Mystery Monday: Meet Philo Vance

Mystery Monday: Philo Vance

“Philo Vance 

Needs a kick in the pance.” 

 

So wrote comic poet Ogden Nash about the wildly popular fictional detective created by S.S. Van Dine, the pseudonym for Willard Huntington Wright. Wright was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, but his parents soon moved to Santa Monica, California where his father purchased a hotel. His brother Stanton Macdonald-Wright was one of the first American abstract artists and co-founded the school of modern art known as Synchromism. 

 

At the age of 21, Wright secured a job at the Los Angeles Times as literary editor where he gained a reputation for scathing book reviews and irreverent opinions. He was particularly critical about romance and detective fiction. After being fired for “intentionally provoking the paper’s middle-class readership with his interest in unconventional and often sexually explicit fiction,” with help from friend H.L. Mencken, Wright found a job as editor with the New York literary magazine The Smart Set. 

 

The mid-1920s found Wright bedridden for two years as the result of a nervous breakdown. Ironically, he devoured mystery fiction (after having derided it years earlier) and found it entertaining and intriguing. In fact, after his recovery he would write an essay that explored the history, traditions, and conventions of detective fiction as an art form. 

 

Having exhausted the market of reading material, he decided to try his hand at writing in the genre. Embarrassed at turning from what he termed “intellectual fiction” to mass market fiction, Wright created the pen name S.S. Van Dine. In the books, Van Dine, referred to as Van acts as narrator much like Sherlock Holmes’s Dr. Watson. 

 

Described in the first publication, The Benson Murder Case, Philo is “what many would call a

dilettante, but the designation does him an injustice. He was a man of unusual culture and brilliance. An aristocrat by birth and instinct...in his manner there was an indefinable contempt for inferiority of all kinds.” A cynic, Vance was flippant rather than bitter, interested in human reactions, almost as a scientist. A Renaissance man, he had courses in the history of religions, the Greek classics, biology, civics, political economy, philosophy, anthropology, literature, psychology, and modern and ancient languages. 

 

The book goes on to describe Vance’s physical features: “He was unusually good-looking, although his mouth was ascetic and cruel...a slightly derisive hauteur in the lift of his eyebrows. His forehead was full and sloping...his cold grey eyes were widely spaced. His nose was straight and slender, and his chin narrow but prominent, with an unusually deep cleft.” 

A dozen Philo Vance novels were published between 1926 and 1939, with nearly all of them made into films with ten different actors taking the lead role. William Powell appeared in four of the movies; the other actors only once or twice. Vance also appeared on radio between 1945 and 1950 with Jose Ferrer, John Emery, and Jackson Beck each taking a series. Interestingly, in 1974, an Italian mini-series came out featuring Giorgio Albertazzi in the lead role. With scripts very close to the novels, the episodes were based on the first three books. 

 

Wright died April 11, 1939 at the age of 50, leaving behind a novelette that was published posthumously as The Winter Murder Case. Wright’s portrait, painted by his brother, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. 

 

Are you familiar with Philo Vance? 

_______________________ 

Murder at Madison Square Garden:

The dream of a lifetime becomes a nightmare. 

 

Photojournalist Theodora “Teddy” Schafer’s career has hit the skids thanks to rumors of plagiarism. With any luck, a photo spread with Charles Lindbergh at the America First Rally will salvage her reputation. After an attempted assassination of Lindbergh leaves another man dead, Teddy is left holding the gun. Literally. Can she prove her innocence before the police lock her up for a murder she didn’t commit? 

 

Private Investigator Ric Bogart wants nothing to do with women after his wife cleaned out their bank account and left him for another man, but he can’t ignore the feeling he’s supposed to help the scrappy, female reporter who is arrested for murder at the America First rally. Can he believe her claims of innocence and find the real killer without letting Teddy steal his heart? 

 

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Mystery Monday: Charlie Chan Movies

Mystery Monday: Charlie Chan Movies 

 

During the 1930s and 1940s, hundreds of mystery, thriller, and noir crime dramas were produced to the delight of the movie-going public. More than a few of the films were either based on or screen adaptations of novels from well-known authors such as S.S. Van Dine, Dashiell Hammett, Graham Greene, Hugh Cleveland, Brett Halliday, and others. 

 

Only six novels featuring Honolulu-based detective Charlie Chan 

were written by Earl Derr Biggers between 1925 and 1932, but almost fifty movies were produced between 1926 and 1949, featuring over a dozen actors playing the title character. In an interview conducted years later, Biggers said he’d been inspired to add a Chinese-American police officer to his book after reading about two Hawaiian detectives in the newspaper. Saying he disliked the stereotypes he found in California, he specifically conceived the character as an alternative: “Sinister and wicked Chinese are old stuff, but an amiable Chinese on the side of law and order has never been used.” 

 

Despite the use of Asian actors for supporting roles such as his family members, Chan was always played by a Caucasian actor. The films met with widespread success with Spanish-language and Chinese-language versions being shown overseas. Between 1932 and 1948, Charlie Chan episodes could be heard on the radio several times a week. Chan also made his way into comic books from 1938 to 1942, being dropped after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. A board game, The Great Charlie Chan Detective Mystery Game (1937) and The Charlie Chan Card Game (1939) were also produced for a short time. 

 

Unsurprisingly, the character of Charlie Chan has been the subject of controversy. Some scholars claim the character is a positive role model, while others feel he is an offensive stereotype. One critic, John Soister, states that Chan is both, going on to say that when Biggers created the character, “he offered a unique alternative to stereotypical evil Chinamen, a man who was at the same time sufficiently accommodating in personality, unthreatening in demeanor, and removed from his Asian homeland to quell any underlying xenophobia.” 

 

Biggers published a handful of other novels and short stories, but none met with the success of his Charlie Chan series. 

 

Have you ever seen a Charlie Chan flick? 

 

_______________________

About Vanessa's Replacement Valentine:

She’s running toward the future. He can’t let go of the past. Will these two hurting souls experience love in the present? 

 

Engaged to be married as part of a plan to regain the wealth her family lost during the War Between the States, Vanessa Randolph finds her fiancé in the arms of another woman weeks before the wedding. Money holds no allure for her, so rather than allow her parents to set her up with another rich bachelor she decides to become a mail-order bride. Life in Green Bay, Wisconsin seems to hold all the pieces of a fresh start until she discovers her prospective groom was a Union spy and targeted her parents during one of his investigations. Is her heart safe with any man? 

 

Eight years have elapsed since the Civil War ended, and Miles Andersen has almost managed to put the memories of those difficult years behind him. He’s finally ready to settle down, but the women in town are only interested in his money. A mail-order bride seems to be the answer until the woman who arrives brings the past crashing into the present. 

Can two wounded hearts find healing in the face of doubt, disappointment, and distrust?

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