Who's for Tales Told Quick and Short?

 

Pulp Books, Pulp Movies --- Where's the Difference?

Remember when Arthur Mayer booked The Lost Patrol after nobody else wanted to? He knew what they did not … that The Lost Patrol was a Pulp Movie, one made with men, for men, of action. At least ones that dreamt of action. Most limited participation to slump in fleapit seats where exertion by others wash over them, life as lived vicarious through characters living fuller. Pulp reading did that for a sedentary majority, those not actually pearl-diving or private-detecting. Every kind of experience we would never know was put within reach of Pulps, Walter Mitty the character more men actually resembled, like it or don’t. Pulp magazines took you places you wanted to go without really going. None of dreary exposition like mainstream novels. Transport to fantasy got done within a paragraph, or someone else would be writing the next paragraph. Pulps sold way, way more than other books. Damn their eyes for waste upon such rubbish, but pulps were reading too. Did they educate well as anything taught by school or college? What vocabulary we get is got from what we choose to read. I’ll venture fans pulp-enough devoted could write same of their own after minimal exposure to the form. In fact, a lot of them did. How many distinguished scribes emerged in the twentieth century by rolling their own via pulps, “Big Little Books,” or Dime Novels? Radio taught too, like spoken word now. Then came television and everything after that was visual. Comic books especially. What is read anymore but “texts”? I’m awed by past scribes generating five, six thousand words per day for sake not of art but of eating. Penny-a-word was as often pulp’s rate. Raymond Chandler lived on soup for five days till finally twenty dollars came through for a sold story.

Movie scripters led a largely pulp life, but at pay almost unseemly for its yield. Some felt guilty taking such money for junk they were obliged to write. Dream of any pulper was Hollywood and ease conferred, as told by Frank Gruber in a 1967 memoir, The Pulp Jungle. He had friends who made the jump to live large, like Steve Fisher who sold I Wake Up Screaming to Fox in 1941 for seventy-five hundred, “a very handsome price for a mystery.” This was up from two hundred fifty to five hundred customarily got by free-lancers from picture-makers during the thirties. Chandler took $3,500 from Fox for The High Window because it had been a successful novel, this after RKO gave him $2,000 for Farewell, My Lovely. Screenwriters knew the value of having a prior novel in their kit, status gotten above ones who toiled for flickers or had a pulp past. Best money came of invitation to work with seasoned directors, like Chandler called by Billy Wilder to help with Double Indemnity, a job he hated but for $10,500 Paramount paid. Enough pulp writers slid under Hollywood doors to influence storytelling there. Pulp Movies emerged from the liaison, factory-generated film much the better for speed and expertise these artisans brought to mass production they understood well. In fact, Hollywood was a rest cure for most. Frank Gruber never had life so good as when churning thrillers, westerns … many westerns, at feature-length and the more prolifically for television. A postwar paperback revolution fed genre formula like slop to hogs, spin-rack America insatiable for what cost a quarter and was enjoyed at half-mast attention. We may safely credit paperbacks for much called “noir,” even if smallest percentage of PB’s eventually got to screens.

Genres were fruit of pulpy trees, often disguised by lush production. Best pulp was purest, done cheapest at a least severe length. The fifties was Gold Era to feed off pulp or what was left of it, plus paperbacks taking pulp’s place. To westerns derived from pulp you’d not associate Red River, but Borden Chase wrote it, no one more adept at pulp than he. Series cowboys were pulp for youngsters or youth-at-heart, as were serials, latter an ongoing triumph of pulp sensibility. Lush and for-everybody westerns gave way to pulp depending on star standing and changed overall circumstance. Tom Mix was a nation’s hero in the twenties, came somewhat down with talkies to a series for Universal, his audience understood now to be Pulp Kids, whom he served splendidly with Destry Rides Again (1932), a Max Brand story which had sold a million copies and bought the author an Italian villa. Reality of pulp was ongoing status as Best-Selling American literature, whether intellects liked it or not. Mix rode pulp to the finish, his serial The Miracle Rider a masterpiece of the mindset, then radio where pulp was a guiding light, or voice. “Tom Mix” survived even unto comic books long after the man passed on. Horror was product more of pulps than other media, certainly movies which shied from the style once censorship and complaints became manifest. Still, there were Pulp Chills, if much milder than what magazines with their lurid covers pledged. These were cut-rate like what newsstands sold for dimes, and a dime for most part got you in to see Boris Karloff in his bent science lot for Columbia, then Bela Lugosi roughly the same when not grave despoiling at Monogram or PRC. Class horror was a done deal it seemed, but then came Val Lewton.

Lewton made poetic chillers that were designed as, and sold as, pulp. Pleasant surprise Cat People frustrated expectations but in a flattering way, a parlor, or auditorium, trick Lewton got away with but once. Follow-up titles and merchandising stayed lurid per RKO dictate, Lewton yanking bone from wolf mouths by denying what they came to see, I Walked With a Zombie pulp that proved to be something else, The Leopard Man not about a man becoming a leopard, but wearing the disguise of one. Watchers complained, exhibitors listened, receipts fell off. Ideal Pulp Chillers in concept were being made by a man determined not to supply them, frustrating to a studio wedded since way back to precepts of pulp, two-thirds of yearly output cut from cloth ragged as edge of a ten-cent magazine. Stars who kept prestige address elsewhere took downward drive to RKO, but served well needs of those who chose action rapid and uncomplicated. Richard Dix, Victor McLaglen, Chester Morris … these and more kept sleeves rolled up for a next fight to engage or mutiny to quell. Each would do enough at RKO to be genres in themselves. Maybe McLaglen listened to Arthur Mayer when The Lost Patrol blew into Gotham on Rialto wings, knew thenceforth who his audience was and determined never to let them down. Aforementioned names were combined where fighting pals was the text, two-for-one if second-featured for your single ticket, stories mighty familiar from past issues of Adventure or Argosy. McLaglen took a freak of an Academy Award in midst of brawling but didn’t let that swell his punched-up head. Remarkable what polish vets could apply to humble surface. Look especially at Dix for The Ghost Ship with Lewton, a pulp elevated eloquent from pulp.

Hot off the Film Daily’s August 10, 1938 wire: “House record smashed at the Rialto on Broadway … biggest take in almost three years since Arthur Mayer took the house over … the picture is made to order for the Rialto trade.” And so it was for Smashing the Rackets, game but less gamey than yarns woven into Spicy Detective’s latest number, or other of pulps lining newsstands. RKO lived by limits publishers did not. One was that Chester Morris as a dynamic D.A. must not skirt due process to crack Bruce Cabot’s syndicate. A telling scene has Chet putting suspects behind closed door where it’s implied (by a recording device) that confessions will be beaten out of them, trickery revealed after miscreants outside are scared into owning up truth and enabling arrest by square shooter Morris. Pulp authority would administer torture for real or shoot the lot to hasten justice, difference being what could be done in print vis a vis cops cuffed by a strict screen Code. Film-depicted officers carried guns but were largely estopped from using them. Later noir detectives, private eyes especially, resorted seldom to firearms used willy-nilly in pulps, and certainly law must not be taken into one’s own hand. Constant dialogue warnings emphasized this, strict out-of-bounds to empty all six from your roscoe into thugs that have it coming. Cop-and- robbing toughened up after the war but could not keep pace with what paperbacks were giving, and for cheap. There emerged dividing lines between class noir and independents down-market enough to at least suggest freedoms pulp enjoyed. The Accused for instance from Paramount was flip side of crime coin from T-Men and others of independent origin, latter stripping kid gloves to serve their public rawer meat.

Pulp Noir brings out for many the best of a genre that, like other genres, and more so literature bound in paper and pocket-size, defined much of pastime in terms of cheapness and convenience. Screen noir was given over to independent filmmakers after major studios realized there was too little money in it (Zanuck memo-wondered why Fox should do them at all). RKO continued apace because theirs had been bare threads to begin with, so yes to Armored Car Robbery, The Threat, others B/W and peeping over one hour’s running time. Novels at twenty-five cent cost bred films made for seemingly not much more, The Killing Kubrick’s salute to stripped-down adapt of literature half-baked and in a hurry. Celebrated Touch of Evil came from dog-eared paperback, many saying later on that these and ones like them were perfect wedding between two sorts of disreputable formats. Pretty soon it got to where majors stayed off crime and dark themes, unless stars were cast: Rogue Cop at Metro, Violent Saturday from Twentieth. A gimmick plus hot source material could help something humble seem special, like I, The Jury lately out on 3-D Blu-Ray to help us understand why people paid to see Biff Elliot play Mike Hammer ($1.6 million in worldwide rentals was better than most cheap noirs took). Kid Pulp Westerns would be displaced after the war by Plain Pulp Westerns designed for everybody plus kids, elements of the old left in (George “Gabby” Hayes kept working), and many in color, if otherwise economical. Frank Gruber of pulp past wrote some, hirers knowing he’d be fast and moderately coherent (Silver City a fair example, his script from a Luke Short story). “Class” westerns stood out like twisted toes, High Noon too rich for posterity’s blood. If westerns must be A and with major stars, let Borden Chase write them, like with Anthony Mann output featuring J. Stewart.

Certain players seemed born to night-set and rain-slick, like Sterling Hayden, Victor Mature. They did Pulp Westerns too, by cartloads. Fellows like Rory Calhoun and Guy Madison hung their own shingles to be Pulp Cowboys and earn more independently than major companies were willing to pay. Pulp sensibility extended to science-fiction after top dogs failed to draw sufficient profit from spaceman themes, War of the Worlds, This Island Earth, Forbidden Planet dressed in long pants to go out and earn knickers money. Sci-fi would be cut henceforth from pulpwood to better satisfaction of many, then and maybe more so now, as look at love for a Brain from Planet Arous or even Plan 9 from Outer Space. Universities don’t teach pulp or paperbacks … right? Films from scurvy source often make our best films, so there is gateway to art for words otherwise printed, then forgot. There have been fads for lowly categories, cast-off-when-new genres. Film noir seems here to stay as idol from the old, where precode hot during the nineties seems less so now. Does old finally become too old? I remember the Rat Pack being celebrated, but that seems to have cooled. Have they become dangerous to like? Serials and series westerns went with generations that processed them new. I couldn’t coax Tom Mix or Rocketman upon anyone with cruise tickets. Comedy seems stabilized. If you grew up liking Keaton, Chaplin, the lot, chances are you still do, but are there converts to the cause, and if so, how many per annum might we guess? I expressed surprise before that pulp enthusiasts still exist, let alone meet. Postwar paperbacks sell on eBay, the rarer ones for uncommon money, and I bet they even get read, especially since thank heaven, the things aren’t being freeze-dried into frightful look-but-never-touch slabs as are comic books.