The Rise And Fall Of A Top-Rated Private Investigator- The Almost Legendary 1950s California Shamus Lew Archer-With The Doomed Hallman Case In Mind

The Rise And Fall Of A Top-Rated Private Investigator- The Almost Legendary 1950s California Shamus Lew Archer-With The Doomed Hallman Case In Mind

By Sam Lowell

[There have been plenty of crime novels based on the exploits of very real private investigators like poor Lew Archer (some of public coppers too but they are usually s strictly by-the-book procedurals making it seem like there was no need for private investigation although the stacks of “cold cases” sitting in the police file freezer belie that fake news). Phil Larkin out of Albany maybe the best of the lot, of course Sam Spade and his partner Miles out of Frisco town and Phil Marlowe working the southern slumming streets of the same state come to mind. Guys who when their careers were over, when they hung up their guns and closed down the third desk drawer liquor cabinet, or who fell down and make a slight misjudgment about some bad ass’s intentions made the coveted entry into the Hall of Fame.     

It only takes a few pages of those lightly altered stories to figure these guys were built for the heavy lifting that goes with chasing after windmills, chasing after some rough justice in what the writer Seth Garth at American Left History has called “this wicked old world.” It has bothered me for a long time that Lew Archer, an ex-cop who got out of line one too many times for some lifer superior to give him the boot, and a guy who started out like a house on fire wrapping up the Galton case, the big Bay City kidnapping and extortion case in about a week after the public coppers had put the thing is deep cold storage after about two days fell down too early in his gumshoe career (by the way most P.I.s hate that “gumshoe” designation but I am trying to vary up the names for those in the profession). That concern got me on the trail of what happened, why Lew wound up, if I recall, peeping through keyholes, no, that is not right, doing leg work for Sally Langley who is now set to be inducted into the Hall in her own right. A lot of the decline is, no, was shrouded in mystery especially when a guy named Kenny Miller, I believe that is his name although some crime novel writers use aliases so as not to be bothered by holy goofs who want to know “the scoop” on some silly case, started to write about Lew when he had the goods. Wrote a very good one about Lew’s breakthrough case, that Galton one which really was great work even if he solved it faster than most P.I.s working on a per diem would have liked.                

Miller then wrote a few books where you could see he was pulling his punches, was letting Lew take a bow for stuff the public coppers finally had a handle on, could see Lew had some kind of trouble getting the last lap finished. Then Miller wrote about the doomed Hallman case, a case where everybody, or almost everybody, saw as the start of Lew’s downfall. The start of making way too many mistakes, of letting the bad guys get way ahead of him.

When I started my research, started to delve into what brought Lew low I did not know about the Hallman case, the Bay City coppers and whatever was left of the Hallman family when the killings were over had hushed the thing up so tight that it was like it did not happen. Apparently Miller went after the facts, after the record not to chart Lew’s decline but just to see where the decline had begun. The only way that I found out about the case was when Miller saw a piece I wrote in Nightshade, the P.I.-friendly magazine wondering about Lew and what happened to him at the end and he sent me an e-mail referring me to his lightly altered story about the Hallman case. We corresponded a bit to compare notes until we had a parting of the ways over my sound and well thought out analysis of Lew’s big problem-that sexual impotence in an age when that was fatal to big story P.I.s. Automatically froze you out of any consideration for the Hall. Miller’s take, his what he called sound and well-thought out analysis of Lew’s problem was that he never got over his wife divorcing him, and it gnawed at him worse when he was around women. Sure, Kenny every guy who has been chain-whipped by some woman falls down for the rest of his life because he screwed up a good thing. Get real. Get some facts and then come back with that lame idea. Compare that with what I have to say below. Sam Lowell]               

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I have a bombshell to report in the festering case of the late California private detective Lew Archer who I have been doing research on to try to figure out why he never made the P.I. Hall of Fame after starting out with such promise on the Galton case which made him a star-for a minute. Sadly, he wound up as a gofer for Sally Langley, yes, that Sally Langley who is about to be inducted into the Hall, after the divorce laws changed to “no fault” and keyhole peepers like taxi drivers today became passé. And after some punk beat him up and stole his car when he was doing “repo” work. Yeah, sad no way around it. But before I lay out my new information let me ask the gentle reader a question. I don’t need an answer but think about it.

Who was the greatest home run hitter of all times? The “Babe,” Henry Aaron, Bobby Bond (setting aside whatever enhancements he may have used)? What about the greatest quarterback? Sammy Baugh, Bart Starr, Joe Montana, Tom Brady? To pose the question is to give the answer. It is very hard to compare athletes from different generations working under very different condition and come up with a sensible comparison. The reason for this \normally silly sports stuff is that I have been pelted, no, inundated with all kinds of lame gibberish about my “unmanly” carping on Lew Archer’s sexual impotence as the reason he slipped down the shamus food chain, why he never made the Hall.

Somehow these deadbeats with apparently plenty of time on their hands and plenty of “cyber ink” can hardly wait to pounce on me for being unkind, or worse to Lew’s memory. What they don’t get at all, don’t understand especially those who see Sally Langley or maybe the “outed” gay private eye Lance Devine as the beeswax of the profession is that in Lew’s time being able to get under the silky sheets with some femme, some frail was part of the job, was part of the resume, was what got you clients and publicity in those circles who could afford to pay to get stuff investigated that the public coppers were either clueless about or would not touch with a ten-foot pole.

I hate to keep having to make a “teachable” moment for this clot of “trolls” who don’t think sex should have entered into the equation but in Lew’s time, as Lew was coming up he had models, good models, just like Sally had Meg Diamond and her post-feminist pushing women forward in the profession giving it a different twist, making taking slugs of either kind sort of old-fashioned and certainly ending that third drawer whisky bottle obsolete against the power of so-called women’s intuition (better stick-to-it-ness) and Lance had Carl Dover pushing gays forward for the same reason when having to bed women as part of the assignment sort of violated the new Code established by the American Association of Private Investigators (AAPI) after great pressure was put on after the heyday of the 1960s. Thus, we are clueless about who either of them slept with, if anybody, because that is not the question today in the private detection field but one’s ability to manipulate the explosive new technologies to put the bad guys to rest, to do what the public coppers can’t do or don’t want to do when all they want to do is have their coffee and crullers. (Some things never change having observed a fleet of them chowing down recently at a Dunkin’ Donut or is it just Dunkin’ not even leaving coin tips in the sacred tip jar) But back in Lew’s day the late 1940s and early 1950s you might as well have become a librarian, maybe a lab technician if you couldn’t rustle and tussle up some sheets while you were solving that heinous crime you were hired to find the perp who did the nasty deed.

Okay, for the millionth time here was the scorecard a guy like Lew had to follow. An old-timer named Sam, Sam Spade set the early standard in a couple of high-end cases also out in California which made that much more glaring about Lew’s downfall. Back East or maybe in Toledo he could have gotten away with the problem, could have faked it and made the Hall if he ever ran across a case that was worthy of his steel. Sam was beautiful in one case to give you an example. While solving about six murders by this femme, Mary, Mary something, Mary Astor, that’s it but don’t get too sentimental about names since everybody had about twelve, one for any occasion,     who was crazy for dough and used guys like washcloths to get this rare jewel he not only bedded her a few times including about five minutes before he tossed her over to the coppers (to save his own skin which is okay in this case because she had him set up as a patsy if things went awry as they did) he was bedding a few others just to keep things interesting. Knocked over his partner’s wife, Ivy something, his secretary, a female cab driver who was willing to take a warm bed in exchange for forgoing cab fare plus tip, maybe more.           

              

   So there was a standard, a California standard which is what a guy named Phil, Phil Marlowe, had to outdo. And did. Phil was a beautiful guy, nature’s nobleman. He worked the Sternwood case, yes, the Sternwood case an old man paid him good money for to find some old Irish revolutionary who befriended him, like a violin. I swear I don’t know how he did it. Bedded this old general who hired him to find some guy two daughters, one at a time or together was never mentioned, some frill in a bookstore, the female clerk working for some scumbag pornographer, a couple of hat check gals at a swank nightclub, another footloose female cab driver bartering the cab fare plus tip away, and the mobster behind lots of dirty stuff who ran that protected night club’s wife. All for a case that took maybe a week to solve. Gold standard.

And Lew? Poor suck-face Lew. The last anybody ever heard of him tussling with a woman, a woman involved in a case he was working was some frustrated wife of a doctor who ran a high-end clinic for the weak and unsure for big dough. Problem in Lew’s case was she was at that point any man’s woman if it is okay in the #MeToo age to say such a thing even if that was the call she made on herself once hubby saw dollar signs in them there hills and studiously avoided her in bed. Bigger problem when Miller interviewed her for background on what ailed Lew (remember that bogus pining over divorcing wife theory he had, sound and well thought out, Jesus) she mentioned that whatever he told anybody else he “couldn’t get it up” to be polite. So Lew was firing blanks, okay. Don’t shoot the messenger just because the message is not to your liking.               

What makes that social worker more important is that the case was the one immediately before the Hallman case, the doomed Hallman family who got picked off like rabbits before the whole thing was done, before the public coppers finished up what Lew had left like scrambled eggs. Here’s a rough outline of the play, really a scorecard of opportunities Lew blew. (I am willing to cut the guy some slack in those pre-Viagra times for his medical condition but remember I am only trying to figure out why he never made the Hall not what he couldn’t help himself with in those dark nights.)

I don’t know, Miller never gave a clue, about Lew’s mental condition upon taking the Hallman case, or really having it thrush upon him after some junkie he had helped when he was a kid referred young heir Hallman, Carl, to Lew to solve a few pressing problems. Like who killed his mother and father. A good- looking brunette was taking care of her aunt and batted her eyes as Lew as he was looking for leads to where this young Hallman might have gone after stealing Lew’s car for a getaway. No go, not even when she practically knocked him over in the foyer retrieving his hat. (That’s, by the way, two stolen joy ride cars in less than a year which should tell even the most devoted Lew adherent that something was wrong, something more than some inherent unmanliness). Next up a psychiatric social worker who was working with young Hallman and was ready to do anything, and from the reports, that meant anything to keep her man, her young Hallman from being killed by the so-called posse, really lynch mob, that was looking all over from Southern California to Nevada for him. Lew said  he would “take a rain check” like the offer would last forever.           

Things get juicier once Lew hits the huge ranch young Hallman is heir to and he runs into young Hallman’s older brother’s wife who can see that if Carl takes a tumble, falls in a rain of bullets as a fugitive and crazy murderer her man will grab everything. She showed up at Lew’s motel room with a proposition and you don’t have to be a genius to know what the terms included to have Lew lay off. Again, zero. Interlude: a couple of crazy townie girls looking for kicks and that was that approached Lew as he walked down the street. They had nothing to do with the case although they had gone to school with Carl and were just feeling their womanly oats but no go even if anybody would bother to argue that Lew was maintaining some kind of professional ethics by laying off women connected with the case. Bullshit. This is the closer, case closer against the defendant one Lew Archer, Carl’s wife who turned out to be an enraged serial killer piling up the bodies-father, mother, older brother, that slatternly wife of his all so she could be on easy street after a life on the wrong side of the tracks practically tore open her shirt showing a firm bosom to try to throw Lew off the scent. Strike four.       

I already have mentioned that this case marked the steady downhill trajectory in Lew’s once promising career. Worse, the coppers had to come in and rescue Lew when that deranged wife was holding him, rightly by her lights since Lew held her future in his hands, hostage and had him pinned down facing a big old-time Colt 45 which even a brave man had to respect, respect a lot. After this bad karma trip Lew just couldn’t get work, nobody wanted to hire a guy who couldn’t face down some looney dame without peeing all over himself. Eventually he went to work for Larry Larsen the big Hollywood divorce lawyer which started Lew’s peeping in keyholes career which as mentioned died out when the divorce laws got more liberal most places. Then down the scale to Manny’s, the main repo operation in town and that infamous stolen car by a guy he was supposed to repossess on. Then Gypsy Sally’s and taking deli sandwich orders from real private eyes in her employ.         

I have saved the bombshell for last although looking over the evidence against poor Lew I am not sure I need to bring in the heavy guns. Since I have it and since the “trolls” will not believe anything any way that has to do with real facts here goes. Seth Garth recently did an article in American Left History about the passing in 2017 of Dotty Malone at 97. Many readers may not know who she is, was, but she was a very famous screenwriter in Hollywood when such things counted with credits Dark Passage, A Lonely Place, Fit To Be Tied and a fistful of others, some which carried awards with them. Before Dotty made it in Hollywood she worked a high-end bookstore on Sunset in Hollywood. That is where she met Phil Marlowe, yes, that Phil Marlowe I have been touting forever as the king of the hill with femmes. This was during the early part of the Sternwood case, before he got seriously tangled up with the two wild child daughters. The afternoon he came in looking for information and looking him over she wound up shutting up shop for the afternoon to entertain Phil and his bottle of whiskey. They would thereafter meet off and on even when Phil married the older Sternwood daughter, Vivian, to take a trip on easy street. Once Phil got tired of playing house and  Vivian divorced him he and Dotty took up again seriously, got married. After Phil passed away in the 1970s Dotty ran into Lew, hadn’t seen him for a while (this P.I. fraternity was pretty inbred in those days when it was all guys and hell-raisers too). Despite their age differences, Dotty some years older but still a looker, a mature looker, they started an affair. Or what should have been an affair. That is when Lew told Dotty that he was having trouble, sexual trouble and while she was sympathetic she thought he had maybe gone queer, or something like that. That is what she told Seth in any case. While the trolls will deny reality, call her story a hoax or the blathering of an old woman the rational world can judge why Lew Archer never made the Hall. End of story.      

How The Mighty Had Fallen On Hard Times-The Decline And Fall Of The Late Famous Late Private Detective Lew Archer-With The Chalmers Case In Mind-A Book Review-Sort Of

How The Mighty Had Fallen On Hard Times-The Decline And Fall Of The Late Famous Late Private Detective Lew Archer-With The Chalmers Case In Mind-A Book Review-Sort Of       

By Sam Lowell

The Good-bye Look, Ross MacDonald, 1969

[To be honest I had originally no intention of writing this bracketed introduction but am doing so now as the request, damn, make that order of site manager Greg Green. That little command despite the fact that I am chair of the Editorial Board of this publication and am in theory at least his boss, or one of his bosses. However Greg has pulled rank on me since there was great deal of blowback from readers and reviewers from other publications on my previous efforts to understand the demise of a man who would have been the greatest of all the private eye detectives Lew Archer. I had assumed that as a hard-hitting publication seeking the truth no matter I was on solid ground. I had freely posited that Lew’s trouble began (and ended) with his hushed-up sexual impotence sending him to the minor leagues where chasing skirts as well as criminals didn’t matter that much to a P.I.s reputation since that was mainly repo work or security stuff. The blowback mostly was why was I “defaming” a long-gone dead guy who had had some great successes. But they fail to  mention in the end a guy who through the breakthrough Hardman case and a few others looked like he was a shoo in for the P.I. Hall of Fame wound up peeking through keyholes in seedy U.S. 101 motels before “no-fault divorce” put and big crimp in that P.I. money-maker and then after he go this license yanked wound up shagging golf balls at the Bel Air Country Club for an ex-client who felt sorry for him.  

I would have let the whole thing fade to oblivion, easily fade to oblivion except I ran into Lew’s lawyer, his last lawyer who was sitting in a San Francisco gin mill when he spotted me and after the obligatory exchange of a few drinks which will always loosen up tongues he posed the question of questions about Lew’s demise. And like all lawyers thought he had the answer to before he asked the question. See I knew Lew in the old days, in his old age just before the hammer came down from the State of California that maybe for the good of the profession he “retire” meaning they were not going to renew his license after he got caught planting so-called evidence in the Miller case, a missing child case which never did get solved. Knew Lew from the time that I interviewed him for the East Bay Other as a young free-lance reporter interested in the wild crops of private eyes who populated the Left Coast (not called that then but later). Had an intense interest on film private eyes too as I was beginning to start my first steps as a film reviewer and wanted to compare Lew with some earlier immortals like Phil Larkin, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe, all three easily inducted into that hall of fame.          

Look, in the old days the cops, the DA, the police reporters and everybody else would cover for somebody like Lew who had started out as a public copper but those hero-worshipping days are long gone, long gone for guys whose feet were made of clay. Although those days are long gone and now every reporter, young or old, has to have a “hook” to stay in place even on the food chain of this cutthroat business I was prepared before I got this inside information to move on to other pursuits. Since I am “outing” Lew who was exceptional in that he tanked early I might as well mention that a guy like Phil Larkin was actually arrested as a “peeping Tom” on his last case and had to register as a sex offender in Pennsylvania where his graduate student girlfriend met on-line was doing her doctoral dissertation at Penn State. Sam Spade passed on in a mental hospital, that is what they called them then screaming out the name “Brigid” over and over again. Phillip Marlowe after he married Vivian Sternwood of the oil money billions and moved to Poodle Springs lost his edge. Took only high-end clients and cases until Vivian tossed him out after she caught him fooling around with younger sister Carmen in Las Vegas (that before he ran into Dotty Malone, the famous screen-writer who he would later marry). Not a word below has been changed as a result of the “boss’ command so read on.   Sam Lowell]     

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Lew Archer had been impotent, sexually impotent, which explains a lot about why he never entered the pantheon, the P.I. pantheon. The famous, or rather almost famous, Hollywood private detective who was expected to light up the 1950s professional firmament after guys like Philo Vance, Same Spade, Phillip Marlowe. Phil Larkin, even Nick Charles, stopped peeking through keyholes or cashed their checks whichever came first. Except poor Lew could not cut the mustard as we used to say in the old North Adamsville neighborhood when we had time on our hands and tried to figure who was homo, a fag, you know “light on their feet, ” a mama’s boy, a Nancy and some stuff I refuse to say in my old age after having learned a thing or two -including it ain’t  my business, or yours, who somebody loves. Except nobody, and I don’t here, is trying to “out” Lew at this late date nor do I think he was into same-sex relationships. I think he just lost steam, lost some sexual desire after maybe taking one, or twenty, too many hits on the noggin, a few off-hand slugs and maybe had some other physical problems like erectile dysfunction in those Viagra-less days as he grew older.

Hollywood though as I just learned recently from Seth Garth, a fellow writer at this publication and one of the guys who gay-baited with me in the old Acre working poor days when we had nothing but time on our hands for such foolishness was very protective of its own back in those same 1950s days. The recent comments he made in this publication in doing a quick review of a new biography about male icon and AIDS victim Rock Hudson and other well-known male hunk figures like Tab Hunter and Rory Calhoun show how well all that stuff was kept from the public in the interest of illusions and profits. At who knows at what cost to the actors and others involved. Hollywood, as is less well known, was as protective of its private investigators as its movie stars so it is understandable that Lew’s reputation as a “lady’s man” lasted so long. (Ironically, no, sadly Hollywood was not so protective of its personnel who were being tarred with the “commie, red” brush in the heart of the Cold War purges orchestrated by the U.S. government. They fed the grist mill with all hands in those days.)        

Naturally anybody would want proof or at least informed speculation to go with the “accusation” against Lew at this far remove and I would suggest that beginning with the Galton case, the case that made him very famous, Hollywood famous and thus fleeting he lost his way. And I will provide proof in due course but first it is necessary to set Lew and his manly failure up against what the public, hell, what the profession expected of its own practitioners. Guys like Phil Larkin, Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, hell, even married to Nora Nick Charles when Nora wasn’t looking, set a high bar for grabbing some serious femmes in their time. Hell a guy like Phil Larkin was still pushing himself forward, and succeeding, with young lovelies, with as the term went, or one of the terms for desirable women went, the frills, grabbing a foxy twenty-something graduate student, a Glennon daughter, when he was almost seventy after the Glennon murder case wrapped up. And Phil was a lesser light in the profession then.     

The two big guys in the profession though who I want to highlight here to set up Lew’s problem were one Samuel Spade whose mother raised no fool and the ubiquitous Phillip Marlowe. First to Sam who, with or without his partner Miles Archer, no relation to Lew, solved many cases including that got him in the P.I. Hall of Fame the Astor case, the case where by the skin of his nose he avoided the noose, the big step off and sent a femme, his femme, Brigid who the hell knows her last name she used a million aliases to face the music. Beautiful and every private detective program from those established by the Pinkertons to those you used to see advertised on match book covers about learning the profession in ten easy lessons without leaving the comfort of your armchair (but leaving a few bucks behind as usual).

That Astor case is informative for it is the first time in public that a P.I. slept with a client, a lying bitch of a client but still a client under most state licensing rules and then turned her over the coppers after she nearly blew his brains out, and few other guys too. The point here being that with a wild one like the Astor dame you had better have, what did we call it up above, plenty of mustard if you are going to go the distance and not fall down in the cracks. I won’t even mention that Chinese beauty over in Chinatown that cleans his whistle in the Tong Wars case or what in the profession was called the “flute-player case,” although in public called the Bergman case, when this Scandinavian femme tried to leave him flat to take yet another fall after doing her thing with him. Great almost heroic mode stuff.      

If Sam set the standard, set the bar high, Phillip Marlowe, another P.I. Hall of Famer, went wild with the women once it didn’t matter, nobody gave a fuck as one wag had it whether you played it straight with the client or jumped immediately under the satin sheets with the femme. Had two sisters going at one point, the younger wilder one, Carmen, Carmen Sternwood, dropping in his lap even before he took his hat off. It is not clear whether he went under the silkies with both her and the older sister, Vivian whom he married for a while mostly for the sex and dough then blew their Poodle Springs mansion for the next best thing. Bopped swell Velma against all odds and against the mammoth client who would have put him six feet under if he got a whiff of that scent she gave off when Phillip came a-calling. Grabbed Honey in the big Hollywood star murder case no problem. I could go on and on but you get the message. Cut the mustard or get the hell out of town.  

Now to the case against Lew, why he didn’t measure up, why he was never even close to being voted into the P.I. Hall of Fame despite a fistful of nominations. There was a lot of speculation around over the years that Lew was never the same after the, what did they call it, oh yeah, the Ivory Grin case where he got egg all over his face when he was unable to figure out what happened to the guy his client was looking for. The client a fox if there ever was one but Lew never got to first base with her, never tried to get to first base which is worse from the story I heard from a very reliable source who knew the client and knew the guy she was looking for and couldn’t find through Lew. The public coppers wrapped it up in a week once there was another murder committed by the same warped doctor who couldn’t keep his hands off the women, some other guys’ women.       

Personally, and bear me out on this I think the turning point was when he balled up the Galton case, couldn’t connect the dots, couldn’t navigate the bevy of dames who passed his way and if that was the case then no way could he solve the case. As mentioned before, and if not then now, the public coppers had to come and save his bacon, Jesus, against a guy who hung himself rather than go back in stir, rather than face the inevitable California big step-off.

Funny how you will get information on the subject you are reporting on, the back channels connections that never get made public, by you or any reporter made public, not if you want to move up the tough racket food chain that is journalism the toughest racket of all except maybe film critics, reviewers whatever they call themselves these days. The operative word is you “dug” the nuggets out by the sweat of your brow like some coalminer rather than having it handed to you by some poor drunk like happened in the Johnny Cielo case down in Key West back in those same 1950s. But at this far remove I am not telling any tales out of school by saying that impotence theory was the opinion of a well-known lawyer who should know and whom I met when I was just starting out as a journalist at the East Bay Other, a place where a few other writers here did some free-lance work. Hell, it was all free-lance or free then since you never knew if you would get paid or not, paid enough at least to keep the wolves from your door. I had been sitting with that lawyer having drinks at the notorious KitKat Club in San Francisco in the days when “drag queen” culture was very much underground, and I was on assignment to write about it for the Eye. He was defending the establishment and the exotic entertainers against the city and against various violations of the health moral codes then existing. This in the days before Timmy Riley was the owner, when he was just working out his act, doing a lame impersonation of Miss Bette Davis and hardly keeping the wolves from his door. Somehow the subject of great private detectives came up, probably I brought it up since I knew that he had defended a number of famous private eyes, famous California ones anyway when they got into legal trouble.

Got Phillip Marlowe, yes that Phillip Marlowe from the Sternwood case P.I.s still talk about, still do case studies on in those matchbox cover ads touting how to be a detective in ten or so easy lessons-for hard cash and no refunds, buddy- out from under the big step off when they tried to wrap old-time gangster Eddie Mars’ murder, murder by his own bodyguards on Marlowe when he, Marlowe,   was allegedly doing a burglary of one of Eddie’s properties. Got Phil off in a million other cases too like the time he wasted some doctor, some pill-pusher who filled him up with junk to get him to spill where a guy named Moose Malone, no relation to Dorothy below, was to stop him from finding some femme who did not want to be found-by giant Moose anyway. From a million other cases and who I had found out later at that time had been married to Dorothy Malone, the famous screenwriter who just died this year at 98 and was the last living link to the great Marlowe legacy.

Got Nick Charles into a 12- Step program after he had attempted to “fly,” Nick’s drunken sot term on the QT after a million DUIs without his wife Nora, his mistress Jenny, or any Frisco cops who had an interest knowing about it. Got one Samuel Spade out from under about six felonies and the loss of his license when some twist named Brigit, Mary, who knew in the end what her real name was pointed the finger at him. That was the one where that Brigit femme walked to the big house and took some gaff for stuff, a fistful of murders, that she had attempted to tie to our boy Sam. So that lawyer and if you don’t know who he is by now then you just don’t lawyers who make their kale off the troubles of private detectives and giving the name would mean nothing to you knew from whence he spoke.

What would mean something, name or no name, was that lawyer’s theory about private detectives, and here he zeroed in specifically on Lew Archer and how he blew the Galton case, a few others too but the Galton case was pure fuck-up and made his point. What that big-time lawyer said was that any P.I. who wasn’t half crazy trying to get under the silky sheets with some femme is strictly impotent, can’t get it up. Not gay, asexual, intersexual, bi-sexual or anything like that that stuff is okay, was okay for him back then since he was hanging around such people in the KitKat Club before Timmy Riley, aka Miss Judy Garland, broke out of the pack with the Garland gag, took over and made the place a Mecca for tourists who wanted to take a quick walk on the wild side.

The funny thing as our lawyer described it was that Lew had about five opportunities to bed some dame starting when he first got on the case with Mrs. gallons of oil money Galton’s home companion, Ava, who was a knockout from the photos of her in a swimsuit when the case went to court (the case of officially adopting Granny Galton’s lost grandson as her sole heir not the murder case of her son which some lawyer had forced her to look into and which was a cold case, a frozen solid cold case when Lew put his grimy paws on the thing and screwed almost everything up before he was done and the public coppers had to come in and solve the damn thing, a rare occasion indeed then but the start of the downward spiral, the road to repo and keyhole peeking work). Then there was the guy who fingered Mrs. gallons of oil money son back in the 1930s whose wife, since remarried, practically threw herself at Lew to avoid her second husband, a good man according to all parties including Lew, finding out she was married to a shiftless bum, a con artist and accessory to murder of that Galton son. Passed her by.

We won’t even speak of the easy pickings he would have had, could have had if he had paid the least bit of attention to the wife, the second wife of the lawyer who hired Lew to find Mrs. Galton’s son (I won’t continue with that “gallons of oil money” gag you know who I mean now). Not only was she drugged to the gills, half naked at least half of the time in his presence at the nursing home she was placed in after she had a nervous breakdown over her role in the murder of that guy who fingered Galton’s son for the executioner’s ax back in the 1930s but she believed, when her lawyerly husband brainwashed her to perdition, she had killed that ex-lover. A piece of cake. Blown to perdition.

It doesn’t end there, and maybe I will miss a few other opportunities today when I think about the long-ago case but I will give you enough examples that my lawyer friend gave me to condemn Lew to strictly third-rate private detective-dom. There was the grandson’s college time, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan girlfriend who had enough dough to sink a ship, was ready to give the kid cars, and whatever else he wanted. The kid walked away, went to greener pastures. When Lew interviewed the twist, trying to find out what she knew about the kid’s whereabouts, what made him tick, and why he was the pawn in some nefarious scheme to dupe Mrs. Galton into believing that he was really her grandson, she was as ready to have a soft shoulder to cry on as anybody in the world. Lew walked. Wouldn’t give her the time of day, made some excuse up about his time of the month, male version. Hell even ancient Phil Larkin, he of the famed Simmons case which made his name, grabbed some twenty-something graduate student from Penn State, led her a merry chase, and he was almost seventy. Poor Lew.

(My lawyer checking into that Big Blue dame’s fate just because he was interested, maybe grab her on the rebound told me she already had a new boyfriend about five days after Lew talked to her although he still was able to get a date with her since she and the new lover were not “exclusive,” whatever that meant.)  

Now I think that the next women Lew passed on maybe he wasn’t wrong to not take a run at although my lawyer was infuriated that I would say such a stupid journalist kind of thing. This was a dame, an older dame but not that old who frankly didn’t keep up her appearances as they used to say in the days before body-shaming became taboo, very taboo whether for good or evil. She would have been easy pickings too, maybe a one-night stand but here is what she was about. She had actually been married to Mrs. Galton’s son, has seen him killed out on the coast south of Frisco where they were staying, had had an affair or two with the finger man and her husband’s murderer before under threat of murder to her son, that Galton heir grandson, she had married the guy and fled to Canada with him. Stayed with him trying to protect her son she said-likely story. No go for Lew though even though she had locked the door behind them when he was “interviewing” her. No, not poor Lew, sad sack Lew.

Here is the one I don’t figure, the one he should have taken a run at with all hands. Once Mrs. Galton found out that her son had been murdered but that she had a grandson who had been missing for years and who turned up during Lew’s tenure as her private investigator that case was over. Still there were plenty of people who for their own reasons believed the kid, John was the name he used but as usual any name will do since they are all aliases, was an impostor, was in it for the big payoff when Granny croaked. One was Mrs. Galton’s doctor who had a young daughter whose was at just that age when she was as flirtatious to older guys as young guys. The doctor wasn’t happy when he found out that said daughter was having an affair with John after Lew basically frosted up on her. Jesus how many chances can a guy have and flub everyone.

My lawyer friend also had a theory about the cause of Lew’s impotency which led to his royally screwing up the case so badly. It is tough being third or fourth fiddle in the private detective game (and that was only in California we won’t even discuss the whole country). Lew tried I think, maybe to be a lady’s man but it didn’t work, so he tried a different route, the no sex with clients or persons of interest. It didn’t work but that is that. It now makes perfect sense that he didn’t believe John was the real deal, that the lawyer who hired him played him like a yo-yo. That everybody lied through their teeth to him and he bought it, or at least followed more false flag leads than you could shake a stick at. The funny thing was that all the loose ends got collected up without him. The Galton son's murderer hung himself rather than going back to jail. The finger-man’s ex-wife got redemption from her second husband. John got his girl and his mother’s forgiveness. Mrs. Galton got her real heir, despite the murderous machinations of her scoundrel lawyer and his bedazzled wife got a clear conscience. Lew, well, Lew got egg on his face, lots of egg and a lonely roll-away bed in his low-rent rooming house.                     

It never really got better for Lew as the cases got fewer, as the femme world got the cold shoulder fast even before they could coo a few words. Take the odd-ball Shafer case, an odd-ball case because he took the thing on “spec” from his lawyer who was trying to help a long time neighbor and his wife, The Chambers, whose son had been off the rails, had been as they said in those day, looney, cuckoo ever since he had been abducted as a child had killed the abductor the minute he got a chance. This neighbor, Jim, the man had bags of money either inherited from his late mother or gathered from some unknown sources, and had been too boot a war hero, World War II version, as a pilot out in the briny Pacific death traps. Jim had a wife, a beauty named Oona, nice right who once Lew got on the case could tell was not in love with her husband, was going through the motions. She had looked Lew up and down the minute he came into view but despite being in her presence for a goody part of the case, passed.     

Jim and Oona’s kid really was in a bad way after two events one the so-called robbery of a bunch of his father’s letters to his mother and the stacking up of bodies like cordwood anytime Nick was within fifty miles on any murder. He blamed himself and found his way into the nearest mental hospital which just so happened to be run by a psychiatrist, and his wife Moira, more on her in a minute, trained as a social worker whose benefactor, whose “angel” in funding the clinic had been Jim after Nick got away from that bad ass abductor. Of course anytime the Nick name came up in Lew’s lawyer’s presence he went apoplectic since he did not want his young daughter, young at twenty-five several years younger than Lew but very appealing. She was looking for a shoulder to cry on, another unhappy California woman who seemed to have populated Lew’s life. She could not have been more obvious about her needs but again Lew turned his face away. 

We need not go into the stack of dead bodies that Lew always wound up having to figure out who the murderer was, in the early days he would have had this thing nailed down before sunset by he was clueless for a long while, just like that horrible end to the Galton case when started him down the road to cheap street. What was important though is that he ran through about three other women who would not have turned him down with slightest encouragement. By now you know the drill though.  

I mentioned that Moira, that buxom, curvy woman, Lew’s description not mine I never saw her, married to the shrink who was treating young Nick, the natural fall guy for any bad stuff in the neighborhood. No question she was brighter and kinder than her husband whom she hated with a passion since he went off the deep end running the clinic factory. She was ripe for Lew’s arms, ready to “do the do” as we used to say in the old neighborhood. Why I bring this up with what we know about Lew’s state of mine at the time one story that was circulating at the time was that they, Moira and Lew let’s be clear, went off to some vacant clinic bed and did the “deed.” That was the story then then went around and people were relieved that at least Lew was back on track to be a real private detective.

Baloney, the real story that my lawyer friend who gave me the skinny on the Galton screwups ran into Moira one night in some gin mill in Brentwood. Since he knew her slightly from sending some of his clients to her husband’s in attempts to make a mental incapacity case for them when all else failed he bought her a drink and the subject of Lew Archer and the Shafer case came up. She turned seven shades of red and probably knew right there where the discussion would lead. My guy brought up the subject by way of thanking her for saving Lew’s reputation, for bringing back his “ladies’ man reputation which every serious P.I. needed or got knocked down to repo work or worse. She told him the real story, the story Lew made her tell certain persons who would make sure it got around. Despite about six different attempts arouse him usually every trick she knew from the Kama Sutra nothing. Being a kind if sexually frustrated by the encounter she went along with his wishes. That night hubby got a joy ride she blurted out.  

As for the fate of poor Nick, well, things got better for him once he figured out he was no stone-cold killer. The solution as Lew’s lawyer figured out and passed on to the coppers was simplicity itself, P.I. 101. Nick was set up by somebody who knew he was vulnerable and knew he knew “what was what” about the stolen letters. His “father” Jim had set the poor kid up having committed a burglary of his mother’s house for dough and those damn letters. Jim was a fake, was not Nick’s father, was a worse fake in general because he was one of those “stolen valor” guys, had washed out of pilot school because he got airsick or something. Wound up doing KP, shining officers’ shoes, and policing the grounds around the naval station in San Diego being laughed at by real pilots who had flown serious missions in the Pacific. The only good thing he did when exposed, or about to be, was to slit his worthless throat. As for Lew he got a reprieve from his fading reputation and that was it. Tough slide for a guy who could have been a hall of famer. 

“First Let’s Kill All The Lawyers”-Maybe Shakespeare Was On To Something Back In The Day-Ross MacDonald’s “The Galton Case” (1959) -A Book Review

“First Let’s Kill All The Lawyers”-Maybe Shakespeare Was On To Something Back In The Day-Ross MacDonald’s “The Galton Case” (1959) -A Book Review

Book Review

By Ronan Saint James

The Galton Case, written by Ross MacDonald, 1959

Lew Archer, the somewhat famous private eye out on the West Coast, was impotent. That is at least the opinion of a well-known lawyer who should know and whom I met when I was just starting out as a journalist at the East Bay Other, a place where a few other writers here did some free-lance work. Hell, it was all free-lance or free then since you never knew if you would get paid or not, paid enough at least to keep the wolves from your door. I had been sitting with that lawyer having drinks at the notorious KitKat Club in San Francisco in the days when “drag queen” culture was very much underground and I was on assignment to write about it for the Eye and he was defending the establishment and the entertainers against the city and against various violations of the health moral codes then existing. Somehow the subject of great private detectives came up, probably I brought it up since I knew that he had defended a number of famous private eyes, famous California ones anyway when they got into legal trouble.

Got Phillip Marlowe, yes that Phillip Marlowe from the Sternwood case P.I.s still talk about, still do case studies on in those matchbox cover ads touting how to be a detective in ten or so easy lessons-for hard cash and no refunds, buddy- out from under the big step off when they tried to wrap old-time gangster Eddie Mars’ murder, murder by his own bodyguards on Marlowe when he was allegedly doing a burglary of one of Eddie’s properties. Got Phil off in a million other cases too like the time he wasted some doctor, some pill-pusher who filled him ot up with junk to get him to spill where a guy named Moose Malone, no relation to Dorothy below, was to stop him from finding some femme who did not want to be found-by giant Moose anyway. From a million other cases and who I had found out at that time had been married to Dorothy Malone, the famous screenwriter who just died this year at 98 and was the last living link to the great Marlowe legacy. Got Nick Charles into a 12- Step program on the QT after a million DUIs without his wife Nora or any Frisco cops who had an interest knowing about it. Got one Samuel Spade out from under about six felonies and the loss of his license when some twist named Brigit, Mary, who knew in the end what her real name was pointed the finger at him. That was the one where that Brigit femme walked to the big house and took some gaff that she had attempted to tie to our boy Sam. So that lawyer and if you don’t know who he is by now then you just don’t lawyers who make their kale off the troubles of private detectives and giving the name would mean nothing to you knows from whence he speaks.

What would mean something, name or no name, was that lawyer’s theory about private detectives, and here he zeroed in specifically on Lew Archer and how he blew the Galton case, a few others too but the Galton case is pure fuck-up and makes his point. What that big-time lawyer said was that any P.I. who wasn’t half crazy trying to get under the silky sheets with some femme is strictly impotent, can’t get it up. Not gay, asexual, intersexual, bi-sexual or anything like that that stuff is okay, was okay for him back then since he was hanging around such people in the KitKat Club before Timmy Riley, aka Miss Judy Garland, took over and made the place a Mecca for tourists who wanted to take a quick walk on the wild side.

The funny thing as our lawyer described it was that Lew had about five opportunities to bed some dame starting when he first got on the case with Mrs. gallons of oil money Galton’s home companion, Ava, who was a knockout from the photos of her in a swimsuit when the case went to court (the case of officially adopting her lost grandson as her sole heir not the murder case of her son which some lawyer forced her to look into and which was a cold case, a frozen solid cold case when Lew put his grimy paws on the thing and screwed almost everything up before he was done and the public coppers had to come in and solve the damn thing, a rare occasion indeed). Then there was the guy who fingered Mrs. gallons of oil money son back in the 1930s whose wife, remarried, practically threw herself at him to avoid her second husband, a good man according to all parties including Lew, finding out she was married to a shiftless bum, a con artist and accessory to murder of that Galton son. Passed her by. We won’t even speak of the easy pickings he would have had, could have had if he had paid the least bit of attention to the wife, the second wife of the lawyer who hired Lew to find Mrs. Galton’s son (I won’t continue with that “gallons of oil money” gag you know who I mean now). Not only was she drugged to the gills, half naked at least half of the time in his presence at the nursing home she was placed in after she had a nervous breakdown over her role in the murder of that guy who fingered Galton’s son for the executioner’s ax back in the 1930s but she believed, when her lawyerly husband brainwashed her to perdition, she had killed that ex-lover. A piece of cake.

It doesn’t end there, and maybe I will miss a few other opportunities today when I think about the long ago case but I will give you enough examples that my lawyer friend gave me to condemn Lew to strictly third-rate private detective-dom. There was the grandson’s college time, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan girlfriend who had enough dough to sink a ship, was ready to give the kid cars, and whatever else he wanted. The kid walked way, went to greener pastures. When Lew interviewed the twist, trying to find out what she knew about the kid’s whereabouts, what made him tick, and why he was the pawn in some nefarious scheme to dupe Mrs. Galton into believing that he was really her grandson, she was as ready to have a soft shoulder to cry on as anybody in the world. Lew walked. Wouldn’t give her the time of day, made some excuse up about his time of the month, male version. (My lawyer checking into her fate just because he was interested, maybe grab her on the rebound told me she already had a new boyfriend about five days after Lew talked to her although he still was able to get a date with her since she and the new lover were not “exclusive,” whatever that meant.  

Now I think that the next women Lew passed on maybe he wasn’t wrong to not take a run at although my lawyer was infuriated that I would say such a stupid journalist kind of thing. This was a dame, an older dame but not that old who frankly didn’t keep up her appearances as they used to say in the days before body-shaming became taboo, vert taboo whether for good or evil. She would have been easy pickings too, maybe a one-night stand but here is what she was about. She had actually been married to Mrs. Galton’s son, has seen him killed out on the coast south of Frisco where they were staying, had had an affair or two with the finger man and her husband’s murderer before under threat of murder to her son, that Galton heir grandson she had married the guy and fled to Canada with him. Stayed with him trying to protect her son she said-likely story. No go for Lew though.

Here is the one I don’t figure, the one he should have taken a run at with all hands. Once Mrs. Galton found out that her son had been murdered but that she had a grandson who had been missing for years and who turned up during Lew’s tenure as her private investigator that case was over. Still there were plenty of people who for their own reasons believed the kid, John was the name he used but as usual any name will do since they are all aliases, was an impostor, was in it for the big payoff when Granny croaked. One was Mrs. Galton’s doctor who had a young daughter whose was at just that age when she was as flirtatious to older guys as young guys. The doctor wasn’t happy when he found out that said daughter was having an affair with John after Lew basically frosted up on her. Jesus how many chances can a guy have and flub everyone.

My lawyer friend also had a theory about the cause of Lew’s impotency which led to his royally screwing up the case so badly. It is tough being third or fourth fiddle in the private detective game (and that was only in California we won’t even discuss the whole country). Lew tried I think, maybe to be a lady’s man but it didn’t work, so he tried a different route, the no sex with clients or persons of interest. It didn’t work but that is that. It now makes perfect sense that he didn’t believe John was the real deal, that the lawyer who hired him played him like a yo-yo. That everybody lied through their teeth to him and he bought it, or at least followed more false flag leads than you could shake a stick at. The funny thing was that all the loose ends got collected up without him. The Galton son murderer hung himself rather than going back to jail. The finger-man’s ex-wife got redemption from her second husband. John got his girl and his mother’s forgiveness. Mrs. Galton got her real heir, despite the murderous machinations of her scoundrel lawyer and his bedazzled wife got a clear conscience. Lew, well, Lew got egg on his face, lots of egg and a lonely roll-away bed in his low rent rooming house.                     

When Private Detectives, Shamuses, Gumshoes, Key-Hole Peepers Stepped Up In Class-“The New P.I.” Circa 1950s-Ross MacDonald’s “The Ivory Grin”-A Book Review

When Private Detectives, Shamuses, Gumshoes, Key-Hole Peepers Stepped Up In Class-“The New P.I.” Circa 1950s-Ross MacDonald’s “The Ivory Grin”-A Book Review

Book Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

The Ivory Grin, by Ross MacDonald

Well the battle lines are finally drawn; the dirty underbelly of this cutthroat business can see the light of day. Sam Lowell, who used to be the official senior film critic in the days when Allan Jackson, recently returned as a contributing editor or some such make-shift title pressed upon Greg Green by the Editorial Board conveniently headed by one Sam Lowell, ran the show, was the site manager which meant that he doled out the assignments to friend and foe alike, has laid down the gauntlet or whatever you call it when you are challenged to a no holds barred unto death duel. It seems Sam, as my good friend and mentor Seth Garth, warned me would happen, has finally blown his gasket, has in his words “had enough.” Had enough of being challenged on his “cred,” his term, on the issue of his expertise in the film noir world. Has taken umbrage, my term, on my continual reference to his so-called definitive tome on the genre The Life And Times Of Film Noir:1940-1960 as so much eyewash, so “retro” and out of date and geared to the hoary Dashiell Hammett- Raymond Chandler-Phillip Larkin trio who allegedly took the, Sam’s expression, “parlor pink amateur detective” and made him, and it was solely hims in that world of blood and guts hard-nosed avenging angels with angles seeking rough-edged justice in this wicked old world.

Yawn. Yawn to threadbare theory and yawn, double yawn to a nine hundred, maybe I had better write the number in numerical form so you too can have your eyes boggled 900, paged volume which by my estimation could have been done in say three hundred pages. The use of the word estimation no accident since try as I might I lost interest about the time I got to 1953 when he dribbled on and on about one Mike Hammer and how despite his ardent anti-communism and bull in a china shop manner was a hard-boiled lady’s man of a detective in the mold of  Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, Hammett’s Sam Spade (notably absent was his Nick and Nora Charles except by indirection), and Larkin’s Jack Logan.

A reviewer, a conscientious reviewer, can only be expected to take so much, take a volume loaded with plenty of book and film reviews allegedly written by Mr. Lowell in his salad days which formed the bulk of the work so he essentially double-dipped getting paid, I hear, by the word from Jackson and getting whatever royalties from the pricey in those days twenty-five dollars from the book publisher Wainwright Press. (I would be remiss, would be taken to task, and continually chuckle and continue to write every chance I get as well if I didn’t mention Seth Garth’s reaction when I asked him if he had read all 900 plus pages of Sam’s volume. Seth, who has known Sam since Hector was a pup, Seth’s expression, gave me his patented Seth smirk and said are you kidding nobody, not even Sam could read that thing, a real snorer was the way he put. Seth also insinuated what is now common knowledge around here on the question of authorship of his reviews that Sam surely had not written the whole thing himself given his skirt-chasing drunken revels in those days and that Seth had written half of it or at least gave lots of input into the project.]

I have made it clear for a while now, at least since I got my own by-line, thanks Seth, after surviving about six different onslaughts from Sam on noir and young Will Bradley on Marvel Comic so-called heroes, that I intend to be the diva for the 21^st film noir world. Sam balked at that idea when I first presented it in print-and Seth said go for it. What has Sam really in a lather is that after he finished his tome he never updated the damn thing so that all the neo-noir, all the films that came after those based on his work are sealed with seven seals to him. Like any good reviewer I saw my spot, my place in the vacant landscape and I am going to make my mark. I have decided to deal with an expose of Sam’s omissions and neglect (like as I mentioned given short shrift to Nick and Nora Charles despite almost two hundred pages on Hammett’s Spade and fifty alone on his early nameless Continental Op in Red Harvest) by starting with a classic writer, film adapter, who Sam gave short shrift to since his career spanned well past the 1960s benchmark, Ross MacDonald (Ken Millar real name). Sam barely mentions him, barely mentions his central private detective Lew Archer although Lew had all of the balls of Marlowe and Spade and about twenty times more psychological insight in what drove up against the wall “perps” over the edge.       

Properly speaking Lew Archer, at least in this first book, The Ivory Grin, that I picked at random out of the twenty-plus books in the Archer series, despite the his short height, or at least that is what is known about his physical stature moves away from the really bull by the horns, knock heads and let God separate out the guilty from the innocent at his leisure, skirt-chasing of Spade-Marlowe-Logan trio much touted by Sam as the epitome of the post-parlor pink detective world. Those guys except when they actually wrap up a case, beating the public coppers with a gong while they are still scratching their heads, to take down some cruddy criminals best gotten off the streets leave me cold, could have better gone back to key-hole peeping before say Chandler, for example, let them handle cold cases, got them out of the threadbare offices waiting around sucking up low-rent whiskey from the bottom desk drawer. Archer used his wits and deductive powers to bring a little rough justice to the world, what Seth, citing a guy from his youth named the Scribe, called this wicked old world.

I am sure, well maybe not sure but I hope, when Sam, or whoever he has read other’s reviews and write his reviews these days finally realizes that his balloon has been burst he will drag up some escapade of Marlowe’s saving an old dowager with wild daughters some grief or Spade busting up a stuff of dreams con or Logan outwitting the dragon king by stealth to counter my contentions about Mr. Archer. Let him do his best. Meanwhile Lew, short or tall, chain-smoker or dope head, drunk or sober will by guile and indirection solves his mysteries without bang-bang and sucker punches every two pages. Here is how he figured out what happened to Charles Singleton when he went slumming among the plebes and got nothing but that ivory grin in the end for his troubles.

Yes, that is the Charles Singleton of the very, very Singleton family that came over with John and Priscilla on the merry Mayflower who made a name for himself in World War II as a pilot, a lady’s man in full uniform and a guy who after the war knew how to turn a dollar-if he had to. But see Charles, and maybe it was that too much inter-breeding among too close cousins which destroyed many old-line families, had a kinky side, liked to go down in the mud with whores, or as the term was used then maybe now too loose women of no known address. As long as they were Helen of Troy beautiful and willing to succumb to his kinky side, to the wild side. That is what tripped him up in the end, what caused Lew to lose some sleep because Charles picked up some tramp, some round-heeled beauty with no vocabulary but who gave good head (unspoken but assumed in 1950s dime store detective literature) in some gin mill out in California when he was stationed in the Air Force and winning fistfuls of medals.

This woman, let’s give her a name beyond her “profession,” Alicia was nothing but a mantrap, was nowhere but from hunger grabbing onto whatever safe harbor she could grab onto. Problem, very big problem, whatever her feelings for Charles and all was that she had been a second level gangster’s moll back in the Midwest, a nice nest but dangerous especially if somebody else takes something from a gangster-then bang-bang and no questions asked. Oh, another little problem she was married out West, out in the California valley to a Walter Mitty-type doctor who was running a low-rent medical practice which was not giving dear Alicia the kind of life she had expected. The long and short of it was Alicia had three guys on her string.

That would be the undoing of one Charles Singleton, he of mansions and Mayflowers, once her gangster man who was getting a bit screwy came West and found out she was shacking up with a Mayfair swell. Bang-bang poor Charles. That was where Lew came in first as a replacement for a corrupt private detective looking for the main chance by Charles’ blue-haired mother and subsequently by one of those too closely related female cousins who was in love with her flyer boy. Mission: find out where the hell Charles had disappeared to. To pose the question was to give the answer. Along the way a young black woman who was trying to help Alicia got murdered as did that self-serving private eye. In all three murders and a few twists and turns.

Here is where human nature as it has evolved thus far gets a big workout.  Everybody and their sister were trying to cover up the fact that our gangster with a screw loose had shot and killed Charles. The helpful black woman, the gangster’s ill-disposed sister, Alicia who in desperation brought the seemingly mortally wounded Charles to hubby doctor’s clinic to see if he could survive.  He didn’t but not due to that gangster fusillade. Old Walter Mitty doc loved his Alicia, wanted to protect her in his own way. Yeah, Doc blew his Hippocratic Oath and did bleeding from all pores Charles in. Moreover, to cover his tracks he dissected the guy and left him a skeleton in a closet where nobody but Lew could figure out what happened. Nice work Lew and the public coppers are still scratching their heads having been out-classed by a new breed of private eye.                               

When Private Detectives, Shamuses, Gumshoes, Key-Hole Peepers Stepped Up In Class-“The New P.I.” Circa 1950s-Ross MacDonald’s “The Ivory Grin”-A Book Review

When Private Detectives, Shamuses, Gumshoes, Key-Hole Peepers Stepped Up In Class-“The New P.I.” Circa 1950s-Ross MacDonald’s “The Ivory Grin” (1952)-A Book Review

Book Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

The Ivory Grin, by Ross MacDonald, 1952

Well the battle lines are finally drawn, the dirty underbelly of this cutthroat business can see the light of day. Sam Lowell, who used to be the official senior film critic in the days when Allan Jackson, recently returned as a contributing editor or some such make-shift title pressed upon Greg Green by the Editorial Board conveniently headed by on Sam Lowell, ran the show, was the site manager which meant that he doled out the assignments to friend and foe alike, has laid down the gauntlet or whatever you call it when you are challenged to a no holds barred unto death duel. It seems Sam, as my good friend and mentor Seth Garth, warned me would happen, has finally blown his gasket, has in his words “had enough.” Had enough of being challenged on his “cred,” his term, on the issue of his expertise in the film noir world. Has taken umbrage, my term, on my continual reference to his so-called definitive tome on the genre The Life And Times Of Film Noir:1940-1960 as so much eyewash, so “retro” and out of date and geared to the hoary Dashiell Hammett- Raymond Chandler-Phillip Larkin trio who allegedly took the, Sam’s expression, “parlor pink amateur detective” and made him, and it was solely hims in that world of blood and guts hard-nosed avenging angels with angles seeking rough-edged justice in this wicked old world.

Yawn. Yawn to threadbare theory and yawn, double yawn to a nine hundred, maybe I had better write the number in numerical form so you too can have your eyes boggled 900, paged volume which by my estimation could have been done in say three hundred pages. The use of the word estimation no accident since try as I might I lost interest about the time I got to 1953 when he dribbled on and on about one Mike Hammer and how despite his ardent anti-communism and bull in a china shop manner was a hard-boiled lady’s man of a detective in the mold of  Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, Hammett’s Sam Spade (notably absent was his Nick and Nora Charles except by indirection), and Larkin’s Jack Logan.

A reviewer, a conscientious reviewer, can only be expected to take so much, take a volume loaded with plenty of book and film reviews allegedly written by Mr. Lowell in his salad days which formed the bulk of the work so he essentially double-dipped getting paid, I hear, by the word from Jackson and getting whatever royalties from the pricey in those days twenty-five dollars from the book publisher Wainwright Press. (I would be remiss, would be taken to task, and continually chuckle and continue to write every chance I get as well if I didn’t mention Seth Garth’s reaction when I asked him if he had read all 900 plus pages of Sam’s volume. Seth, who has known Sam since Hector was a pup, Seth’s expression, gave me his patented Seth smirk and said are you kidding nobody, not even Sam could read that thing, a real snorer was the way he put. Seth also insinuated what is now common knowledge around here on the question of authorship of his reviews that Sam surely had not written the whole thing himself given his skirt-chasing drunken revels in those days and that Seth had written half or at least gave lots of input into the project.]

I have made it clear for a while now, at least since I got my own by-line, thanks Seth, after surviving about six different onslaughts from Sam on noir and young Will Bradley on Marvel Comic so-called heroes, that I intend to be the diva for the 21^st film noir world. Sam balked at that idea when I first presented it in print-and Seth said go for it. What has Sam really in a lather is that after he finished his tome he never updated the damn thing so that all the neo-noir, all the films that came after those based on his work are sealed with seven seals to him. Like any good reviewer I saw my spot, my place in the vacant landscape and I am going to make my mark. I have decided to deal with an expose of Sam’s omissions and neglect (like as I mentioned given short shrift to Nick and Nora Charles despite almost two hundred pages on Hammett’s Spade and fifty alone on his early nameless Continental Op in Red Harvest) by starting with a classic writer, film adapter, who Sam gave short shrift to since his career spanned well past the 1960s benchmark, Ross MacDonald (Ken Millar real name). Sam barely mentions him, barely mentions his central private detective Lew Archer although Lew had all of the balls of Marlowe and Spade and about twenty times more psychological insight in what drove up against the wall “perps” over the edge.       

Properly speaking Lew Archer, at least in this first book, The Ivory Grin, that I picked at random out of the twenty-plus books in the Archer series, despite the his short height, or at least that is what is known about his physical stature moves away from the really bull by the horns, knock heads and let God separate out the guilty from the innocent at his leisure, skirt-chasing of Spade-Marlowe-Logan trio much touted by Sam as the epitome of the post-parlor pink detective world. Those guys except when they actually wrap up a case, beating the public coppers with a gong while they are still scratching their heads, to take down some cruddy criminals best gotten off the streets leave me cold, could have better gone back to key-hole peeping before say Chandler, for example, let them handle cold cases, got them out of the threadbare offices waiting around sucking up low-rent whiskey from the bottom desk drawer. Archer used his wits and deductive powers to bring a little rough justice to the world, what Seth, citing a guy from his youth named the Scribe, called this wicked old world.

I am sure, well maybe not sure but I hope, when Sam, or whoever he has read other’s reviews and write his reviews these days finally realizes that his balloon has been burst he will drag up some escapade of Marlowe’s saving an old dowager with wild daughters some grief or Spade busting up a stuff of dreams con or Logan outwitting the dragon king by stealth to counter my contentions about Mr. Archer. Let him do his best. Meanwhile Lew, short or tall, chain-smoker or dope head, drunk or sober will by guile and indirection solves his mysteries without bang-bang and sucker punches every two pages. Here is how he figured out what happened to Charles Singleton when he went slumming among the plebes and got nothing but that ivory grin in the end for his troubles.

Yes, that is the Charles Singleton of the very, very Singleton family that came over with John and Priscilla on the merry Mayflower who made a name for himself in World War II as a pilot, a lady’s man in full uniform and a guy who after the war knew how to turn a dollar-if he had to. But see Charles, and maybe it was that too much inter-breeding among too close cousins which destroyed many old-line families, had a kinky side, liked to go down in the mud with whores, or as the term was used then maybe now too loose women of no known address. As long as they were Helen of Troy beautiful and willing to succumb to his kinky side, to the wild side. That is what tripped him up in the end, what caused Lew to lose some sleep because Charles picked up some tramp, some round-heeled beauty with no vocabulary but who gave good head (unspoken but assumed in 1950s dime store detective literature) in some gin mill out in California when he was stationed in the Air Force and winning fistfuls of medals.

This woman, let’s give her a name beyond her “profession,” Alicia was nothing but a mantrap, was nowhere but from hunger grabbing onto whatever safe harbor she could grab onto. Problem, very big problem, whatever her feelings for Charles and all was that she had been a second level gangster’s moll back in the Midwest, a nice nest but dangerous especially if somebody else takes something from a gangster-then bang-bang and no questions asked. Oh, another little problem she was married out West, out in the California valley to a Walter Mitty-type doctor who was running a low-rent medical practice which was not giving dear Alicia the kind of life she had expected. The long and short of it was Alicia had three guys on her string.

That would be the undoing of one Charles Singleton, he of mansions and Mayflowers, once her gangster man who was getting a bit screwy came West and found out she was shacking up with a Mayfair swell. Bang-bang poor Charles. That was where Lew came in first as a replacement for a corrupt private detective looking for the main chance by Charles’ blue-haired mother and subsequently by one of those too closely related female cousins who was in love with her flyer boy. Mission: find out where the hell Charles had disappeared to. To pose the question was to give the answer. Along the way a young black woman who was trying to help Alicia got murdered as did that self-serving private eye. In all three murders and a few twists and turns.

Here is where human nature as it has evolved thus far gets a big workout.  Everybody and their sister were trying to cover up the fact that our gangster with a screw loose had shot and killed Charles. The helpful black woman, the gangster’s ill-disposed sister, Alicia who in desperation brought the seemingly mortally wounded Charles to hubby doctor’s clinic to see if he could survive.  He didn’t but not due to that gangster fusillade. Old Walter Mitty doc loved his Alicia, wanted to protect her in his own way. Yeah, Doc blew his Hippocratic Oath and did bleeding from all pores Charles in. Moreover, to cover his tracks he dissected the guy and left him a skeleton in a closet where nobody but Lew could figure out what happened. Nice work Lew and the public coppers are still scratching their heads having been out-classed by a new breed of private eye.