Ellsworth quickly established a much more subjective, emotionally driven style of crime writing than Shaw. Commentators on Black Mask’s influence on film and popular culture have not often noticed these changes in style and direction.
Certainly, Curt Siodmak’s science fiction noir masterpiece, Donovan’s Brain, the darkest of obsessive, subjective, first person narratives, serialized in Black Mask in 1942, years after Fanny Ellsworth had left, would not have made it into Black Mask if the talents of Fisher (nine stories from August 1937 to April 1939) and of Woolrich (twenty-two original stories from January of 1937 to June of 1944) had not first been let loose on its pages.
Black Mask writers and genres influenced Hollywood in more ways than hard-boiled dialogue and tough-guy detection of films based on Hammett, Chandler, and similar writers.
The late Curt Siodmak’s work on horror films, especially at Universal scripting and creating The Wolf Man (1941), and with Val Lewton at RKO scripting I Walked with a Zombie (1943), is of interest, particularly with regard to the emergence of a noir film esthetic from out of the shadows of the “horror” films of the 1930s and 1940s Hollywood (See my interview with Siodmak about his film experiences, particularly with Val Lewton: http://www.blackmaskmagazine.com/siodmak.html).
Once the noir film emerged at the beginning of the 1940s with the production of Steve Fisher’s novel, I Wake Up Screaming (1941), Fisher’s and Woolrich’s noir work flooded Hollywood:
In 1943 the great run of more than two-dozen noir films based on works by Cornell Woolrich, the genius of the dark thriller, began when Val Lewton produced The Leopard Man (1943); Robert Siodmak (Curt’s brother) directed Phantom Lady (1944); The Mark of the Whistler (1944) followed; Clifford Odets scripted Deadline at Dawn (1946); then came Black Angel (1946); and The Chase (1946); followed by The Guilty (1947); and Fear in the Night (1947).
Steve Fisher scripted Cornell Woolrich’s I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (1948) with a telephone call assist from his pal Woolrich. When Fisher couldn’t come up with an appropriate ending for I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes, Woolrich suggested that Fisher resurrect the sexually obsessive, psychotic cop from I Wake Up Screaming and turn him into the culprit, motivated by his lust for the framed man’s wife. Ironically, Fisher originally had based that haunting and haunted police detective, Ed Cornell, on his friend Cornell Woolrich.
The most famous Woolrich inspired film, of course, is Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic, Rear Window.
Frank Gruber and Steve Fisher always remarked on this change in the esthetic of the crime thriller that started to take place in pulp fiction (and some would argue in American cinema) in the late 1930s, and which came of age in Hollywood films in the 1940s; and to note Black Mask’s and Fanny Ellsworth’s role in that change.
In Black Mask, Fisher and Woolrich shared a talent for presenting aberrant mental states, and for casting suspenseful plots with inventive, obsessive incidents.
Frank Gruber, who more than any other Black Mask writer encouraged Fanny Ellsworth’s influence among his writing peers, had a flair for introducing humor into classic hardboiled and noir thriller situations. And so even though he did not have the dark, obsessive, natural noir talents his best friends Fisher and Woolrich possessed, Gruber was still able to make significant and influential contributions during Ellsworth’s heightened emotional reign over Black Mask’s narratives.
Gruber’s natural sense of humor heightened and relieved the tension in hardboiled and noir thrillers and influenced many writers to follow him. Craig Rice even adopted character duos of a sharp, super smart and fast-talking detective partnered with a slow-witted, always hungry, funny foil of a sidekick. One of Rice’s characters even had a photographic memory.
More modern stylists who owe much to Gruber’s sense of comic complications, and humorous dialogue are Donald E. Westlake, and the much more sinister Elmore Leonard. Gruber credits Fanny Ellsworth with allowing Black Mask authors to relax and explore their sense of narrative humor.
Under Captain Shaw, brilliantly funny narrators like Norbert Davis had to sneak their more zany sides into more traditional tough guy stories. We can see the long distance result of Gruber’s influence in the movement toward screwball mysteries in the films of the late 1930s and the 1940s, especially in the better film work of Bob Hope and Red Skeleton.
Even the great Dashiell Hammett in his late career brought the genre its greatest recipe for mixing humor with mystery in the Thin Man films. Nick and Nora Charles were presented on screen as a classic screwball loving couple as they romped through an iconic tough guy crime universe of cops, criminals, and corpses with a charming élan that became Hammett’s most enduring commercial creation.
Even more important than Ellsworth’s encouragement of humorous turns in classic Black Mask mysteries, Fanny Ellsworth was the inspiration for the full emergence of the psychologically heightened noir genre that has had an enduring and thrilling impact on film and fiction in popular American and world-wide entertainment.
— Keith Alan Deutsch
BEHIND THE BLACK MASK
In working out an Oliver Quade story I always determine, first, the background for the yarn. I generally try to have an original or colorful setting for the yarn. This isn’t always as simple as it sounds.
Although Hollywood backgrounds are used repeatedly by other writers, I’d never done a Hollywood story. Mainly because I’d never been in Hollywood until recently and I always believe I should know a little of a background, from personal observation.
So, when the opportunity presented itself for a Hollywood trip, I decided to write a story with a Hollywood background. After giving it some thought, I came to the conclusion that just about every phase of Hollywood had been covered by other writers — except the animated cartoon studio.
The thought struck a responsive note in me for I am very fond of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck…. So I emerged with Desmond Dogg and “Funny Man” in this issue of Black Mask.
To Mr. Hugh Harman of the Harman-Ising Cartoon Studios, I am indebted for the courtesy of a personally conducted tour through a “cartoon factory.” I want it understood, though, that none of characters or situations in “Funny Man” refer in any way to the Harman-Ising Studios. They are entirely fictitious, only the factual material and the “atmosphere” was obtained from H-I.
For the benefit of those who came in late, I’d like to report that Oliver Quade will soon be portrayed in a motion picture, Paramount Pictures having bought the film rights to all the Quade stories, for Lynn Overman. The story now “in the works” is Dog Show Murder, which appeared originally in the March 1938 issue of Black Mask.