Angeles)
Samuel French – Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood
Skylight Books – Vermont Avenue, Los Feliz (near Hollywood)
Small World Books – Ocean Front Walk/the Venice Boardwalk, Venice Beach
Vroman’s – Colorado Blvd., Pasadena
So, tell us about your city’s bookstores (now and then) and your favorites.
And now for the usual BSP:
I’m happy to say that my story “There’s An Alligator in My Purse” has been selected for the 2018 Bouchercon anthology, Sunny Places, Shady People, edited by Greg Herren. I’m pleased to be included with fellow SleuthSayers Barb Goffman and John Floyd.
Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my website www.PaulDMarks.com
I went to a bookstore. And it was almost a revelatory experience.
Now, I have to admit it wasn’t a quirky little independent bookstore. It was a Barnes and Noble. And it was a wonderful experience. The feel of the books. The ability to read the jacket flaps. To see books on display that I might not come across online. And while checking out the clerk had some interesting things to say about one of the books I was buying, A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window.
One of my favorite pastimes is meandering through bookstores. And I'm not a snob about it. I like both the big chain stores and the small independents. Each has strengths and weaknesses. The independents often carry a more eclectic stock or are sometimes dedicated to a single genre, such as mysteries. Their staffs are usually more knowledgeable and well read. The big box stores often have more variety and selection.
![]() |
L to R: me, Naomi Hirahara, Darrell James and Rochelle Staab at The Mystery Bookstore in Westwood |
Also, on the social level I’ve met women I ended up dating at bookstores (before I was married, of course!) and have seen authors I like do signings and readings. Check out a James Ellroy event some time if you want to see insanity in motion. And I've done signings and speaking gigs at bookstores myself.
I like bookstores that stay open late. That I can run to when an urge for something in particular strikes at an odd hour—and I keep pretty odd hours. It was a place to go. A destination. Before moving out of the city proper (Los Angeles) to a more rural area, I would often hop in the car at all hours to go find a book to satisfy my addiction. But from here, everything is a trek.
![]() |
Me doing a reading at Book Soup in West Hollywood |
![]() |
A scene from the movie Harry and Tonto where you can see Pickwick Books on Hollywood Blvd in the background |
In the olden days, Los Angeles had a ton of bookstores. Specialty stores and general bookstores. Westwood alone (in West Los Angeles, between Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, home of UCLA and the Bruins for you non-Angelinos) had a ton of bookstores. It was so much fun just walking the streets of that little neighborhood and hitting all of them, and maybe getting something to eat and going to a movie as well.
Westwood also had the Mystery Bookstore, which began life as the Mysterious Bookshop in West Hollywood, the West Coast branch of Otto Penzler’s famous Mysterious Bookshop in New York. Both places were treasures in more ways than one and I’m truly sorry that they are no more. Luckily, while in NYC last April I got to visit the original Mysterious Bookshop and it was an amazing amalgam of mystery books. I can’t wait to go back.
Unfortunately, all those Westwood bookstores are gone now.
Other specialty stores that are still with us include, Larry Edmunds for film and TV books and Samuel French that specializes in theatre books.
![]() |
Pickwick Books in Hollywood |
Back in the day, on Hollywood Boulevard near Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and definitely worth the trip, was Pickwick Books, three stories of book lovers’ delights. And way back in the day, Fitzgerald, Chandler, Faulkner, Bogart, Marlene Dietrich and many other celebs would haunt this place. Though I’m sure F. Scott wished he hadn’t one time. He went into the store and asked if they had The Great Gatsby by one F. Scott Fitzgerald. The clerk told him, “We don’t stock the work of dead authors on this floor. You’ll have to try upstairs [where used books, bargains and the like were kept].” The clerk later said, “I didn’t even recognize him and it’s been making me sick ever since. Especially since he died shortly after that. Another customer who knew him told me my not recognizing him and thinking he was dead had a catastrophic effect on him.”
There were also used book stores (and still are). Down in Long Beach was Acres of Books, a mere 12,000-square-feet. I went there several times but it was a bit of a drive. Closer to home and one of my faves was Book City on Hollywood Boulevard. Partly because of the books and partly because they had one of my favorite pix of the Beatles outside (see pic). They would order hard to find books for me and always came through. And in West Hollywood was the very independent George Sand Books. A small store that held a lot of readings. And even as I put the polish on this piece another one bites the dust: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-caravan-last-chapter-20180301-htmlstory.html
![]() |
Book City in Hollywood |
There’s still bookstores, of course, though maybe not as many. But hopefully things will shake out and people will want the human and tactile experience of going to bookstores.
![]() |
Small World Books in Venice Beach |
$10 or Less Bookstore – Tampa Ave., Northridge
Angel City Books and Records – Pier Avenue, Santa Monica
Barnes and Noble – various locationsBook Soup – Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood
BookMonster – Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica
Books on the Boulevard – Ventura Blvd., Sherman OaksBookstar – Ventura Blvd, Studio City (owned by B&N)
Chevalier Books – Larchmont Avenue, Hancock Park/Los Angeles
Eso Won Books – Degnan Avenue, Leimert Park (Los Angeles)
Gatsby Books – Spring Street, Long Beach
Iliad Bookshop, The – Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood (near Universal Studios)
Larry Edmund’s – Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood
Last Bookstore, The – Spring Street, downtown L.A.
Mysterious Galaxy – Balboa Avenue, San Diego
Mystery Ink Bookstore – Warner Ave., Huntington Beach
Mystery Pier Books – Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood
Open Book, The – Soledad Canyon, Canyon Country/Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County)
Pop-Hop Bookstore, The – York Boulevard, Highland Park (Los Angeles)
Samuel French – Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood
Skylight Books – Vermont Avenue, Los Feliz (near Hollywood)
Small World Books – Ocean Front Walk/the Venice Boardwalk, Venice Beach
Vroman’s – Colorado Blvd., Pasadena
So, tell us about your city’s bookstores (now and then) and your favorites.
***
And now for the usual BSP:
I’m happy to say that my story “There’s An Alligator in My Purse” has been selected for the 2018 Bouchercon anthology, Sunny Places, Shady People, edited by Greg Herren. I’m pleased to be included with fellow SleuthSayers Barb Goffman and John Floyd.
Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my website www.PaulDMarks.com
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12 December 2017
Early Clues That I Might Become a Crime Writer
Since we’ve been on fire watch this past week when I’d normally be writing my post I’ve been a little scattered, so I hope you don’t mind a not-so-instant replay (hey, the networks do it over the holidays) of something I did somewhere else some time back. I’m sorry for not having a totally fresh post today, but most of you probably haven’t seen it.
One of the fires was fairly close to us and when it crested the mountain to our side, well, it was a little hairy. Amy left work early and stayed home a couple days just in case we had to evacuate. And, besides the big fires, another one did break out in a barn near us. Luckily they got that out before it spread. But it’s always a little nerve-wracking when the Santa Anas are blowing. Raymond Chandler famously said of those devil winds in Red Wind:
“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”
And because I won’t be posting here again until after the New Year, I want to wish everyone Happy Holidays and a Terrific New Year. And thanks to Rob and Leigh, and the board, for hosting us here, and to all the SleuthSayers and everyone who’s come by to say hi and check things out.
So, here goes. Early warning signs that I would go down this wayward path:
And while the romance of being an outlaw is tempting, I think my temperament is better suited to that of “crime fighter” and crime writer. And not just because they rhyme.
I have a bit of a different take on how I came to be a crime writer. I was influenced by film noir and crime movies and later by the great writers from Hammett and Chandler on up. But because of certain things in my checkered past I think I’ve always had a strong sense of justice. And, while not getting involved in marches or crusades, I’ve tried in my own way to bring a little justice to this world on a micro level.
Someone who knew me well told me a long time ago that he thought I was like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. I don’t think he meant it as a compliment, but I’ll take it as one. As I tell my wife, who would rather avoid confrontation than fight, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but at least you have to stand up for yourself or others. And I don’t do this as much anymore. I guess I’ve mellowed with age and the sage advice of my wife. And also knowing that I can’t fight every battle.
At some point, I figured out one way that I could make justice prevail was to write about it. I think the below stories illustrate what I mean when I say I think I was born to be a crime fighter-writer.
Everything below has been abbreviated and abridged. Names changed to protect the innocent and guilty.
La Barbera’s/West LA:
Many years ago (decades), my mother, grandmother and two brothers and I went to La Barbera’s (sadly no longer there) on Wilshire for dinner. Dad was out of town. We were seated in a booth. My youngest brother and me on one side of the booth. Mother, grandmother and middle brother on the other. The younger one was, well, young, squirming a little in the seat. The man in the next booth could feel him squirm through the seatbacks. He turned around and started yelling at my brother. Yelling and nasty! He finally turned around back to his companion. I didn’t like what he’d done so I started to mimic everything he said so he could hear it. I also started jamming my elbow into the back of the seat, so he could feel it on his side—yeah, I’m a little nuts, or used to be.
So he turned around, started yelling at my brother again. I said “I did it.” He didn’t respond, just turned away. But I couldn’t stop mimicking him. Well, to make a long story short, after some more back and forth, he ended up at our booth—pulling a knife on me. I had long hair and at that time it wasn’t cool with some people. And I thought everyone in the restaurant would de facto be on his side, especially the UCLA jocks sitting nearby on one side and a Marine in dress blues on another. But the jocks were on my side. One stood up and said, “I saw it, the guy pulled a knife on him [me].” And the Marine kept to himself. Eventually, we were moved to another side of the restaurant. Our original waitress came over to us, put her hand on my shoulder and thanked me for putting the guy in his place since he lived near the restaurant and came in every week with his sister causing trouble. But they couldn’t say anything since he was a customer. A couple other waitresses did the same. That made me feel good. But my mom and grandmother almost had heart attacks...
Dupar’s/Farmer’s Market:
Once again out to eat. With grandmother again and whole immediate family this time, dad included. Man in the next booth was yelling at his kid. Nasty. Deriding him for everything. Humiliating. Young kid, maybe around 5, 6, 7. As I say, because of my background things like this get my back up. “Why don’t you leave him alone?” I said. Uh oh! Paul’s at it again, the family thinks. Tell me to shut up. Nobody pulled a knife this time and the man’s wife finally got him to shut up. But I couldn’t help myself. And when it was over, nobody at my table said anything to me for some time. I guess they thought here goes crazy Paul again.
The Bus/Westwood:
A friend of mine and I were in Westwood which, at the time was a hub of activity. Crowded sidewalks. Lots of street traffic. A bus pulled up to a bus stop. An old man was running for it—“running” as best as he could. The bus driver saw him but didn’t wait. I was pissed. So I ran down to the next bus stop a block or two away, beating the bus by seconds—he was in traffic. When the driver opened the door I said “Why didn’t you wait for that old man?” The driver told me to “&#%*#@$ off” and drove off. I didn’t win that one, but maybe the next time the driver saw an old man running for his bus he would wait for him. Nah, not that guy. —And, of course, I’m abbreviating our conversation, but that’s what it amounted to.
The LAPD/West LA
I can honestly say that I pulled a gun on the LAPD and lived to tell about it. After all, here I am.
According to some people, if the LAPD is known for one thing it's for being trigger happy, ready to bust people up. Well, I'm happy to be able to say that I'm one of the few people to have pulled a gun on two cops and lived to tell about.
The first time it happened, I was in my apartment (the only upstairs unit in a four unit building) and heard yelling and screaming. I went outside. Sally’s (name changed) boyfriend said something about her being attacked and the guy was in the alley. Her boyfriend and I chased him down the alley. The police came out in force, including choppers that lit up the alley like daylight. But they didn’t’ catch the guy.
Every night after the first I would search her apartment for her when she came home from work, if her boyfriend wasn’t there. I'd let her sleep on my couch. And then she started staying at her boyfriend’s place off and on, so I asked her to let me know if the cops were going to stake out her apartment. She said she would.
Then, one night I’m watching “In a Lonely Place” on the tube (one of my favorite movies) when I heard helicopter noises. I grabbed my politically incorrect pistol, headed to my front door. I opened the door slowly and headed out to the landing at the top of my stairs. I watched a chopper circle above. Then, two scuzzballs came out of Sally's apartment at the bottom of the stairs. Greasy long hair. Big mustaches. Dirty clothes. The bad guy and a friend?
This was one of those situations where you don't have time to think. You have to act.
"Hold it," I said, aiming near-point blank at them only a few yards below. I could have dropped them both before they had a chance to turn around. "Turn around, slowly."
It was just like in the movies.
They did as ordered. Turned s-l-o-w-l-y.
"We're the police," the scuzzier of the two said. "Put the gun away and go inside."
I asked for ID and he badged me, cautiously. That was good enough for me. I went inside. So much for a trigger happy LAPD, though I wouldn’t try this today. It’s a whole different world.
Back in my apartment, “In a Lonely Place” was still on. And then the reality hit. Jesus, they were cops. And I had pulled a gun on them. The movie droned in the background. It could have been anything as far as I was concerned. I was freaking out. Visions of SWAT teams surrounding my apartment flashed through my mind.
The thoughts grew larger. What should I do? Sally hadn’t told me the police were staking out her place, as she’d promised. Now I’d pulled a gun on two cops. I called her apartment. One of the cops answered.
"Are you the guy from upstairs with the gun?" he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Man, you really made me nervous."
Not as nervous as I was when I found out you were the cops, I thought, but didn't say. He was cool. They weren't going to bust me. I had, indeed, pulled a gun on the LAPD and lived to tell about it.
Sally moved out not too long after that. And, shortly after that the Westside Rapist was caught a block away. Not sure if it was the same guy who attacked Sally, but I tend to think it was.
![clip_image008 clip_image008](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-LEL3Zc30p9I/VV6tdPnge5I/AAAAAAAAB7A/n4AvkRrZi8M/clip_image008_thumb%25255B50%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
So there you have it. My crazy adventures seeking truth, justice and the American Way...and there’s more. But I guess that’s for another time. So when I started writing I naturally gravitated towards telling stories where the bad guys would get punished. What better genre to do that than crime writing. Of course, sometimes, especially in the noir genre, the bad guys don’t get caught, but then there is always the great hand of fate that I can bring down on them as I sit at my computer screen in my captain’s chair and steer my boat to exact revenge and justice in the world. …Okay, so I’m a little over the top but you get the idea.
I don’t do this much anymore – after all, someone might pull a gun on me. And I don’t think the bullets would bounce off my chest.
Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my website www.PaulDMarks.com
One of the fires was fairly close to us and when it crested the mountain to our side, well, it was a little hairy. Amy left work early and stayed home a couple days just in case we had to evacuate. And, besides the big fires, another one did break out in a barn near us. Luckily they got that out before it spread. But it’s always a little nerve-wracking when the Santa Anas are blowing. Raymond Chandler famously said of those devil winds in Red Wind:
“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”
And because I won’t be posting here again until after the New Year, I want to wish everyone Happy Holidays and a Terrific New Year. And thanks to Rob and Leigh, and the board, for hosting us here, and to all the SleuthSayers and everyone who’s come by to say hi and check things out.
So, here goes. Early warning signs that I would go down this wayward path:
Well, aside from the seven banks I robbed and my days as a benevolent hitman, sure, there were signs I might become a crime writer. But I was disappointed never to make it onto the FBI’s Top Ten.
And while the romance of being an outlaw is tempting, I think my temperament is better suited to that of “crime fighter” and crime writer. And not just because they rhyme.
I have a bit of a different take on how I came to be a crime writer. I was influenced by film noir and crime movies and later by the great writers from Hammett and Chandler on up. But because of certain things in my checkered past I think I’ve always had a strong sense of justice. And, while not getting involved in marches or crusades, I’ve tried in my own way to bring a little justice to this world on a micro level.
Someone who knew me well told me a long time ago that he thought I was like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. I don’t think he meant it as a compliment, but I’ll take it as one. As I tell my wife, who would rather avoid confrontation than fight, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but at least you have to stand up for yourself or others. And I don’t do this as much anymore. I guess I’ve mellowed with age and the sage advice of my wife. And also knowing that I can’t fight every battle.
At some point, I figured out one way that I could make justice prevail was to write about it. I think the below stories illustrate what I mean when I say I think I was born to be a crime fighter-writer.
Everything below has been abbreviated and abridged. Names changed to protect the innocent and guilty.
La Barbera’s/West LA:
![clip_image002 clip_image002](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-jPB72hsM3-I/VV6taQrxJsI/AAAAAAAAB6Q/dbRcEkQ2gqQ/clip_image002_thumb.jpg?imgmax=800)
So he turned around, started yelling at my brother again. I said “I did it.” He didn’t respond, just turned away. But I couldn’t stop mimicking him. Well, to make a long story short, after some more back and forth, he ended up at our booth—pulling a knife on me. I had long hair and at that time it wasn’t cool with some people. And I thought everyone in the restaurant would de facto be on his side, especially the UCLA jocks sitting nearby on one side and a Marine in dress blues on another. But the jocks were on my side. One stood up and said, “I saw it, the guy pulled a knife on him [me].” And the Marine kept to himself. Eventually, we were moved to another side of the restaurant. Our original waitress came over to us, put her hand on my shoulder and thanked me for putting the guy in his place since he lived near the restaurant and came in every week with his sister causing trouble. But they couldn’t say anything since he was a customer. A couple other waitresses did the same. That made me feel good. But my mom and grandmother almost had heart attacks...
Dupar’s/Farmer’s Market:
![clip_image004 clip_image004](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-WjEbqPsIXn8/VV6tbfwpkEI/AAAAAAAAB6g/lPlOStqEObs/clip_image004_thumb%25255B168%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
Once again out to eat. With grandmother again and whole immediate family this time, dad included. Man in the next booth was yelling at his kid. Nasty. Deriding him for everything. Humiliating. Young kid, maybe around 5, 6, 7. As I say, because of my background things like this get my back up. “Why don’t you leave him alone?” I said. Uh oh! Paul’s at it again, the family thinks. Tell me to shut up. Nobody pulled a knife this time and the man’s wife finally got him to shut up. But I couldn’t help myself. And when it was over, nobody at my table said anything to me for some time. I guess they thought here goes crazy Paul again.
The Bus/Westwood:
A friend of mine and I were in Westwood which, at the time was a hub of activity. Crowded sidewalks. Lots of street traffic. A bus pulled up to a bus stop. An old man was running for it—“running” as best as he could. The bus driver saw him but didn’t wait. I was pissed. So I ran down to the next bus stop a block or two away, beating the bus by seconds—he was in traffic. When the driver opened the door I said “Why didn’t you wait for that old man?” The driver told me to “&#%*#@$ off” and drove off. I didn’t win that one, but maybe the next time the driver saw an old man running for his bus he would wait for him. Nah, not that guy. —And, of course, I’m abbreviating our conversation, but that’s what it amounted to.
The LAPD/West LA
I can honestly say that I pulled a gun on the LAPD and lived to tell about it. After all, here I am.
According to some people, if the LAPD is known for one thing it's for being trigger happy, ready to bust people up. Well, I'm happy to be able to say that I'm one of the few people to have pulled a gun on two cops and lived to tell about.
* * *
I was living in a four unit apartment building in West LA, a good neighborhood. Three downstairs units, one upstairs unit. I lived in the upstairs unit and had a view of the front door to the middle apartment downstairs from the top of the outdoor stairs. The woman who lived there had been attacked by a guy who tried to rape her. Her face was black and blue from the first attack. The first time it happened, I was in my apartment (the only upstairs unit in a four unit building) and heard yelling and screaming. I went outside. Sally’s (name changed) boyfriend said something about her being attacked and the guy was in the alley. Her boyfriend and I chased him down the alley. The police came out in force, including choppers that lit up the alley like daylight. But they didn’t’ catch the guy.
Every night after the first I would search her apartment for her when she came home from work, if her boyfriend wasn’t there. I'd let her sleep on my couch. And then she started staying at her boyfriend’s place off and on, so I asked her to let me know if the cops were going to stake out her apartment. She said she would.
![clip_image006 clip_image006](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-10rUQZ8p-i4/VV6tcIdmmYI/AAAAAAAAB6s/AoC6jeGfXUc/clip_image006_thumb%25255B153%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
This was one of those situations where you don't have time to think. You have to act.
"Hold it," I said, aiming near-point blank at them only a few yards below. I could have dropped them both before they had a chance to turn around. "Turn around, slowly."
It was just like in the movies.
They did as ordered. Turned s-l-o-w-l-y.
"We're the police," the scuzzier of the two said. "Put the gun away and go inside."
I asked for ID and he badged me, cautiously. That was good enough for me. I went inside. So much for a trigger happy LAPD, though I wouldn’t try this today. It’s a whole different world.
Back in my apartment, “In a Lonely Place” was still on. And then the reality hit. Jesus, they were cops. And I had pulled a gun on them. The movie droned in the background. It could have been anything as far as I was concerned. I was freaking out. Visions of SWAT teams surrounding my apartment flashed through my mind.
The thoughts grew larger. What should I do? Sally hadn’t told me the police were staking out her place, as she’d promised. Now I’d pulled a gun on two cops. I called her apartment. One of the cops answered.
"Are you the guy from upstairs with the gun?" he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Man, you really made me nervous."
Not as nervous as I was when I found out you were the cops, I thought, but didn't say. He was cool. They weren't going to bust me. I had, indeed, pulled a gun on the LAPD and lived to tell about it.
Sally moved out not too long after that. And, shortly after that the Westside Rapist was caught a block away. Not sure if it was the same guy who attacked Sally, but I tend to think it was.
***
![clip_image008 clip_image008](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-LEL3Zc30p9I/VV6tdPnge5I/AAAAAAAAB7A/n4AvkRrZi8M/clip_image008_thumb%25255B50%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
So there you have it. My crazy adventures seeking truth, justice and the American Way...and there’s more. But I guess that’s for another time. So when I started writing I naturally gravitated towards telling stories where the bad guys would get punished. What better genre to do that than crime writing. Of course, sometimes, especially in the noir genre, the bad guys don’t get caught, but then there is always the great hand of fate that I can bring down on them as I sit at my computer screen in my captain’s chair and steer my boat to exact revenge and justice in the world. …Okay, so I’m a little over the top but you get the idea.
I don’t do this much anymore – after all, someone might pull a gun on me. And I don’t think the bullets would bounce off my chest.
*** *** ***
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Labels:
Dashiell Hammett,
Don Quixote,
Paul D. Marks,
Raymond Chandler,
Superman,
writers,
writing
04 April 2017
Cornell Woolrich: The Forgotten Man
by Paul D. Marks
Cornell Woolrich was one of the most popular writers of crime/mystery fiction in the mid twentieth century. He also wrote under the names William Irish and George Hopely. Today he’s largely forgotten at least on the written page. But I’m not going to talk about him as a writer per se. I’m going to talk about him as the hardboiled or noir writer who’s had more stories adapted for film than any other.
To give some idea of his popularity on celluloid, on IMDB there are 103 movies credited to him, including foreign movies. Chandler has 37. Hammett: 33. David Goodis 19. Mostly these are “based on” credits, but Chandler, Goodis and even Hammett actually wrote screenplays (the latter for Watch on the Rhine, not a mystery or noir, but a World War II propaganda flick).
The first movie based on a Woolrich story (writing as William Irish) was The Haunted House in 1928. The credit reads “titles,” so I assume that means he was writing the titles for a silent movie. The first flick credited to a story of his is Children of the Ritz (1929). The last movie listed on IMDB based on one of his stories is She’s No Angel (2002), based on I Married a Dead Man, which had been filmed several times before both domestically and in other countries. The American version was called No Man of Her Own (1950).
So 1928 to 2002 is a pretty good run, with over a hundred adaptations. And I suspect it’s not the end of his run.
Woolrich started out writing Fitzgerald-like stories, but found his niche in the mystery-suspense field, writing both short stories and novels. He spent some time in Hollywood but eventually returned to New York, where he lived in a hotel with his mother until she died, then he moved to another hotel. In the early days of his return to NYC he socialized with fans and MWA members. But alcoholism and the loss of a leg to gangrene because of a too tight shoe and the infection it caused, plus not going to the doctor soon enough, turned him into a recluse. A closeted homosexual, he spent the last years of his life alone and lonely. Nobody attended his funeral in 1968.
Here’s a handful of noir and mystery movies based on his work:
Phantom Lady, 1944: A man (Alan Curtis) and his wife have a fight on their anniversary. He takes a powder and picks up a woman in a bar. When he finally returns home he finds his wife strangled with one of his ties, the police crawling all over his place. And guess who’s the prime suspect? At first the only person who really seems to believe in him is his secretary, the bewitching Ella Raines. Curtis was seen by several people while out that night, but when Rains or the police talk to them they deny it. Eventually Curtis’ best friend (Franchot Tone) returns from South America (I hope I’m remembering this right) and Ella hopes he can help out. Noir icon Elisha Cook, Jr. has a great turn as a crazed drummer. A pretty good B flick, directed by Robert Siodmak.
Black Angel,1946: Blackmailer Mavis Marlowe is murdered. Kirk Bennet, a married guy with a loyal wife, is sentenced for the crime. His wife teams up with Marlowe’s ex-husband, an alkie composer and pianist, Dan Duryea, to try to find the real killer before the state executes her husband. Peter Lorre does a turn as a sleazy nightclub owner. Hey, it’s Peter Lorre, can the club owner be anything but sleazy? And any noir with Duryea is worth watching.
The Chase,1946: From the No Good Deed Goes Unpunished school of storytelling. Down on his heels World War II vet Robert Cummings returns a lost wallet to gangster Eddie Roman. Roman rewards him with a job as his chauffeur. Eventually Cummings volunteers to help Eddie’s wife, Michelle Morgan, escape her crazy husband. Will they get away to sail into the sunset together?
Deadline at Dawn,1946: A sailor wakes up with a stash of cash after a night of heavy drinking (hey, he’s a swabbie, what do you expect). With the help of dance hall girl Susan Hayward he tries to find the woman it belongs to, and does. Just one problem: she’s dead. He’s not sure if he did the deed or not. And now they only have a few hours to find out the truth before his leave is up.
Fear in the Night x 2, 1947 & 1956: A man (who should have been in outer space—DeForest Kelly) dreams he committed a murder in a strange mirror-covered octagonal room. He wakes up with unusual marks on his throat, blood on his sleeve. His cop brother-in-law tries to convince him that it was just a dream—but he’s freaking out. The cop, his wife, DeForest and his girl go on a picnic to a weird house in the woods…and find a mirrored room just like the one he dreamt about. What the hell’s going on?—I have to admit that, while I like all the movies here, I really love this low-budget flick. I’m not saying it’s even good. There’s just something I like about it. The sort of surreal aspect maybe. Remade as Nightmare (the title of the story it’s based on) with Edward G. Robinson and Kevin McCarthy in ’56. Almost an exact remake, but it lacks something, IMO, that Fear in the Night has.
The Window,1949: Woolrich’s version of the boy who cried wolf. It’s hot and sultry in the city, so 9 year old teller-of-tall-tales Tommy decides to sleep on the fire escape, but instead of doing it outside his apartment he does it at a higher one to get a better breeze. While there, he sees the Kellersons murder someone. But no one will believe him because he’s the boy who cries wolf. Well, the Kellersons believe him and they want to silence him...
Rear Window x 2 – 1954 & 1998: POSSIBLE SPOILER AHEAD. Forget the 1998 version, though it does have one unique thing. Christopher Reeve plays the wheelchair-bound photog played by Jimmy Stewart in the original. And he’s really confined to a wheelchair because of his fall off of a horse. That’s interesting, but the movie doesn’t touch the original. And for those out there who’ve never seen it, L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries (Stewart) is confined to a wheelchair in his apartment because of a broken leg. He likes to spy on his neighbors in the voyeuristic way that Hitchcock loves so much (Oh, did I forget to mention this is a Hitchcock flick?) So he’s watching his weird, wild and sad collection of neighbors across the courtyard when he sees someone who looks suspiciously like Perry Mason murder his wife. He soon involves his girlfriend (Grace Kelly) and his nurse (Thelma Ritter) in trying to ferret out what happened. Rear Window is one of Hitchcock’s 1950s string of great and classic flicks that includes Vertigo, Strangers on a Train, The Man Who Knew Too Much, North by Northwest and more.
Besides movies, Woolrich’s stories have also been adapted for various radio and television shows, including The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Suspicion, Thriller and Fallen Angels.
I picked this group of films from the huge selection of Woolrich adaptations because to one degree or another (not including the Rear Window remake) I like them all and would recommend them as decent adaptations of his work.
Woolrich was very successful, but ultimately lived a life somewhat like his stories, sad, friendless and abandoned. There’s something very noir about the way his life played out.
And congratulations to O’Neil, Herschel, B.K. and R.T. on their Derringer noms! Good luck!
And now for a little BSP:
I’m thrilled to announce that my short story, “Ghosts of Bunker Hill,” was voted #1 in the 2016 Ellery Queen Readers Poll. If you’d like to read it (and maybe consider it for other awards) you can read it free on my website: http://pauldmarks.com/stories/
Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea is available at Amazon.com and Down & Out Books.
Cornell Woolrich was one of the most popular writers of crime/mystery fiction in the mid twentieth century. He also wrote under the names William Irish and George Hopely. Today he’s largely forgotten at least on the written page. But I’m not going to talk about him as a writer per se. I’m going to talk about him as the hardboiled or noir writer who’s had more stories adapted for film than any other.
To give some idea of his popularity on celluloid, on IMDB there are 103 movies credited to him, including foreign movies. Chandler has 37. Hammett: 33. David Goodis 19. Mostly these are “based on” credits, but Chandler, Goodis and even Hammett actually wrote screenplays (the latter for Watch on the Rhine, not a mystery or noir, but a World War II propaganda flick).
The first movie based on a Woolrich story (writing as William Irish) was The Haunted House in 1928. The credit reads “titles,” so I assume that means he was writing the titles for a silent movie. The first flick credited to a story of his is Children of the Ritz (1929). The last movie listed on IMDB based on one of his stories is She’s No Angel (2002), based on I Married a Dead Man, which had been filmed several times before both domestically and in other countries. The American version was called No Man of Her Own (1950).
So 1928 to 2002 is a pretty good run, with over a hundred adaptations. And I suspect it’s not the end of his run.
Woolrich started out writing Fitzgerald-like stories, but found his niche in the mystery-suspense field, writing both short stories and novels. He spent some time in Hollywood but eventually returned to New York, where he lived in a hotel with his mother until she died, then he moved to another hotel. In the early days of his return to NYC he socialized with fans and MWA members. But alcoholism and the loss of a leg to gangrene because of a too tight shoe and the infection it caused, plus not going to the doctor soon enough, turned him into a recluse. A closeted homosexual, he spent the last years of his life alone and lonely. Nobody attended his funeral in 1968.
Here’s a handful of noir and mystery movies based on his work:
The Chase,1946: From the No Good Deed Goes Unpunished school of storytelling. Down on his heels World War II vet Robert Cummings returns a lost wallet to gangster Eddie Roman. Roman rewards him with a job as his chauffeur. Eventually Cummings volunteers to help Eddie’s wife, Michelle Morgan, escape her crazy husband. Will they get away to sail into the sunset together?
Deadline at Dawn,1946: A sailor wakes up with a stash of cash after a night of heavy drinking (hey, he’s a swabbie, what do you expect). With the help of dance hall girl Susan Hayward he tries to find the woman it belongs to, and does. Just one problem: she’s dead. He’s not sure if he did the deed or not. And now they only have a few hours to find out the truth before his leave is up.
Fear in the Night x 2, 1947 & 1956: A man (who should have been in outer space—DeForest Kelly) dreams he committed a murder in a strange mirror-covered octagonal room. He wakes up with unusual marks on his throat, blood on his sleeve. His cop brother-in-law tries to convince him that it was just a dream—but he’s freaking out. The cop, his wife, DeForest and his girl go on a picnic to a weird house in the woods…and find a mirrored room just like the one he dreamt about. What the hell’s going on?—I have to admit that, while I like all the movies here, I really love this low-budget flick. I’m not saying it’s even good. There’s just something I like about it. The sort of surreal aspect maybe. Remade as Nightmare (the title of the story it’s based on) with Edward G. Robinson and Kevin McCarthy in ’56. Almost an exact remake, but it lacks something, IMO, that Fear in the Night has.
The Window,1949: Woolrich’s version of the boy who cried wolf. It’s hot and sultry in the city, so 9 year old teller-of-tall-tales Tommy decides to sleep on the fire escape, but instead of doing it outside his apartment he does it at a higher one to get a better breeze. While there, he sees the Kellersons murder someone. But no one will believe him because he’s the boy who cries wolf. Well, the Kellersons believe him and they want to silence him...
Rear Window x 2 – 1954 & 1998: POSSIBLE SPOILER AHEAD. Forget the 1998 version, though it does have one unique thing. Christopher Reeve plays the wheelchair-bound photog played by Jimmy Stewart in the original. And he’s really confined to a wheelchair because of his fall off of a horse. That’s interesting, but the movie doesn’t touch the original. And for those out there who’ve never seen it, L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries (Stewart) is confined to a wheelchair in his apartment because of a broken leg. He likes to spy on his neighbors in the voyeuristic way that Hitchcock loves so much (Oh, did I forget to mention this is a Hitchcock flick?) So he’s watching his weird, wild and sad collection of neighbors across the courtyard when he sees someone who looks suspiciously like Perry Mason murder his wife. He soon involves his girlfriend (Grace Kelly) and his nurse (Thelma Ritter) in trying to ferret out what happened. Rear Window is one of Hitchcock’s 1950s string of great and classic flicks that includes Vertigo, Strangers on a Train, The Man Who Knew Too Much, North by Northwest and more.
Besides movies, Woolrich’s stories have also been adapted for various radio and television shows, including The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Suspicion, Thriller and Fallen Angels.
I picked this group of films from the huge selection of Woolrich adaptations because to one degree or another (not including the Rear Window remake) I like them all and would recommend them as decent adaptations of his work.
Woolrich was very successful, but ultimately lived a life somewhat like his stories, sad, friendless and abandoned. There’s something very noir about the way his life played out.
***
And now for a little BSP:
I’m thrilled to announce that my short story, “Ghosts of Bunker Hill,” was voted #1 in the 2016 Ellery Queen Readers Poll. If you’d like to read it (and maybe consider it for other awards) you can read it free on my website: http://pauldmarks.com/stories/
Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea is available at Amazon.com and Down & Out Books.
Labels:
Alfred Hitchcock,
Cornell Woolrich,
Dan Duryea,
Dashiell Hammett,
David Goodis,
DeForest Kelly,
film noir,
hardboiled,
Jimmy Stewart,
mystery,
noir,
Raymond Chandler,
Rear Window
10 January 2017
I am Arturo Bandini
![]() |
By Nail Babayev (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons |
“Fante was my God,” Charles Bukowski wrote in the introduction to a later edition of Ask the Dust.
***
This post is the tale of a young punk and John Fante, author of Ask the Dust, Dreams from Bunker Hill, Wait Until Spring, Bandini, and more. They never met, they never talked, they never corresponded (though sort of), but one was greatly influenced by the other.
Some time before Fante died, the young punk discovered his work, especially his seminal work, Ask the Dust, about Arturo Bandini (Fante’s alter ego), a young writer struggling in Los Angeles in the 1930s. The young punk devoured everything of Fante’s he could get his hands on, and at that time not everything was in print as Fante hadn’t been rediscovered yet. The punk thought that Fante was speaking to him, writing about him. The punk related to Bandini’s struggles and aspirations.
Ask the Dust is Bandini’s story. Bandini was born to be a writer and he is more than excited when he sells his first short story. Fante, uh, Bandini, was a struggling writer living in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles in the 1930s (see my piece on Sleuth Sayers from 12/2016 – http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2016/12/remembering-los-angeles-bunker-hill-in.html for more on Bunker Hill). Even then the once-impressive neighborhood, filled with grand Victorian mansions, was rundown. Many of the mansions had been turned into cheap rooming houses. Both Fante and Bandini lived in cheap hotels there, Fante in the Alta Vista, renamed the Alta Loma for Bandini:
The hotel was called the Alta Loma. It was built on a hillside in reverse, there on the crest of Bunker Hill, built against the decline of the hill, so that the main floor was on the level with the street but the tenth floor was downstairs ten levels. If you had room 862, you got in the elevator and went down eight floors, and if you wanted to go down in the truck room, you didn't go down but up to the attic, one floor above the main floor. – John Fante, Ask the Dust
Bandini (Fante) traveled the streets of downtown LA, from Pershing Square to the Grand Central Market, where he liked to look for girls. Bandini was elated when he finally sold his first short story, as was the punk when he sold his first paid piece – an article on John Lennon.
Screenwriter Towne decided he wanted to make a movie of the book. His dream finally came true in 2006, with mixed results. But one thing that the movie got right was the sets, at least in tone. Built on two “football” fields in South Africa, they recreated the look and feel of the hot and dusty Bunker Hill of the 1930s. Maybe every little thing isn’t in the exact place it should be, maybe every little detail isn’t exactly right, but the overall ambience and milieu is there and you feel like you’re there among the hoi polloi and the people just hustling to get by. And you feel that you could run into Bandini – or Fante – in a diner or the Columbia Buffet on Spring Street.
***
And those images of the Bunker Hill that used to be linger still in the movie playing before the not-so-young-anymore punk’s eyes. A romantic vision of shabby gentility. Or maybe not so much gentility as seen in several noir movies that were filmed there in the 1940s and 50s, including Criss Cross, Kiss Me, Deadly and Cry Danger.
***
The young punk identified with Bandini and Fante. And even young punks who think they’re cool have idols and one of this young punk’s idols was John Fante. To that end, he decided to reach out to Fante.
As a young man, Fante had begun a correspondence with H.L. Mencken, journalist, scholar and co-founder of a magazine most of the readers here will know, Black Mask. The punk hoped to have a similar relationship with Fante. He sent Fante a long, 3 page single spaced typed letter. It was a fan letter, but also more than simply a fan letter, and the young punk hoped to begin a correspondence with Fante like Fante had had with Mencken.
The young punk had done a lot of things like that, writing to a lot of well-known people. Got letters back from some, phone calls from others (Cary Grant), and was even invited to Gene Kelly’s house. And from others nothing. As time went on, the punk started to lose hope that he would ever hear from Fante.
Even though Fante eventually had success in Hollywood, writing movies like Full of Life, Walk on the Wild Side and others, he never seemed like a happy man. He thought of himself as a well-paid Hollywood whore. And the punk knew that Fante was bitter and angry and in failing health. He never did hear back. He figured Fante was too sick or too angry or both.
On April 8, 2010, John Fante’s 101st birthday, Fante Square was dedicated in downtown L.A., near Bunker Hill. The area may have changed a lot, but the spirit of Fante and the old Bunker Hill is still there.
Fante died on May 8, 1983 and the not-so-young punk liked to think that maybe Fante read his letter or a family member read it to him before he died. And the punk kept writing, hoping to someday be able to say “I am Arturo Bandini.”
Books by Fante:
The Road to Los Angeles (1936, publ.1985)
Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938)
Ask the Dust (1939)
Dago Red (1940), short story collection
Full of Life (1952)
Brave Burro (book, with Rudolph Borchert) (1970)
The Brotherhood of the Grape (1977)
Dreams from Bunker Hill (1982)
The Wine of Youth: Selected Stories (posthumously, 1985), Dago Red and short story collection
1933 Was a Bad Year (post., 1985; incomplete)
West of Rome (post., 1986), two novellas
Fante/Mencken: John Fante & H. L. Mencken: A Personal Correspondence, 1932–1950 (post., 1989), letters
John Fante: Selected Letters, 1932–1981 (post., 1991), letters
The Big Hunger: Stories, 1932–1959 (post., 2000), short story collection
###
And now for the usual BSP:
Coming on January 30th from Down & Out Books:
Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea
A collection of 15 Private Eye stories from some of the best mystery and noir writers from across the country. Available for pre-order now on Amazon:
And I have a couple of appearances in January.
Santa Clarita: The Old Town Newhall Library
Saturday, January 14, 2017, from 10:00 AM-3:00 PM.
24500 Main St, Santa Clarita, CA 91321
Cerritos Library, where I’ll be moderating a panel:
Saturday, January 28 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
18025 Bloomfield Avenue, Cerritos, CA 90703
Coming on January 30th from Down & Out Books:
A collection of 15 Private Eye stories from some of the best mystery and noir writers from across the country. Available for pre-order now on Amazon:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYTEyEKWyUvNcQVa5yEGVKR4xJbOCABfCls15KLeD7DYndR44iKgP9PkQVK8NSMG4_IjoF1KlDt-5DuXKR_eh_bgE7c-x6G3XFdHze6MFFZkbrFFbc_4vNa31hyphenhyphenTQ7HpjVXaHMKHjNzs4/s320/COVER_Coast+to+Coast2_x2700.jpg)
Santa Clarita: The Old Town Newhall Library
Saturday, January 14, 2017, from 10:00 AM-3:00 PM.
24500 Main St, Santa Clarita, CA 91321
Cerritos Library, where I’ll be moderating a panel:
Saturday, January 28 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
18025 Bloomfield Avenue, Cerritos, CA 90703
Labels:
Black Mask,
Bunker Hill,
Charles Bukowski,
Chinatown,
H.L. Mencken,
John Fante,
Raymond Chandler,
Robert Towne
20 December 2016
Remembering Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill in Books and Movies
When Raymond Chandler talked about a man neither tarnished nor afraid navigating the mean streets, I have no doubt he was talking about that man walking the streets of Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill neighborhood.
For my first SleuthSayers post on February 24, 2015, I wrote a column called Adventures in La La Land (http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2015/02/adventures-in-la-la-land.html), where I talked about Los Angeles, how it influences my writing and memories of growing up here. One area that I didn’t mention then was Bunker Hill. That is Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, not that “other” one on the East Coast.
And since my story Ghosts of Bunker Hill appears in the December, 2016 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (though I think it’s only available on newsstands until today, the 20th) I thought I’d take this opportunity to rectify that, especially as Bunker Hill has influenced both that story and my writing in general.
If you’ve been to the Music Center in downtown L.A. you’ve “been” to Bunker Hill. If you’re into film noir, you’ve “been” to Bunker Hill. Many times. Numerous film noirs—as well as movies in other genres—were shot there: Criss Cross, Cry Danger, Kiss Me Deadly, Joseph Losey’s M, The Brasher Doubloon, Backfire, the Judy Garland version of A Star is Born, The Glenn Miller Story and Angel’s Flight, an interesting, gritty, ultra low-budget noir. And L.A.’s Bunker Hill has stood in for many other cities as well.
Bunker Hill was L.A.’s first wealthy residential neighborhood, right near downtown. It was filled with glorious Victorian mansions, as well as offices, storefronts, hotels, etc. After WWI the swells moved west and the neighborhood got run down and became housing for poor people. It wasn’t shiny enough for the Powers That Be, who wanted to build up and refurbish downtown. Out with the old, the poor, the lonely, in with the new, the young, the hip. The wealthy.
By the time Raymond Chandler, who had lived there a couple of different times in his life, was writing about it he was calling it “shabby town”. In The High Window (1942), he said:
Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town. Once, very long ago, it was the choice residential district of the city, and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw Gothic mansions with wide porches and walls covered with round-end shingles and full corner bay windows with spindle turrets. They are all rooming houses now, their parquetry floors are scratched and worn through the once glossy finish and the wide sweeping staircases are dark with time and with cheap varnish laid on over generations of dirt. In the tall rooms haggard landladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the wide cool front porches, reaching their cracked shoes into the sun, and staring at nothing, sit the old men with faces like lost battles.
―Raymond Chandler, The High Window
Bunker Hill is also where John Fante (and his character Arturo Bandini) lived when he first moved to Los Angeles from Colorado. The struggling writer wrote about that experience:
One night I was sitting on the bed in my hotel room on Bunker Hill, down in the middle of Los Angeles. It was an important night in my life, because I had to make a decision about the hotel. Either I paid up or I got out: that was what the note said, the note the landlady had put under my door. A great problem, deserving acute attention. I solved it by turning out the lights and going to bed.
―John Fante, Ask the Dust
And Bunker Hill is where the famous Angels Flight funicular railway is/was. As a kid, I got to ride the original Angels Flight, which was a thrill then and still is in memory. I guess Bandini preferred to walk alongside it instead of riding in the little cars:
I took the steps down Angel’s Flight to Hill Street: a hundred and forty steps, with tight fists, frightened of no man, but scared of the Third Street Tunnel, scared to walk through it—claustrophobia. Scared of high places too, and of blood, and of earthquakes; otherwise, quite fearless, excepting death, except the fear I’ll scream in a crowd, except the fear of appendicitis, except the fear of heart trouble, even that, sitting in his room holding the clock and pressing his jugular vein, counting out his heartbeats, listening to the weird purr and whirr of his stomach. Otherwise, quite fearless.
―John Fante, Ask the Dust
Angels Flight was later moved up the street and a “new and improved” Angels Flight was put in, but it closed not too long after it opened. So it might have been new, definitely not improved. And it makes me think of the old saw about how they don’t make ’em like they used to. I talk more about it in the Adventures in La La Land post and in Ghosts of Bunker Hill:
I stood at the bottom of the hill, staring up at Angels Flight, the famous little funicular railway in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles, that brought people from Hill Street up to Olive. I desperately wanted to ride those rails up to the top. But now the two twin orange and black cars were permanently moored in the middle, suspended in mid-air, ghosts from another time.
―Paul D. Marks, Ghosts of Bunker Hill
Fante also described Bunker Hill like this:
The old folk from Indiana and Iowa and Illinois, from Boston and Kansas City and Des Moines, they sold their homes and their stores, and they came here by train and by automobile to the land of sunshine, to die in the sun, with just enough money to live until the sun killed them, tore themselves out by the roots in their last days, deserted the smug prosperity of Kansas City and Chicago and Peoria to find a place in the sun. And when they got here they found that other and greater thieves had already taken possession, that even the sun belonged to the others; Smith and Jones and Parker, druggist, banker, baker, dust of Chicago and Cincinnati and Cleveland on their shoes, doomed to die in the sun, a few dollars in the bank, enough to subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, enough to keep alive the illusion that this was paradise, that their little papier-mâché homes were castles.
― John Fante, Ask the Dust
It was a tough life in the tough part of a tough city for the young writer and his alter ego:
Down on Spring Street, in a bar across the street from the secondhand store. With my last nickel I went there for a cup of coffee. an old style place, sawdust on the floor, crudely drawn nudes smeared across the walls. It was a saloon where old men gathered, where the beer was cheap and smelled sour, where the past remained unaltered.
― John Fante, Ask the Dust
In the late 1950s and 60’s, the Powers That Be decided they wanted to get rid of the “blight” and modernize downtown. To that end, they began a massive redevelopment of the area, including leveling or flattening some of the hills, changing street configurations, removing and demolishing houses and other buildings. So by the late 1960s/early ’70s it was all torn down and redeveloped and progress was achieved.
In Ask the Dust, Fante said, “I crossed Hill Street and breathed easier when I entered Pershing Square. No tall buildings in the square.”
Today’s Bunker Hill would be unrecognizable to Bandini. But maybe not completely to Fante, who lived till 1983, though he was dealing with serious complications from diabetes so he may not have seen what it became. As the narrator in Ghosts of Bunker Hill says,
Bandini had said there were no tall buildings in the Square. He should see it today. Steel and glass spikes sprout from every available space. And when nothing’s available the wrecking ball makes a new empty lot. Much of the park greens have been cemented over, with little pinpricks of green here and there, like a garnish on the side of your plate.
―Paul D. Marks, Ghosts of Bunker Hill
I may have a somewhat romanticized view of Bunker Hill. We do tend to romanticize the past, don’t we? I’m sure it was a hardscrabble and even dangerous life for the people who lived there after the swells moved out and it became “shabby town”. But with its gingerbread elegance and the “secret passages” of Clay Street (which no longer exists), with the winding roads going up and down and the hills, I have to say that I love the old Bunker Hill. And I’m glad so much of it is preserved in movies and writing.
I also feel very lucky that I could explore it with a friend before it was totally razed. We did our own little archaeological expedition of several of the houses and I even "borrowed" the top of a newel post from the long and winding interior stairway in one of those houses (see pic). A true relic of L.A.’s past, it’s a prized possession.
Los Angeles isn’t known for venerating and preserving its past. Everything here is new or wants to be. People come here to start over and every few years the city tries for a rebirth. But parts of Bunker Hill were preserved. Some of the old Victorian houses were moved to Carroll Avenue near the Echo Park section of L.A.. The characters in Ghosts of Bunker Hill live in a restored Victorian on Carroll Avenue and appreciate what they have:
Every time I walked those creaky wooden floors, I felt the presence of the past. The people who’d lived there. Not ghosts, but history, something Los Angeles often doesn’t appreciate. Carroll Avenue was close to downtown, where I worked. But the whole short street looked like something out of early 1900s L.A. I loved everything about it.
―Paul D. Marks, Ghosts of Bunker Hill
So I hope you’ll give Ghosts of Bunker Hill a shot and if you like it the sequel, Bunker Hill Blues, will be in a future issue of EQMM.
For my first SleuthSayers post on February 24, 2015, I wrote a column called Adventures in La La Land (http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2015/02/adventures-in-la-la-land.html), where I talked about Los Angeles, how it influences my writing and memories of growing up here. One area that I didn’t mention then was Bunker Hill. That is Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, not that “other” one on the East Coast.
And since my story Ghosts of Bunker Hill appears in the December, 2016 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (though I think it’s only available on newsstands until today, the 20th) I thought I’d take this opportunity to rectify that, especially as Bunker Hill has influenced both that story and my writing in general.
If you’ve been to the Music Center in downtown L.A. you’ve “been” to Bunker Hill. If you’re into film noir, you’ve “been” to Bunker Hill. Many times. Numerous film noirs—as well as movies in other genres—were shot there: Criss Cross, Cry Danger, Kiss Me Deadly, Joseph Losey’s M, The Brasher Doubloon, Backfire, the Judy Garland version of A Star is Born, The Glenn Miller Story and Angel’s Flight, an interesting, gritty, ultra low-budget noir. And L.A.’s Bunker Hill has stood in for many other cities as well.
Bunker Hill in transition |
By the time Raymond Chandler, who had lived there a couple of different times in his life, was writing about it he was calling it “shabby town”. In The High Window (1942), he said:
Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town. Once, very long ago, it was the choice residential district of the city, and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw Gothic mansions with wide porches and walls covered with round-end shingles and full corner bay windows with spindle turrets. They are all rooming houses now, their parquetry floors are scratched and worn through the once glossy finish and the wide sweeping staircases are dark with time and with cheap varnish laid on over generations of dirt. In the tall rooms haggard landladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the wide cool front porches, reaching their cracked shoes into the sun, and staring at nothing, sit the old men with faces like lost battles.
―Raymond Chandler, The High Window
Bunker Hill is also where John Fante (and his character Arturo Bandini) lived when he first moved to Los Angeles from Colorado. The struggling writer wrote about that experience:
One night I was sitting on the bed in my hotel room on Bunker Hill, down in the middle of Los Angeles. It was an important night in my life, because I had to make a decision about the hotel. Either I paid up or I got out: that was what the note said, the note the landlady had put under my door. A great problem, deserving acute attention. I solved it by turning out the lights and going to bed.
―John Fante, Ask the Dust
![]() |
Angels Flight photo by Rarmin |
I took the steps down Angel’s Flight to Hill Street: a hundred and forty steps, with tight fists, frightened of no man, but scared of the Third Street Tunnel, scared to walk through it—claustrophobia. Scared of high places too, and of blood, and of earthquakes; otherwise, quite fearless, excepting death, except the fear I’ll scream in a crowd, except the fear of appendicitis, except the fear of heart trouble, even that, sitting in his room holding the clock and pressing his jugular vein, counting out his heartbeats, listening to the weird purr and whirr of his stomach. Otherwise, quite fearless.
―John Fante, Ask the Dust
Angels Flight was later moved up the street and a “new and improved” Angels Flight was put in, but it closed not too long after it opened. So it might have been new, definitely not improved. And it makes me think of the old saw about how they don’t make ’em like they used to. I talk more about it in the Adventures in La La Land post and in Ghosts of Bunker Hill:
I stood at the bottom of the hill, staring up at Angels Flight, the famous little funicular railway in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles, that brought people from Hill Street up to Olive. I desperately wanted to ride those rails up to the top. But now the two twin orange and black cars were permanently moored in the middle, suspended in mid-air, ghosts from another time.
―Paul D. Marks, Ghosts of Bunker Hill
***
Fante also described Bunker Hill like this:
The old folk from Indiana and Iowa and Illinois, from Boston and Kansas City and Des Moines, they sold their homes and their stores, and they came here by train and by automobile to the land of sunshine, to die in the sun, with just enough money to live until the sun killed them, tore themselves out by the roots in their last days, deserted the smug prosperity of Kansas City and Chicago and Peoria to find a place in the sun. And when they got here they found that other and greater thieves had already taken possession, that even the sun belonged to the others; Smith and Jones and Parker, druggist, banker, baker, dust of Chicago and Cincinnati and Cleveland on their shoes, doomed to die in the sun, a few dollars in the bank, enough to subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, enough to keep alive the illusion that this was paradise, that their little papier-mâché homes were castles.
― John Fante, Ask the Dust
It was a tough life in the tough part of a tough city for the young writer and his alter ego:
Down on Spring Street, in a bar across the street from the secondhand store. With my last nickel I went there for a cup of coffee. an old style place, sawdust on the floor, crudely drawn nudes smeared across the walls. It was a saloon where old men gathered, where the beer was cheap and smelled sour, where the past remained unaltered.
― John Fante, Ask the Dust
In the late 1950s and 60’s, the Powers That Be decided they wanted to get rid of the “blight” and modernize downtown. To that end, they began a massive redevelopment of the area, including leveling or flattening some of the hills, changing street configurations, removing and demolishing houses and other buildings. So by the late 1960s/early ’70s it was all torn down and redeveloped and progress was achieved.
In Ask the Dust, Fante said, “I crossed Hill Street and breathed easier when I entered Pershing Square. No tall buildings in the square.”
![]() |
Bunker Hill today, photo by Lan56 |
Bandini had said there were no tall buildings in the Square. He should see it today. Steel and glass spikes sprout from every available space. And when nothing’s available the wrecking ball makes a new empty lot. Much of the park greens have been cemented over, with little pinpricks of green here and there, like a garnish on the side of your plate.
―Paul D. Marks, Ghosts of Bunker Hill
***
![]() |
Newel Post "borrowed" from Bunker Hill |
Los Angeles isn’t known for venerating and preserving its past. Everything here is new or wants to be. People come here to start over and every few years the city tries for a rebirth. But parts of Bunker Hill were preserved. Some of the old Victorian houses were moved to Carroll Avenue near the Echo Park section of L.A.. The characters in Ghosts of Bunker Hill live in a restored Victorian on Carroll Avenue and appreciate what they have:
Every time I walked those creaky wooden floors, I felt the presence of the past. The people who’d lived there. Not ghosts, but history, something Los Angeles often doesn’t appreciate. Carroll Avenue was close to downtown, where I worked. But the whole short street looked like something out of early 1900s L.A. I loved everything about it.
―Paul D. Marks, Ghosts of Bunker Hill
Haskins house on Carroll Avenue, Photo by Laëtitia Zysberg |
So I hope you’ll give Ghosts of Bunker Hill a shot and if you like it the sequel, Bunker Hill Blues, will be in a future issue of EQMM.
###
Labels:
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19 July 2016
A Noir Summer
Since Turner Classics doesn’t appear to be doing a noir Summer of Darkness like they did last summer, I thought I’d mention some film noirs to turn those bright sunny days into days of shadows, dread and despair. Hey, I’m just a happy-go-lucky guy.
And while Turner and other stations do run noirs at various times, they often seem to stick with the classics and well-known films. Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, Postman Always Rings Twice (some of my favorites). But they sometimes overlook the lesser-known noirs. And while noir fans might know these, people looking to expand their horizons into the dark side might not. So I thought I’d mention a few here that are available for purchase and/or rent, as I said, to darken those too cheery, happy days of summer.
One of my favorites is Too Late for Tears (aka Killer Bait) – 1949 – with Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea. She’s so evil in this one that even Duryea, who’s pretty good at being rotten himself, can’t take her. A husband and wife (Scott) are driving their convertible when someone in another car throws a suitcase full of cash into their car. She wants to keep it, he not so much. Noir ensues. Good, low budget noir. I like this one a lot. Some nice shots/scenes at Westlake Park in LA and other LA locations. It was written by Roy Huggins, who later created The Rockford Files and The Fugitive (TV series), though David Goodis might dispute that, among other things. And it’s just recently come out in a new, fancy-dancy restored Blu-ray/DVD edition.
Fear in the Night – 1947 – stars Paul Kelly, DeForest Kelley and Ann Doran. And yeah, it’s that DeForest Kelly, before he ran around saying stuff like “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor not a mechanic.” A man dreams he murdered someone in a weird-shaped mirrored room. Then slowly comes to believe it wasn’t a dream. It was remade in 1956 as Nightmare, with Edward G. Robinson and Kevin McCarthy and relocated to New Orleans. Both versions are good, though if I had to pick one I’d probably say I like Fear in the Night better. Both are based on a story by Cornell Woolrich (William Irish).
What do you do when your days as the boy ingénue are over and Judy Garland doesn’t go to CC Brown’s for a hot fudge sundae with you anymore – and you’re down on your luck? You gotta find something to do. You turn to noir. And Mickey Rooney did. After the War, in the 1950s, he made a series of low budget film noirs. I couldn’t decide if I should go with The Strip – 1951 – or Quicksand – 1950 – so what the hell, check ’em both out. In The Strip Rooney plays a drummer who loses his girl to a gangster buddy. In Quicksand he’s a mechanic who “borrows” 20 bucks from his boss to take a girl on a hot date. When he can’t pay up, he slips deeper and deeper into……quicksand. The Strip has the added attraction of Louis Armstrong and his band and seeing Louis do A Kiss to Build a Dream On, which was nominated for an Oscar. Interesting background on the song since it was written in 1935 but nominated for an Academy Award in the 50s. Normally a song would have to be new to be considered for an Oscar for best original song, but Oscar Hammerstein II completed the unfinished lyrics of the older song for the 1951 movie and I guess the Academy decided to fudge it. – You might have to wait till The Strip plays on one channel or another. I’m not sure it’s available for purchase or streaming.
Dick Powell wasn’t on the skids, but he did want to change his image from the juvenile lead in backstage musicals to something more adult. Going from lines like “Hey, I've been for you ever since you walked in on me in my BVD's” to “I caught the blackjack right behind my ear. A black pool opened up at my feet. I dived in. It had no bottom. I felt pretty good – like an amputated leg.” And, “She was a gal who'd take a drink, if she had to knock you down to get the bottle.” So, he jumped on the Raymond Chandler bandwagon, playing Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, two years before Bogie played Marlowe in The Big Sleep, and did a fine job of it. MMS is based on Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely. One of Powell’s lesser known noirs is Cry Danger, with Rhonda Fleming and Raymond Burr, which is what I really wanted to point out here. Powell’s a mug sent to prison for something he didn’t do. He gets out, wants to set things right, and returns to LA. What I really like about this one are the great LA locations, especially of Bunker Hill and surrounds, an area that was totally flattened and redeveloped in the Sixties. Many film noirs were filmed at Bunker Hill, including Kiss Me, Deadly, Criss Cross and Backfire. So if you want to see LA’s real noir hood, check out these movies and Cry Danger. And as a side note, I have a couple of new stories coming out in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in the future that are set in modern day Bunker Hill (what’s left of it), but inspired by Bunker Hill before it bit the dust.
And to top the list off, a couple of Barbara Stanwyck noirs. She, of course, plays the ultimate femme fatale in the ultimate film noir, Double Indemnity. In The Strange Love of Martha Ivers – 1946 – she co-stars with Van Heflin, Lizabeth Scott and Kirk Douglas in his film debut. The File on Thelma Jordon – 1950 – is a companion to piece to that, at least in my mind. Something about Stanwyck’s aunts getting mysteriously dead in both movies. I like them both.
So, if you want to see dead aunts, LA’s infamous Bunker Hill, as opposed to that other one in Massachusetts, a hardboiled Mickey Rooney sans Judy and Lizabeth Scott at her most corrupt, check these out. This list barely scratches the surface but should give you start on making those hot, bright summer days just a little less bright.
And while Turner and other stations do run noirs at various times, they often seem to stick with the classics and well-known films. Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, Postman Always Rings Twice (some of my favorites). But they sometimes overlook the lesser-known noirs. And while noir fans might know these, people looking to expand their horizons into the dark side might not. So I thought I’d mention a few here that are available for purchase and/or rent, as I said, to darken those too cheery, happy days of summer.
One of my favorites is Too Late for Tears (aka Killer Bait) – 1949 – with Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea. She’s so evil in this one that even Duryea, who’s pretty good at being rotten himself, can’t take her. A husband and wife (Scott) are driving their convertible when someone in another car throws a suitcase full of cash into their car. She wants to keep it, he not so much. Noir ensues. Good, low budget noir. I like this one a lot. Some nice shots/scenes at Westlake Park in LA and other LA locations. It was written by Roy Huggins, who later created The Rockford Files and The Fugitive (TV series), though David Goodis might dispute that, among other things. And it’s just recently come out in a new, fancy-dancy restored Blu-ray/DVD edition.
Fear in the Night – 1947 – stars Paul Kelly, DeForest Kelley and Ann Doran. And yeah, it’s that DeForest Kelly, before he ran around saying stuff like “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor not a mechanic.” A man dreams he murdered someone in a weird-shaped mirrored room. Then slowly comes to believe it wasn’t a dream. It was remade in 1956 as Nightmare, with Edward G. Robinson and Kevin McCarthy and relocated to New Orleans. Both versions are good, though if I had to pick one I’d probably say I like Fear in the Night better. Both are based on a story by Cornell Woolrich (William Irish).
What do you do when your days as the boy ingénue are over and Judy Garland doesn’t go to CC Brown’s for a hot fudge sundae with you anymore – and you’re down on your luck? You gotta find something to do. You turn to noir. And Mickey Rooney did. After the War, in the 1950s, he made a series of low budget film noirs. I couldn’t decide if I should go with The Strip – 1951 – or Quicksand – 1950 – so what the hell, check ’em both out. In The Strip Rooney plays a drummer who loses his girl to a gangster buddy. In Quicksand he’s a mechanic who “borrows” 20 bucks from his boss to take a girl on a hot date. When he can’t pay up, he slips deeper and deeper into……quicksand. The Strip has the added attraction of Louis Armstrong and his band and seeing Louis do A Kiss to Build a Dream On, which was nominated for an Oscar. Interesting background on the song since it was written in 1935 but nominated for an Academy Award in the 50s. Normally a song would have to be new to be considered for an Oscar for best original song, but Oscar Hammerstein II completed the unfinished lyrics of the older song for the 1951 movie and I guess the Academy decided to fudge it. – You might have to wait till The Strip plays on one channel or another. I’m not sure it’s available for purchase or streaming.
Dick Powell wasn’t on the skids, but he did want to change his image from the juvenile lead in backstage musicals to something more adult. Going from lines like “Hey, I've been for you ever since you walked in on me in my BVD's” to “I caught the blackjack right behind my ear. A black pool opened up at my feet. I dived in. It had no bottom. I felt pretty good – like an amputated leg.” And, “She was a gal who'd take a drink, if she had to knock you down to get the bottle.” So, he jumped on the Raymond Chandler bandwagon, playing Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, two years before Bogie played Marlowe in The Big Sleep, and did a fine job of it. MMS is based on Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely. One of Powell’s lesser known noirs is Cry Danger, with Rhonda Fleming and Raymond Burr, which is what I really wanted to point out here. Powell’s a mug sent to prison for something he didn’t do. He gets out, wants to set things right, and returns to LA. What I really like about this one are the great LA locations, especially of Bunker Hill and surrounds, an area that was totally flattened and redeveloped in the Sixties. Many film noirs were filmed at Bunker Hill, including Kiss Me, Deadly, Criss Cross and Backfire. So if you want to see LA’s real noir hood, check out these movies and Cry Danger. And as a side note, I have a couple of new stories coming out in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in the future that are set in modern day Bunker Hill (what’s left of it), but inspired by Bunker Hill before it bit the dust.
And to top the list off, a couple of Barbara Stanwyck noirs. She, of course, plays the ultimate femme fatale in the ultimate film noir, Double Indemnity. In The Strange Love of Martha Ivers – 1946 – she co-stars with Van Heflin, Lizabeth Scott and Kirk Douglas in his film debut. The File on Thelma Jordon – 1950 – is a companion to piece to that, at least in my mind. Something about Stanwyck’s aunts getting mysteriously dead in both movies. I like them both.
***
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24 June 2016
Genre-Bending Brilliance: An Interview with Ariel S. Winter
by Art Taylor
Ariel S. Winter’s debut novel, The Twenty-Year Death, was actually a trilogy of novels, bound in a single volume, each in turn paying homage to a classic crime writer—Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler, and Jim Thompson, specifically—and together telling the full story of the beautiful Clothilde-ma-Fleur over two decades, from France in 1931 to Hollywood in 1941 to Baltimore in 1951. I reviewed the book for the Washington Post in 2012 and found it a truly stunning tour de force, a masterful achievement.
This spring, Winter returned with a second book, Barren Cove—which is equally (if not as epically) magnificent but which also shows Winter taking his talent in a different direction. Instead of a crime novel, Barren Cove is more solidly a family drama; a visitor staying in the guest cabana of a Victorian estate interacts with the mysterious and clearly troubled family living in the main house: the beautiful and haunted Mary, her larger-than-life brother Kent, the mischievous Clark, and then the reclusive Beachstone, whom the property is named after but whose sickness keeps him hidden away in his room.
Oh, and one more thing: Nearly all these characters—everyone but Beachstone—are robots.
Winter offered me the chance to speak with him about the new book—thrilling in many ways from a writer’s perspectives (and a reader's too, I should stress) but also challenging in a world where branding and marketing and categories are the order of the day.
ART TAYLOR: Barren Cove clearly signals a shift in genre, with its futuristic setting, with robots as the primary characters, even in the labeling with "science fiction” mentioned prominently in one of the back cover blurbs. Have you been as big a reader and a fan of science fiction as you are of mystery fiction? Are there specific authors here, as with The Twenty-Year Death, that was an influence?
ARIEL S. WINTER: I became a writer because of my great love of reading, and as a reader I've never limited myself to specific genres. Especially as a kid, I read fantasy, science fiction, mystery, comedy, literary fiction, pretty much anything my parents or librarians recommended, plus whatever I stumbled on myself. And lots and lots of comic books. Since all of those genres fueled my love of fiction, and my writing grew out of my love of fiction, it only makes sense that my writing encompasses all of the things that turned me into a writer in the first place.
Growing up, I read the classics, Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Douglas Adams, several of whom I pay homage to in Barren Cove through characters' names. Then as I got older I moved on to Philip K. Dick, Jonathan Lethem, Alfred Bester, Thomas M. Disch, and I'm still filling in some of the gaps in my reading. I finally read the Dune books last year and was blown away.
As for influence on Barren Cove, it's less about style, and more about world building. I imagined that all robot fiction up to now takes place in a shared universe, so that the great robot books are detailing a continuous history. In R.U.R. by Karel Capek, the action takes place exclusively in a factory where robots are just first starting to be manufactured. By I, Robot, robots are an integral part of human life, but the laws of robotics put limits on their actions, and helps to keep them separate from humans. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? robots are indistinguishable from humans, even passing as human, and they are pervasive, but they're supposed to still be inferior socially. Barren Cove is the next book in that history, the point at which robots are now the majority, and humans are second-class.
While your two books might seem to readers very different, the interest in genre seems a central connection—not just in the specific genres of police procedural or hard-boiled detective novel or noir or science fiction, but in the idea of genre itself: what constitutes genre, how are specific genres defined, how does all this guide reader expectations. My questions for you: What is it about genre more generally that interests you and drives your writing? Is it exploration, experimentation, commentary on genres and genre-building or…?
I've always been excited by books that push the boundaries of form. Writers like Mark Z. Danielewski with his typography and page layouts, David Mitchell with his genre jumping within a single book, and writers like Faulkner, B.S. Johnson, Jan Potocki, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Laurence Sterne. Two of my favorite books, and the ones that probably had the greatest influence on Barren Cove are Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights, both of which play with multiple narrators, frame stories, several different forms such as journals, letters, and stories given orally that were subsequently written down, adding another layer to the trustworthiness of the story itself. So form is usually as big a driving factor in my work as genre is. And since genre carries with it certain expectations and conventions, it gives some kind of structure on which to lay formal experimentation. That makes it sound like genre is merely a tool though, and that's not right, because it goes back to wanting to write the kind of books I love, which are broadly defined, as I said earlier. I usually start with genre in the same way that I would decide to pick up one book or another to read, simply because it seems cool. Then as I explore the genre, I like to challenge it.
“Branding” is a big buzzword for authors today. After all the recognition you earned for The Twenty-Year Death, did you feel any pressure—from your editor or your agent or from readers or from self—to write another crime novel? Or any opposition to the book here that you did write?
The short answer is “yes.” The book that my agent and I tried to sell after The Twenty-Year Death was actually a domestic drama, literary fiction. We got some excellent feedback, several editors who were very serious about it, but they just couldn't sell it to their marketing and sales teams because it wasn't a mystery, and I was a mystery writer, even though I'd only published one book. In frustration, I pulled out Barren Cove, which I originally wrote in 2004, expanded it quite a bit, and we then went out with that. It was still a different genre, but it was mostly finished, and we could go out with it quickly. We met with a lot of the same resistance. People loved it, but it wasn't a mystery. I was lucky enough to finally find editors who were willing to take the risk, but it proved a real challenge for marketing, and it's met with mixed results. I've had to admit that while I insisted that a writer can jump genres, I've sort of been proven wrong. That's not because readers won't read across genres, which was a lot of my argument, because of course they will. But that the book publishing world from marketing to reviewers to bookstores are separated by genre so much that it isn't a question of finding readers who will follow you, but rather, of having access to the same people who covered your previous books in the press. It's a lot about the network. So, yes, I'm now being gently encouraged to return to crime. I've spent the last few years working on a fantasy, but that might get put on hold.
While the narrator and most of the characters in Barren Cove are robots, their struggles—both the conflicts between characters and then their internal, existential troubles—seem all too human. Ultimately, this is a story about identify and family and relationships. Why not just write a family drama? one without robots?
Someone asked me that at a social event a few years ago, and I was really taken aback, because it was such an astute question, especially given that she hadn't read the book. The answer is because robots can be immortal, replacing parts and upgrading indefinitely, and the possibility of immortality, which you can't have with human characters, really changes the nature of the existential question about death. If you don't have to die except by choice, why would you ever choose to die? It's a different question than we usually ask.
I also used robots, because as I said before, I like books with an unreliable narrator, which can sometimes be chalked up to a question of memory. But robots have perfect memories, so how accurate is a story when the memory is perfect? At the same time, however, robots, as computers, can have their memories erased or rewritten, so how trustworthy are they then?
I used the word “existential” before—but it’s not just questions of existence but also concerns about mortality, about death, that stood out to me reading it. What themes or issues drove you in writing this story? Or do you even think of themes in that way when you’re writing?
So I either start with genre or story, and that was the same here. I wanted to write something like a number of books I loved, so I looked at Wuthering Heights and Philip K. Dick and others, and said, I want to do something like this. The themes then develop organically in the writing. I'm not like Cormac McCarthy who seems to build a story around the idea of fate. Instead I build a story, and since I try to keep the stakes high, themes emerge. In The Twenty-Year Death, that became about losing a family member. In Barren Cove it became a question of why do we live. Then I go back and accentuate it in the rewrites. That being said, it's more important to me that a book is fun to read, that the story is compelling, than whether it's conveying an idea, so I try to use that as my guiding principle throughout.
This spring, Winter returned with a second book, Barren Cove—which is equally (if not as epically) magnificent but which also shows Winter taking his talent in a different direction. Instead of a crime novel, Barren Cove is more solidly a family drama; a visitor staying in the guest cabana of a Victorian estate interacts with the mysterious and clearly troubled family living in the main house: the beautiful and haunted Mary, her larger-than-life brother Kent, the mischievous Clark, and then the reclusive Beachstone, whom the property is named after but whose sickness keeps him hidden away in his room.
Oh, and one more thing: Nearly all these characters—everyone but Beachstone—are robots.
Winter offered me the chance to speak with him about the new book—thrilling in many ways from a writer’s perspectives (and a reader's too, I should stress) but also challenging in a world where branding and marketing and categories are the order of the day.
ART TAYLOR: Barren Cove clearly signals a shift in genre, with its futuristic setting, with robots as the primary characters, even in the labeling with "science fiction” mentioned prominently in one of the back cover blurbs. Have you been as big a reader and a fan of science fiction as you are of mystery fiction? Are there specific authors here, as with The Twenty-Year Death, that was an influence?
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Ariel S. Winter |
Growing up, I read the classics, Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Douglas Adams, several of whom I pay homage to in Barren Cove through characters' names. Then as I got older I moved on to Philip K. Dick, Jonathan Lethem, Alfred Bester, Thomas M. Disch, and I'm still filling in some of the gaps in my reading. I finally read the Dune books last year and was blown away.
As for influence on Barren Cove, it's less about style, and more about world building. I imagined that all robot fiction up to now takes place in a shared universe, so that the great robot books are detailing a continuous history. In R.U.R. by Karel Capek, the action takes place exclusively in a factory where robots are just first starting to be manufactured. By I, Robot, robots are an integral part of human life, but the laws of robotics put limits on their actions, and helps to keep them separate from humans. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? robots are indistinguishable from humans, even passing as human, and they are pervasive, but they're supposed to still be inferior socially. Barren Cove is the next book in that history, the point at which robots are now the majority, and humans are second-class.
While your two books might seem to readers very different, the interest in genre seems a central connection—not just in the specific genres of police procedural or hard-boiled detective novel or noir or science fiction, but in the idea of genre itself: what constitutes genre, how are specific genres defined, how does all this guide reader expectations. My questions for you: What is it about genre more generally that interests you and drives your writing? Is it exploration, experimentation, commentary on genres and genre-building or…?
I've always been excited by books that push the boundaries of form. Writers like Mark Z. Danielewski with his typography and page layouts, David Mitchell with his genre jumping within a single book, and writers like Faulkner, B.S. Johnson, Jan Potocki, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Laurence Sterne. Two of my favorite books, and the ones that probably had the greatest influence on Barren Cove are Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights, both of which play with multiple narrators, frame stories, several different forms such as journals, letters, and stories given orally that were subsequently written down, adding another layer to the trustworthiness of the story itself. So form is usually as big a driving factor in my work as genre is. And since genre carries with it certain expectations and conventions, it gives some kind of structure on which to lay formal experimentation. That makes it sound like genre is merely a tool though, and that's not right, because it goes back to wanting to write the kind of books I love, which are broadly defined, as I said earlier. I usually start with genre in the same way that I would decide to pick up one book or another to read, simply because it seems cool. Then as I explore the genre, I like to challenge it.
“Branding” is a big buzzword for authors today. After all the recognition you earned for The Twenty-Year Death, did you feel any pressure—from your editor or your agent or from readers or from self—to write another crime novel? Or any opposition to the book here that you did write?
The short answer is “yes.” The book that my agent and I tried to sell after The Twenty-Year Death was actually a domestic drama, literary fiction. We got some excellent feedback, several editors who were very serious about it, but they just couldn't sell it to their marketing and sales teams because it wasn't a mystery, and I was a mystery writer, even though I'd only published one book. In frustration, I pulled out Barren Cove, which I originally wrote in 2004, expanded it quite a bit, and we then went out with that. It was still a different genre, but it was mostly finished, and we could go out with it quickly. We met with a lot of the same resistance. People loved it, but it wasn't a mystery. I was lucky enough to finally find editors who were willing to take the risk, but it proved a real challenge for marketing, and it's met with mixed results. I've had to admit that while I insisted that a writer can jump genres, I've sort of been proven wrong. That's not because readers won't read across genres, which was a lot of my argument, because of course they will. But that the book publishing world from marketing to reviewers to bookstores are separated by genre so much that it isn't a question of finding readers who will follow you, but rather, of having access to the same people who covered your previous books in the press. It's a lot about the network. So, yes, I'm now being gently encouraged to return to crime. I've spent the last few years working on a fantasy, but that might get put on hold.
While the narrator and most of the characters in Barren Cove are robots, their struggles—both the conflicts between characters and then their internal, existential troubles—seem all too human. Ultimately, this is a story about identify and family and relationships. Why not just write a family drama? one without robots?
Someone asked me that at a social event a few years ago, and I was really taken aback, because it was such an astute question, especially given that she hadn't read the book. The answer is because robots can be immortal, replacing parts and upgrading indefinitely, and the possibility of immortality, which you can't have with human characters, really changes the nature of the existential question about death. If you don't have to die except by choice, why would you ever choose to die? It's a different question than we usually ask.
I also used robots, because as I said before, I like books with an unreliable narrator, which can sometimes be chalked up to a question of memory. But robots have perfect memories, so how accurate is a story when the memory is perfect? At the same time, however, robots, as computers, can have their memories erased or rewritten, so how trustworthy are they then?
I used the word “existential” before—but it’s not just questions of existence but also concerns about mortality, about death, that stood out to me reading it. What themes or issues drove you in writing this story? Or do you even think of themes in that way when you’re writing?
So I either start with genre or story, and that was the same here. I wanted to write something like a number of books I loved, so I looked at Wuthering Heights and Philip K. Dick and others, and said, I want to do something like this. The themes then develop organically in the writing. I'm not like Cormac McCarthy who seems to build a story around the idea of fate. Instead I build a story, and since I try to keep the stakes high, themes emerge. In The Twenty-Year Death, that became about losing a family member. In Barren Cove it became a question of why do we live. Then I go back and accentuate it in the rewrites. That being said, it's more important to me that a book is fun to read, that the story is compelling, than whether it's conveying an idea, so I try to use that as my guiding principle throughout.
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