Everybody Learns from Sherlock Holmes

They really do. Not long ago, I wrote about a particular episode of The Adventures of Superman that used a similar concept to a Sherlock Holmes story.


Well, recently, the original Torchy Blane movies came out on DVD through the Warner Archives program. I’d seen most of them over the years on TV from time to time, but there’s a few I’ve missed. It’s nice to be able to get completely caught up on them.


Torchy, by the way, has an odd history. The movies are supposedly based on an excellent series of hard-boiled detective stories by Frederick Nebel. These featured a cop named Steve McBride and a perpetually drunk reporter named Kennedy, who often worked together to catch crooks and uncover corruption in fictional Richmond City.


When Warner Brothers brought the series to the big screen in nine entertaining B-movies, poor Kennedy was replaced by spunky, smart and fast-talking Torchy Blane. Played in seven of the films by the very pretty Glenda Farrell, Torchy was now engaged to Steve McBride (usually played by Barton MacLane). Their relationship was often more adversarial than loving—but they usually managed to solve whatever crime needed solving. And, it’s the wise-cracking Torchy who usually gets to the correct solution first, scooping the other newspapers on the story in the process. Also, Richmond City was replaced by New York City—most likely to allow the use of stock footage.


The movies aren’t the hard-boiled fare that the original stories were. They are more light-weight. But good writing and Warner Brothers’ stable of reliable character actors make it a really enjoyable series.


Anyway, I’m supposed to be talking about a Sherlock Holmes connection. In Torchy Gets Her Man (1938), the girl reporter finds out MacBride is working on a top-secret sting operation at the race track, hoping to catch a counterfeiter. Eager to get a scoop, she decides to deal herself in by tailing the G-man who’s working with MacBride. What neither he nor MacBride know, though, is that the G-man actually is the counterfeiter. (That’s not a spoiler, by the way. The audience is given this information early on.)


When Torchy tries a straight tail, she loses the “G-man.” So she tries a different method. She pours creosote (a smelly oil that was used as a wood preservative) on the right rear tire of the guy’s car. Then she rents a bloodhound track the smell.


She even admits to have gotten the idea from Sherlock Holmes. In the novel The Sign of Four (1890—Holmes’ second appearance), someone fleeing from the scene of a murder steps in some creosote. Holmes uses a bloodhound named Toby to hunt him to the riverfront. This eventually leads to the classic boat chase that brings the case to a close.


Toby, by the way, is something of a fan favorite. If I remember correctly, this was his only actual appearance in a story from the original Canon, but he makes quite an impression on readers--or at least the dog-loving readers.


Well, Torchy doesn’t have access to Toby. She ends up with a German Shepherd named Blitzen (and is obligated to phonetically give commands to Blitzen in German). Despite the language barrier, Blitzen does a bang-up job, even playing an important role in saving Torchy’s life after she is captured and left tied up near a ticking time bomb.

So 48 years after the publication of The Sign of Four, spunky and pleasant-to-look-at Torchy Blane looks to the Great Detective for help. That same year, Orson Welles described Holmes during a Mercury Theater on the Air broadcast as “a gentleman who never lived and will never die.” Torchy Gets Her Man is just one small example of just how true that is.

1937--A Good Year for Adventure

By pure coincidence, I just read a couple of books that were both originally published in 1937. Both were good mysteries featuring established characters and it got me to thinking. What were all the famous detectives and adventurers doing that year?


We’ll start with the Whisperer—the secret identity of James “Wildcat” Gordon, police commissioner of an unnamed big city. Gordon isn’t satisfied with the slow course of official justice and the corruption that slows it down even more. So, on top of his efforts as a cop, he often assumed the identity of the Whisperer. Using specially designed dental plates to disguise his voice, he wielded a pair of silenced automatics to dispense a somewhat faster method of justice than the court system allows.


In The Red Hatchets, he finds himself caught between two opposing forces when a Chinese tong wages brutal warfare against a local gangster. A lot of mobster skulls get split with red-handled axes while the Whisperer tries to rescue a kidnapped girl and sort out exactly what’s going on.


Beautiful girl reporter Torchy Blane (the inspiration for Lois Lane) had several 1937 adventures chronicled in the movies. One of them, Fly-Away Baby, had her traveling around the world to keep tabs on a suspected murderer. She and her boyfriend, NYPD Lt. Steve McBride, eventually confront a killer aboard the zeppelin Hindenburg.


Interestingly, Charlie Chan had been aboard the Hindenburg (though traveling in the opposite direction) while pursuing a spy in Charlie Chan at the Olympics. Of course, though that film was released ’37, it was recounting events that took place the previous year. For Charlie’s 1937 adventure, we need to look to Charlie Chan on Broadway, where he sorts out a killer’s identity from among a bevy of Damon Runyon-esque gamblers.



Terry Lee and Pat Ryan (from the comic strip Terry and the Pirates), while still bumming around the Far East, begin the year escaping from the bandit leader Pyzon, though Pat gets shot in the process. While recovering, he encounters his long-lost love Normandie Drake and her sleezy husband Tony Sandhurst. Terry and Pat rescue Sandhurst from kidnappers, but the chubby villain then attempts to frame Pat for several felonies.


Dick Tracy spent a large part of 1937 breaking up an insurance fraud ring. In the end, he is forced to track the main bad guy through a pitch-dark theater.

Hercule Poirot was in England that year, responding to a letter for help from a rich woman who feared one of her relatives was trying to off her. The letter is delayed and the poor woman is dead before Poirot arrives. But he can at least put the finger on the killer, as recounted in the book The Dumb Witness.


Back in New York City, gargantuan detective Nero Wolfe looks into a murder in The Red Box. It’s a case complicated when one of the suspects has the bad taste to die in Wolfe’s office, presenting him with a possible conflict of interest in his further investigations. But, with the help of his hard-boiled assistant Archie Goodwin, the overweight genius manages to figure it all out.


There was, in fact, quite a bit of action in the Big Apple that year. The Shadow was quite busy, but his most notable case that year was recorded in The Shadow Unmasked. While looking into some jewel thefts, the Shadow is forced to abandon his usual secret identity of Lamont Cranston. For the first time, we learn who he really is—Kent Allard, an aviator who was supposedly killed in a crash years before.


The Spider had a busy year as well. In Dictator of the Damned, he prevented a madman from using assassinations and an army of thugs to take over the city. It all comes to a head with a desperate gun battle inside a riverfront building, while the lovely Nita Van Sloan is caught up a yet another death trap. I think that poor girl may have even beat out Lois Lane for the number of death traps various villains tossed her into.


Ellery Queen had a quieter but still fascinating adventure when he tried to deduce who had plunged a pair of scissors into the neck of a famous novelist in The Door Between.


Doc Savage was hopping around the globe quite a bit that year (as he was throughout the ‘30s and ‘40s.) His adventures included battling an evil dwarf armed with a super-weapon in Repel and preventing some mercenaries from taking over a Central American nation in The Golden Peril. That latter case was especially important—the country is the source of Doc’s great wealth, regularly supplied to him in gold by some grateful Mayans he once helped out.


Over in Los Angeles, famed criminal attorney Perry Mason solved a murder aboard a gambling ship in The Case of the Dangerous Dowager. A little later that same year, Della Street gets tossed in jail for a short time helping her boss figure out The Case of the Lame Canary. She also gets the first of what will be several marriage proposals from Perry in that book. But she believes Perry needs a secretary who will back his plays no matter what more than a wife, so she always turns him down.


Even when I read the books, my mental image of Della is that of Barbara Hale from the TV series. I don’t blame Perry for being persistent in his proposals. Gee whiz, that gal was purty!


And that’s only a small portion of the vigilantes, detectives, and explorers that had adventures that year. It was an adventurous year indeed. But whatever problems might arise, whether it was a single murder or the threat of world domination, there were more than enough heroes scattered about the globe to keep the innocent safe.

B-Movie Detectives: Part 5

Torchy Blane, a spunky, very pretty girl newspaper reporter, used to be a thin, perpetually drunk guy reporter named Kennedy.

No, no operation of any sort was involved. This was the 1930s and when Warner Brothers bought the rights to Frederick Nebel's hard-boiled detective stories starring Kennedy of the Free Press, the decision was made to change Kennedy's sex AND personality. Kept from the original story was police Lieutenant Steve McBride, now Torchy's love interest.

It's too bad that movies faithfully based on Nebel's entertaining stories were never made--Kennedy is a great character and the stories are well-plotted. But Torchy is smart, spunky, brave, quick with a insult and really pretty--so there's no real room to complain.

Of the nine Torchy Blane movies, seven of them starred cute-as-a-button Glenda Farrell as Torchy. Farrell played the role with a lot of energy and a real sense of fun, bringing life to the stereotypical girl reporter role. In each film, Torchy would get involved in investigating a murder. Her boyfriend, Steve McBride, would head up the official investigation. Sometimes, he and Torchy would work together. Other times, they'd get on each other's nerves; McBride would order Torchy to back off from the case; Torchy would then ignore him and follow up her own leads. And she was usually the one to figure out who did it in the end.

McBride was played by Barton MacLane. MacLane usually showed up in Bogart movies as a gangster or dishonest cop--somebody Bogie would have to shoot or beat up before the movie was over. It's fun to see him as a straightforward good guy.

By going with a female protagonist and casting an actress so appealing in the role, the Torchy Blane movies have a unique energy to them. She might not be as famous as Dick Tracy, but she looks a lot better in a skirt.