...No softness is tolerated in the magazine called Gang World. The Black Mask wants stern tales and so does Gangland Stories and Gangster Stories. The Racketeer [sic], another periodical magazine, would disappoint its readers if the hint of Victorian decency were permitted to creep in.
...nowadays a different definition of virtue is found. Virtue is indeed glorified in such publications as Prison Stories, Speakeasy Stories and Gangster Stories, but it is virtue of a different order. The hero is the type of criminal who does not expose his pals, does not double cross his associates, but is true to the code of the gang. The gun moll who goes to the chair or faces the machine guns of a rival gang without squealing is accorded the same title of heroism as the girl who took such strenuous measures to prevent curfew from ringing tonight.
...Violence is the order of the day...
On July 28, 1932, the Chicago City Council introduced a resolution urging the suppression of crime magazines:
At the outset, we are confronted by a tremendous and never-ceasing amount of suggestions for murderous crimes. Detective stories, gangster stories, gun moll stories and racketeering stories by the millions and millions of copies, week after week, encourage those who are mentally defective to contemplate murder and execute the crime as opportunity offers.
Hersey could only have dreamed of circulations into seven figures. No doubt, the resolution went the way of most resolutions: into the noble memories file. Gangster pulps may have fizzled out, hut detective and crime pulps remain with us in one form or another.
In the grand history of censorship in the 20th Century, the attack on the gang pulps barely merits a footnote (the footnote you’re now reading). The original magazines are extremely scarce, and precious few of the stories have ever been reprinted. Thus, there has been only a vague notion of what the magazines contain, among the relatively few people who even know they existed. So how could we regret losing, because of censorship, that which we barely remember?
In an interesting coincidence, the infamous Hollywood Production Code (PC) was adopted by the film studios on March 31, 1930, a variance measured in weeks from when Hersey reached his accommodation with Sumner. Hersey’s agreement, like the PC, was a form of self-censorship: We agree to restrict ourselves in order that retribution is not delivered upon us. The PC is best-remembered for its restrictions on sexual issues, adultery, nudity, rape, deviance, and sex itself. But it also addressed crime scenarios. Its restrictions in that category are a virtual catalog of what could be found in the gang pulps: “criminals should not be made heroes”; “brutal killings should not be presented in detail”; “killings for revenge should not be justified”; “law and justice must not by the treatment they receive from criminals be made to seem wrong or ridiculous”; “crime need not always be punished, as long as the audience is made to know that it is wrong.” The PC, though, was skirted as quickly as it was adopted: thus creating the “pre-Code era” that lasted into 1934, when the Code was finally observed in earnest. We wonder if Hersey’s agreement with Sumner did not, in its own way, produce a half-hearted standard, giving the reader the same product of revenge and violence bundled up in a chaste wrapping; analogous to a later generation of pornographic books advertised as “marriage manuals.” The “packaging” may pacify outsiders, but the true consumers know better.
Reading these gang stories, and looking for evidence of pre- and post-censorship content, can be a puzzling experience, at times the imperfect science of reading tea leaves. The distinctions can be subtle to the modern eye, as jaded as we are to depictions of violence in print, film, or on television news. But understanding the cloud of scrutiny the stories were published under gives them another level of intelligibility all the same (assuming the rocky prose cooperates).
In 1930, Harold Hersey elected not to defend his constitutional rights — for perfectly understandable reasons. Though the Bill of Rights grants freedom freely, enforcing it can be very expensive, indeed. When Hersey reduced the conflict to a one-day news story, he guaranteed that the affair would soon be forgotten and that its inner details would never be public. That allowed him, whether from intent or selective memory, to claim in Pulpwood Editor: “I was careful never to permit an underworldling to triumph over justice.” Because the magazines themselves were unavailable, his brief account became the prism through which future historians of the pulps would characterize his gang-story magazines. We hope, with this volume, to have corrected the record to the extent possible.
Bibliography
“Ban on Crime Story Magazines Is Sought in Chicago Council.” (Associated Press) New York Times, July 29, 1932.
Doherty, Thomas. Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934. Columbia University Press, 1999.
Ellis, Douglas. Uncovered: The Hidden Art of the Girlie Pulps. Adventure House, 2003.
“ ‘Gang Stories’ Magazines To Be Withdrawn.” The Bee (Danville, Virginia), February 21, 1930.
Gunnison, John P. “Let’s Try Strange Courtroom Suicide Stories.” The Pulp Collector, Summer 1988.
“Hersey, Revisited.” The Pulp Collector, Fall 1991.
Haskin, Frederic J. “Gangster Stories of Today Are Successors of the Dime Novels” (in The Haskin Letter column of May 20, 1931). The Independent (Helena, Montana), May 25, 1931.
Hawkins, Willard E. Untitled, unsigned editorial. The Author & Journalist, May 1930. Account of Hersey’s “arrest” in Denver.
Hersey, Harold. The New Pulpwood Editor. Adventure House, 2002. Reprint of Pulpwood Editor (Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1937).
“John S. Sumner, Foe of Vice, Dies.” New York Times, June 22, 1971.
Lichtblau, Joseph. “The NEW Gangster Story.” Writer’s Digest, September 1930.
“The Lighter Side” (column). The Hartford Courant, February 20, 1930.
“Magazine Attacks Newstands’ Wares.” New York Times, October 29, 1929. Report of article in Catholic weekly, America.
“Magazines Stopped Here.” New York Times, February 20, 1930.
Parton, Lemuel F. “New York Revives Old Law to Stamp Out Gang Stories.” Appleton Post-Crescent (Wisconsin), February 22, 1930. Syndicated article.
“Reports on 1928 Vice War.” New York Times, May 12, 1929. Describes mission and scope of activities for the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
“Seize 3,000 Books as ‘Indecent’ Writing.” New York Times, October 5, 1929.
Van Raalte, Joseph. Bo Broadway (column). Olean Evening Herald (New York), February 16, 1931.
“Volte Face.” Writer’s Digest, April 1930. News item on Hersey’s censorship problem.
Woolf, S. J. “A Vice Suppressor Looks at Our Morals.” New York Times, October 9, 1932. Interview with John S. Sumner, executive secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
About the Authors
A number of these names may seem unfamiliar, even to diehard pulp fans. The natural conclusion to make is that a few writers produced the bulk of the stories, which the publisher issued under pseudonyms to conceal the lack of variety. However, few of the below names are pseudonyms; on the contrary, the majority seem to be real. Some of these writers, however, did sell regularly to Hersey and, perhaps, had less luck elsewhere.