Pulp International - Raymond+Chandler

Feb 5 2018

Pronounce it wrong one more time. I dare you.

American actress Nancy Guild's name actually rhymed with “wild” not “guilt,” according to her, and since she's armed we'll call her anything she wants. She appeared in the noir thrillers Somewhere in the Night, which we talked about here, and Raymond Chandler's The Brasher Doubloon, as well as about a dozen more films before quitting show business to marry producer Ernest H. Martin. This photo was made in 1947.

Somewhere in the Night The Brasher Doubloon Nancy Guild Ernest H. Martin Raymond Chandler film noir

Vintage Pulp

Jan 30 2018

Los Angeles homecoming goes awry for Alan Ladd.

The Blue Dahlia is often cited as a top film noir, but it really isn't. That didn't matter to the Hollywood movers and shakers who nominated Raymond Chandler's screenplay for an Oscar, but we suspect the nod was for stringing together hard boiled dialogue, since it certainly wasn't for stringing together a coherent plot. The movie tells the story of a vet who returns home to find his wife cheating with the shady owner of a Hollywood nightclub. When she's murdered, the husband is sought by police, but he goes fugitive and attempts to find the real killer. With pretty boy Alan Ladd in the lead, plus support from Veronica Lake, William Bendix, and the beautiful Doris Dowling, The Blue Dahlia has a lot going for it, including a cool nocturnal vibe, but a script too reliant on improbable occurrences and Lake's flat performance in a basically ornamental role keep it from being upper echelon. It's worth a watch just to see Bendix go bathouse crazy every time he hears what he calls “monkey music,” but go into it knowing there are at least twenty better films in the genre.

Los Angeles The Blue Dahlia Academy Award Alan Ladd Veronica Lake Doris Dowling William Bendix Raymond Chandler poster art cinema film noir movie review

Vintage Pulp

Dec 24 2017

Michael Shayne stabs Phillip Marlowe in the back.

Above you see a promo poster for the detective yarn The Time To Kill, a movie that premiered in the U.S. today in 1943 and has a mildly convoluted provenance that will be interesting to pulp fans. Mystery authors Brett Halliday and Raymond Chandler were both popular writers, but Twentieth Century Fox had already made six movies based on Halliday's novels. So they bought Chandler's The High Window and changed the main character from Phillip Marlowe to Halliday's franchise detective Michael Shayne. We don't know if Chandler and Halliday had any sort of rivalry to that point, but we wouldn't be surprised if one started.

Fox had made the previous Shayne flicks in just two years, and they're light in tone, which is one reason we think websites that label The Time To Kill a film noir are stretching. The lead character is not a driven loner, the general sense of corruption is nowhere to be found, and most of the usual noir iconography, such as rain or water, neon, newspapers, sidewalks, etc., is absent. No flashbacks. No voiceover. Nothing. Co-star Doris Merrick is a femme fatale perhaps, but virtually any woman in a crime thriller can fit that cubbyhole. Then surprise—four fifths of the way through its running time the movie shifts gears—Shayne walks into a nighttime murder scene that's draped with shadows and ill portent, but even this is played for laughs when he pratfalls down a staircase. And the ultimate fate of the villain is basically a bad barroom joke.

Director Herbert Leeds had worked on a variety of low budget westerns, comedies, and serials, and was a technician, not a stylist. His spliced in noir sequence is a nice nod to an emerging trend, but we don't think it pushes what is mainly a goofball detective film into noir territory. In general, his were a safe pair of hands tasked with churning out movies at high speed. The Time To Kill is a typically perfunctory Leeds effort—one hour and one minute long, meant to be consumed like penny candy. So we don't think it's a film noir, but hey—we just run a silly website. What do we know? And does it even matter? The Time To Kill is a decent enough distraction, however you categorize it.

Twentieth Century Fox The Time To Kill Lloyd Nolan Raymond Chandler Brett Halliday Herbert Leeds Doris Merrick poster art cinema literature movie review

Vintage Pulp

Feb 27 2017

Femmes fatales are tough but are they bulletproof?

We've run across some low characters in paperback art, but these guys are the lowest. Faced with danger they've grabbed the nearest woman to use as a shield. Women in mid-century fiction have it rough—they're interrupted while skinny-dipping, carried off against their will, manhandled, spied on, tied up, and more. They have their victories too, thankfully—put a gun in their hands and they start dropping men like two-foot putts. Well, good thing femmes fatales are so tough, because they'll need to be hard enough to stop bullets to get out of these jams. We shared another cover in the same style back in 2009 and you can see that nice effort here.

Vintage Pulp

Dec 28 2016

Phillip Marlowe gets involved in shady business.

Above, a very nice piece of William Rose cover art incorporating a window shade for Raymond Chandler's Playback, from Cardinal Books, 1960. This is the last Phillip Marlowe novel Chandler wrote. It first appeared in Britain in 1958 as a hardback. Basically, it's a missing persons case set in California in which Marlowe is put on the trail of a woman being pursued by various shady figures from her past. Many critics consider it lesser Chandler, but it has its plusses. The mystery blog Bloody Murder agrees, and you can read a detailed positive review there by following this link.

Britain Cardinal Books Playback Raymond Chandler William Rose cover art literature

Vintage Pulp

Nov 18 2016

Long live the King—in Yellow, that is.

The interesting cover above for Five Sinister Characters was painted by Paul Stahr and fronts a Raymond Chandler short story collection that appeared as an edition of Avon Publications' Murder Mystery Monthly series in 1945. The book is composed of Chandler's "Trouble Is My Business,” “Pearls Are a Nuisance,” “I'll Be Waiting,” “The Red Wind,” and “The King in Yellow.” H.P. Lovecraft fans probably know that last title. The King in Yellow is an avatar of one of Lovecraft's terrible gods Hastur, aka The Unspeakable One. Lovecraft in turn lifted it from Robert W. Chambers' 1895 collection of weird stories The King in Yellow, which you see below.

However, Chandler's “The King in Yellow” is unrelated to Lovecraft and Chambers. Chandler's tale is a detective yarn, while Chambers' collection is, well, very weird, and within that weirdness The King in Yellow is a fictional play that drives those who it read it insane, or at least deeply despondent. Midway through Chandler's story a character says, “'The King in Yellow.' I read a book with that title once.” A clear nod to Chambers' work.

But as we said, Chandler's “The King in Yellow” is a crime story. It follows hotel detective Steve Grayce, who evicts jazz trumpetist and lover of yellow clothing King Leopardi for unruly late night conduct. The King later ends up shot to death in a woman's bedroom across town, and Grayce—fired for tossing a famous client—tries to figure out why the murder happened, and to get the woman off the hook in whose bed the King bled out. It's an excellent story, as are the others. But you already know that. It's Chandler.

Avon Publications Murder Mystery Monthly Raymond Chandler Paul Stahr Robert W. Chambers cover art literature

Vintage Pulp

Jul 5 2016

Raymond Chandler's most memorable hits.

Women were hit often in pulp literature. This cover for Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep depicts just such a moment, as detective Philip Marlowe decides to slap Carmen Sternwood to bring her out of a drug induced stupor. He feels it's for her own good, as he's found her naked in a house where's she's been the subject of pornographic photos. The goal is to get her up and out of the place. Later he hits her again and this time it's more out of annoyance. We could go into our whole thing about how this sort of behavior reflects an assumption on the part of men that they have ownership of women's bodies, but you already know what we're going to say, so let's just give artist Harvey Kidder credit for painting an eye-catching cover. The Big Sleep was originally published in 1939, and this edition appeared in 1950.

The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler Harvey Kidder cover art literature

Vintage Pulp

Jun 13 2015

They call it the Devil’s wheel for a reason.

It’s been a while since we’ve put together a pulp collection, so below you’ll find vintage cover art that uses the roulette wheel as a central element. They say only suckers play roulette, and that’s especially true in pulp, where even if you win, eventually you lose the money and more. Art is by Ernest Chiriacka, Robert Bonfils, Robert McGinnis, and many others.

Vintage Pulp

Oct 16 2013

First and last stop—the ground floor.

You know we like themed cover collections. Over at Killer Covers a few days ago there were two book fronts featuring people falling from a height. A light bulb went off and we realized this represented yet another common pulp art motif. As with our other collections, some of these images are from Flickr, so thanks to the original uploaders on those, and thanks to Killer Covers for the two we borrowed from there. To see one more great falling cover we posted a while back, go here.

Vintage Pulp

Mar 5 2012

Black Lizard’s pulp anthology is as thick as an old phone book, but we’ll get through it somehow.

Stay away from the U.S. long enough and when you go back you get really good gifts. The Big Book of Pulps, above, was a belated birthday present—and what a present it is. At over 1,000 pages, this is probably the most comprehensive pulp anthology we’ve ever seen. Published in 2007 by the now defunct pulp revival specialists Black Lizard, the collection contains stories from Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, James M. Cain, Paul Cain and many others, and is even sprinkled with some ink illustrations. We’ll be working our way through this tome for the next couple of years, no doubt. Which means we should finish just in time to go back to the States again and get another great gift. Thanks Neil S.

Black Lizard Publishing Dashiell Hammett Erle Stanley Gardner James M. Cain Paul Cain Cornell Woolrich Raymond Chandler cover art literature