1 Exploring Detective Films in the 1930S and 1940S: Genre, Society and Hollywood

Notes 1 Exploring Detective Films in the 1930s and 1940s: Genre, Society and Hollywood 1. For a discussion of Hollywood’s predilection for action in narratives, see Elsaesser (1981) and the analysis of this essay in Maltby (1995: 352−4). 2. An important strand of recent criticism of literary detective fiction has emphasised the widening of the genre to incorporate female and non-white protagonists (Munt, 1994; Pepper, 2000; Bertens and D’Haen, 2001; Knight, 2004: 162−94) but, despite Hollywood’s use of Asian detectives in the 1930s and 1940s, these accounts are more relevant to contemporary Hollywood crime films. 3. This was not only the case in B- Movies, however, as Warner’s films, includ- ing headliners, in the early 1930s generally came in at only about an hour and one- quarter due to budgetary restraints and pace was a similar neces- sity. See Miller (1973: 4−5). 4. See Palmer (1991: 124) for an alternative view which argues that ‘the criminal mystery dominates each text to the extent that all the events in the narrative contribute to the enigma and its solution by the hero’. 5. Field (2009: 27−8), for example, takes the second position in order to create a binary opposition between the cerebral British whodunnit and the visceral American suspense thriller. 6. The Republic serials were: Dick Tracyy (1937), Dick Tracy Returns (1938), Dick Tracy’s G- Men (1939) and Dick Tracy vs Crime, Inc. (1941) (Langman and Finn, 1995b: 80). 7. The use of the series’ detectives in spy-hunter films after 1941, however, modifies this relationship by giving them at least an ideological affiliation with the discourses of freedom and democracy that Hollywood deploys in its propagandistic representation of the Allies in general and the United States in particular. 8. See Cross (1981: 7) for details with regard to the organisation of B units at specific studios. 9. See Taves (1993: 329) for details of the use of contract-players and other studio personnel in B film units. 10. Kerr (1986: 230) notes, in discussing film noirr, that during the early 1940s as a result of escalating costs: ‘Casts and crews on contract to B units were kept at a manageable minimum, so prohibiting plots with long cast lists, crowd scenes and complicated camera or lighting set- ups’. 11. I would like to thank Alasdair Spark for pointing out the similarity between the performances of detective and the magician in the act of revealing the truth. 171 172 Notes 2 ‘Such Lovely Friends’: Class and Crime in ‘The Thin Man’ Series 1. Schatz (1997: 49) includes The Thin Man in the class of low budget films pro- duced by MGM although Naremore (1998: 141) considers it as having an A budget in comparison to other studios’ B productions. 2. Glitre argues that the screwball form was itself a product of two modes, the sophisticated comedy and the ‘tough comedy’, mixing ‘the glamorous pleasure- filled lifestyle of the former with the wise-cracking sexual ten- sion of the latter’ (Glitre, 2006: 23). This means that The Thin Man draws its ‘toughness’ from within the comedy genre as much as it does from its source novel. 3. See Neve (1992: 28) for a discussion of populism’s deployment of ‘the opposition between elites and “the people” ’. 4. An alternative view might, however, see Nick as a dabbler, taking on a profes- sion similar to other screwball comedy heroes ‘in a field middle America does not view as serious or “real” employment’ (Gehring, 2002: 30). 5. See Bergman (1971: 141−5) for a discussion of the importance of innocence and simplicity in redeeming the United States in Capra’s 1930s films. 6. The film offers a modified back-story for Nick who is now at work as a detective again, working as a consultant for the NYPD, rather than managing Nora’s business affairs. 3 Between Law and Crime: The Chivalric ‘Criminal’ Detective 1. Boston Blackie and the Lone Wolf both first appeared in film in the silent era before being revived in the 1930s and 1940s. Boston Blackie appeared in a number of silent films beginning with Boston Blackie’s Little Pal in 1918 while the Lone Wolf had been regularly portrayed by Bert Lytell after his first appearance in The Lone Wolff in 1917. 2. The granting of a temporary official licence to the criminal detective to allow him to engage in detection was an occasional device used by other series. Michael Lanyard, for example, is used by the police in Secrets of the Lone Wolff (1941) and Boston Blackie is given a police badge in One Mysterious Night (1944), although in both cases the pair come under later suspicion. 3. See Pepper (2010: 345) for a discussion of the Op’s relations with political and economic power structures and the way that these undercut his sense of autonomy. 4. The character of Hymie Fanro, who pays deference to The Saint during The Saint in New York, was played by Paul Guilfoyle, who returned to the series as Pearly Gates in The Saint Takes Overr and The Saint in Palm Springs, play- ing a more overtly subservient character in his role as The Saint’s comedy sidekick. 5. Miller (1973: 225) and Hardy (1997: 123) report that the reasons for the change were either that Charteris withdrew the rights to ‘The Saint’ or recov- ered them. Notes 173 6. The death of the first Falcon is a textual contrivance necessitated by George Sanders’ desire to quit the ‘Falcon’ series, but it comes as a logical conclusion to the troubles that beset the Gay Lawrence incarnation. 7. Nick Charles is, however, a similar figure as Glitre comments in her discussion of the way in which The Thin Man plays a central role in ‘the develop- ment of Powell’s trickster persona’ (Glitre, 2006: 81). 4 Englishness and America: Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes 1. Ousby (1976: 153) notes, however, that Conan Doyle was responsible for something similar in converting complex issues into ‘material for beguiling romance’ as a part of a process of ‘haute vulgarisation’. 2. See Brooks (1994: 327) for a discussion of the interpretation of irrelevance in Conan Doyle’s ‘The Naval Treaty’ as a paradigm of the classical detective’s method. 3. In The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, this insightful mind is less on display than in other films in the series, not only because Holmes cannot identify an albatross in the drawing sent to Ann Brandon’s brother, but also because he doesn’t seem able to identify the murder weapon as a bolas nor connect it with the South American Gaucho band at Lady Conyngham’s party. Steinbrunner and Michaels comment that ‘Moriarty’s grand scheme is so complicated and unwieldy that it is embarrassing to see it almost work’ (1978: 82) and this is in no small part due to the lack of intellect demonstrated by Holmes in the film. 4. All of the Universal entries, except for Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terrorr, were directed by Roy William Neill who was also involved in their produc- tion from Spider Woman onwards. 5. See Field (2009: 115−7) for a discussion of Holmes’ end-words in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terrorr, Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, and Sherlock Holmes in Washington and their enunciation of Holmes as the embod- iment of several hundred years of humanist ideas. It should be noted that the end-words form the standard coda that concludes most films of the classical Hollywood period, in which comment is made reflecting back on events while also often suggesting a life after the film for the characters. Holmes’ end-words are, arguably, therefore free of any ideological meaning in them- selves because they only derive such meanings from the previous events on which they reflect. 6. See Field (2009: 165) for a counterview arguing that the science-supernatural opposition more fully informs the narrative. 7. One such example of this economy of shooting involves a shot through a church doorway when the priest arrives to find the body of Lady Penrose, which allows him to be shown dismounting a cart, walking up the path and then discovering the body while in the background Potts can be seen as he calls out a message and then rides off without any change of lighting, camera angle or focus. 8. See Leitch (2002: 138) for a discussion of the use of cigarettes as a sign of ‘emo- tional intimacy’ to imply homo- erotic discourses in Double Indemnityy. 174 Notes 5 Ordering the World: The Uncompromising Logic of Charlie Chan and Mr Moto 1. Charlie Chan Carries On is not the only lost film in the series because Charlie Chan’s Chance (1932), Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case (1933) and Charlie Chan’s Courage (1934) shared the same fate. 2. See Ousby (1976: 154) for a discussion of the importance of the use and reconstruction of the past in the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ stories. 3. The shooting script for Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case indicates that the film had the same format, but that it flirted with a breach of the closed world in Chan’s accusation of someone not of the circle only for this to be revealed as a ruse to catch the real killer within it. 4. Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case seems also to have included a scene at home in which Chan has more modern American slang inflicted upon him. 5. Denzin (1995: 92) argues that because Charlie Chan, Mr Moto and Mr Wong were presented as sexually passive they became ‘feminized Asian men’, but this is problematic not only because they often enunciated masculine ide- ology, but also because the lack of sexual coding equally applies to detectives such as Sherlock Holmes and the Crime Doctor and, very often, to Boston Blackie, the Lone Wolf and even Michael Shayne because it is a general textual pre- requisite of the detective to be distant from romantic entanglement.

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