THE PULP CALENDAR: September 15

This is a 1931 Adventure from my own collection. I don't think it's an intact copy; my understanding is that in this era you had an advertising section before the table of contents that, if such was still the case in 1931, has been cut away. Still, the content that counts is intact, though I don't think I'd risk cracking the 192 page magazine's spine to do any serious scanning. I've only read about a third of the issue so far, and the stories are pretty good.

In this era Adventure's covers rarely if ever illustrated any of the stories inside, but you could imagine that Sidney Riesenberg's cover is a portrait of Hashknife Hartley, W. C. Tuttle's most enduring western hero. Hashknife's career began in Adventure in 1920, and there he stayed, for the most part, until 1935, apart from a few forays into Argosy. From 1935 to 1951 Hashknife was a star of Short Stories, though Tuttle created a kind of poor man's version of the team of Hashknife and Sleepy Stevens for Exciting Western's Tombstone and Speedy series in the 1940s. The original Hashknife was the exemplar of Tuttle's pulp specialty, the cowboy detective, though the author is at pains to deny pretentious claims for his hero's genius in this introduction to him (or reintroduction) from this issue's opening installment of the two-parter The Make-Believe Man.

Hashknife was no super-sleuth of the range country, but he did have a keen mind and a keen eye for small details, together with a bulldog tenacity. He was a product of the cattle range on the Milk River, Montana; the son of an intinerant minister who had almost too many sons and daughters to share his pittance. So little Henry Hartley, with only a smattering of education, went into the world to win a living.

He grew up quickly, both physically and mentally, a student of human nature, a crude analyst of things. Drifting down through the cattle country, he stopped for a while at the famous old ranch that gave him his nickname, and there he met Dave – Sleepy – Stevens, another cowboy with an itchy foot.

The other side of the hills called to both of them, and they rode away together, just a pair of vagabond cowboys.

And many a rangeland had passed under their horses’ feet since that day, and many a hill had seen them go up one side and down the other. It had not been a profitable partnership. Right now they had less money than they had the day they rode away together, but behind them were deeds well done and memories that money could not buy.

 
In this story Hashknife tries to solve the killing of a fellow saddletramp he knows to have been a real, professional range detective, along the way embroiling himself and Sleepy in the family drama of a woman whose son robbed her, supposedly to pay off a gambling debt, and whose daughter-in-law still lives with her. To Hashknife that doesn't add up; someone that low wouldn't pay any sort of debt. Where he goes with that insight I won't know until I see the October 1 issue someday.

Fortunately there are several satisfactory stories complete in this issue. The best so far is L. Patrick Greene's "Justice," surprisingly frank in its acknowledgment of the sexual exploitation of African women, often the wives of colonial troops, by British officers. The story's hero has the hard-earned respect of his Black Watch, former Zulu warriors, but has to take extra steps to defend their honor after forbidding them from killing the African orderlies who act as procurers for the predatory British. Just as Greene's portrayal of Jim the Hottentot in his Major series evolved over time so that Jim was virtual co-hero of some stories, so here, despite some inevitable racism, he sympathetically portrays the Black Watch's demand for respect as men. I like that Greene resorts to that old pulp standby, the white man's charm that supposedly will detect a guilty party, only to blow right past that point where other stories climax to get to the meat of his subject.

Also very good is "First Command," by Jacland Marmur. A writer I discovered in unz.org's collection of Collier's Weekly, Marmur was pulp's answer to Joseph Conrad: a native of Poland who wrote sea stories in English. This one sets up a cliched situation of two young officers whose lifelong rivalry is punctuated by fistfights in every shared port of call, who end up getting their first posts or serious responsibility on the same ship. When disaster strikes almost instantly, the rivalry vanishes almost as instantly as the men's professionalism comes to the fore.

The last story I read before deadline was L. G. Blochman's "Monsoon." It's well-written but misguided, as Blochman is more interested in the British officer facing criticism from an impatient colonial elite than in his improbable and thus automatically more interesting antagonist, a Canadian World War I veteran who inspires a native uprising. We simply don't learn enough about this man apart from an idealistic belief in liberty that defies the officer's experienced cynicism. It's not that the officer doubts that Indians want liberty; it's just that he knows them to be peasants first who'll revert to peasant ways at the first opportunity, which he strives to provide to them. Maybe it's just my anti-imperialist bias talking (despite my fascination with imperialist stories), but the real story just has to be how the Canadian forms his army, but still finds time for friendly games of chess with the officer.

Coming up for me are Hugh Pendexter's novelette "No Man's Land," about Quantrill's Raiders; Raymond Spears' western story "The Nester;" Gordon Carroll's "story of the tanks" "The Gunner's Seat;" Andrew A Caffrey's "The Fishing Was Good;" another memoir from globetrotting soldier of fortune Rafael de Nogales, and the conclusion of Ared White's Napoleonic serial Monsieur Le Falcon. I really look forward to the Pendexter, but even if the rest aren't up to the standard set in the early pages this issue is still a treat already.

It was inexcusable of me not to credit this issue's sponsor:

THE PULP CALENDAR: September 14

W. C. Tuttle's Henry Harrison Conroy had become "famous" in little more than six months. After making his debut in late February 1935, the vaudevillian turned rancher, sheriff and "Shame of Arizona" had appeared in two more Argosy novelettes before earning his first cover and first serial this issue. He looks a little more stalwart and rugged in V. E. Pyles' rendering, despite his paunch, than he'd look in his many subsequent cover appearances. The whole point of Henry was that he was a comical figure, blatantly Fieldsian, and thus never taken seriously by the criminals of the west whom he inevitably outwitted or simply defeated. Still, Henry had arrived and there was no disputing that. He probably got more Argosy covers over the remainder of the decade than any series character.

Sharing the bill with Henry is Frederick Faust in a dual role. In his most famous part, that of Max Brand, he concludes the serial The Sacred Valley. As George Challis, he presents the second installment of The Dew of Heaven. This serial features Challis's other swashbuckling character, the pirate Ivor Kildare -- Faust clearly liked that name -- to whom the author was returning after getting Tizzo the Firebrand out of the system. After having created the Challis alias for a 1926 Western Story serial, Faust revived it as a swashbuckling brand name with the original Ivor Kildare serial, 1934's The Naked Blade. For this issue's fourth serial, George F. Worts continues his eccentric adventure, The Gold Fist. If you want complete stories, the big one this time is Alfred Batson's "White Jade." This is grand brawling adventure in Asia. As the tag says, "When a Jap, a Chinese and an American all scheme for a fabulous stake, there's no telling the outcome." Throw in a deep-sea diving angle and "White Jade" is vintage pulp fun. You also get R. V. Gery's "The White-Haired Boy," in which an American ship captain gets embroiled in one of those Latin American revolutions, and Charles Newton Elliott's "Bighorn," which is about a mountain sheep, not a beef. It all adds up to another solid Argosy from one of the magazine's peak years.

THE PULP CALENDAR: March 27

W.C. Tuttle never rested on his laurels. By 1937 he'd already created a bunch of enduring characters, from Hashknife Hartley, who went back to 1920, to his Argosy phenom "Hilarious" Henry, of 1935 vintage. It never hurt a pulp writer to have another character you could depend on seeing published, so for Western Story he created Peaceful Peters in a short story named for the character. Peters was one of Tuttle's less-successful efforts, or else one he tired of relatively quickly. Peaceful appeared in only five stories between this issue and July 1938.In that same period Tuttle published three Henry serials in Argosy, so you know where his real efforts were going. The only other series character in this issue is Guthrie Brown's Lefty Pearl, who got his start in 1935 and was almost done by the time "Lefty is Right" appeared. Only two more stories are reported in the Fiction Mags Index. John Dudley Phelps gets the novelette, "Blue Barrier," while Luke Short continues one of his early serials, Silver Horn Breaks. Eugene R. Dutcher and H. C. Wire contribute the rest of the stories, while six columnists, a poet and a letters section fill out the rest of this weekly's 144 pages. The covers aren't as starkly elegant as they'd be in 1939 but with Tuttle and Short in the forefront this was probably a halfway-decent issue.

THE PULP CALENDAR: March 23

This deliberately vague 1935 cover suggests that the people at Argosy weren't sure yet of how to promote W. C. Tuttle's new character. Henry Harrison Conroy, who had made his debut one month earlier, would not cut an imposing figure on a pulp cover by normal standards. Conroy, as readers may recall from the Feb. 23 Calendar entry, was a middle-aged vaudevillian turned Arizona rancher whose most prominent feature was a red, bulbous nose -- in short, W. C. Fields as reimagined by W. C. Tuttle as one of his comical mystery-solving cowboys, though neither of the figures on this cover really matches that description. It wouldn't be until after Henry had appeared in two more stories after this issue's "With the Help of Henry" that Argosy dared put him on a cover. By then -- specifically the September 14 issue -- Tuttle's creation had proved so popular that he'd get the cover whenever one of his serials premiered. Even if they were coy about Henry, Tuttle still outranked Fred MacIsaac, no slouch with Argosy readers, whose new serial, The Wild Man of Cape Cod, probably should have gotten the cover. Elsewhere this issue, Singapore Sammy reaches the penultimate installment of George F. Worts's serial, The Monster of the Lagoon, while spy story specialist Ared White delivers a novelette, "Baited Cipher," and Donald Barr Chidsey, C.C. Rice and William Merriam Rouse contribute short stories. It isn't the most formidable lineup, but just about any 1935 Argosy will have plenty worth reading in it.

THE PULP CALENDAR: February 23

The February 23, 1935 Argosy is as loaded an issue as you're likely to see. For starters, it concludes Eustace L. Adams's serial Anywhere But Here, which I'll have ready for you to download later this week. And as Adams wraps up his story, George F. Worts launches a Singapore Sammy serial. Worts was one of Argosy's superstars in the first half of the Thirties, with Sammy and ace defense attorney Gillian Hazeltine being two of the pulp's most popular recurring characters, and that's not even counting his side gig as Loring Brent, the creator of Peter the Brazen. Singapore Sammy Shay is the best of Worts/Brent's creations: a slightly disreputable globetrotting treasure hunter with a grudge against his devious deadbeat dad. While Worts would close up the Loring Brent shop with a final Peter the Brazen novelet later in 1935, Sammy would get three serials, counting this one, over the next two years before his creator jumped to the slicks and got boring.

Now that I've covered the serials, let's see what else this issue has to offer.

Two top pulp hands introduce new characters this issue. "Spy Against Europe" is the first of three H. Bedford-Jones stories about a spy who comes to be known as The Sphinx. To be honest, I can understand why the series didn't last long after reading this one. More of a milestone is W. C. Tuttle's contribution, "Henry Goes Arizona." To explain the apparent illiteracy, one "goes Arizona," presumably, the way one "goes Hollywood." Henry, to introduce him fully, is Henry Harrison Conroy, a relic of vaudeville who finds himself heir to a ranch in Wild Horse Valley, Arizona. Dismissed as a dude and a drunk, and decried as "The Shame of Arizona," Henry's sardonic intelligence, and a little help from his eccentric new friends, always gets the better of the bad guys in the modern but still wild west. Perhaps the ultimate embodiment of Tuttle's specialty, the comic western detective story, Henry was an instant hit with Argosy readers, and proved popular enough to justify an M-G-M adaptation of this issue's origin story, only with Frank (Wizard of Oz) Morgan in the title role rather than the too-obvious W. C. Fields, though Fields alone, as both actor and writer, could have done the part real justice. Before 1935 was over Henry got his first Argosy cover, and from that point forward his red-nosed rotundity fronted any issue that started one of his serials. Henry survived the collapse and near-demise of Argosy by moving to Short Stories, where his adventures continued to the end of the 1940s.

While Henry's debut makes this an historic issue and the two serials are terrific, the true highlight this week, for me at least, is Ralph R. Perry's "Fangs of the Fetish," an appearance by my own favorite Argosy character, Bellow Bill Williams. I'll be spending a large part of this week proselytizing for Bellow Bill: scanning "Fangs" for your reading pleasure and linking you to other tales while compiling a preliminary checklist of the tattooed pearler's career that will expand greatly on the Fiction Mags Index's inventory. Argosy hardly gets more pulpy in the blood-and-thunder sense than when Bellow Bill roams the South Sea islands, as you'll find over the next few days.

Once I make the Adams and Perry stories available, most of the contents of this issue will accessible to non-collectors in one way or another, as the Bedford-Jones and Tuttle stories have recently been republished by indispensable pulp-fiction preservers Altus Press, while RadioArchives.com recently issued The Monster From the Lagoon in its entirety as an e-book. If I'm feeling generous I'll scan the Kenneth Gilbert and Frank Triem stories, one an animal story, the other a western short, so that pulp fans can collect a virtually complete issue of the venerable weekly from somewhere near the peak of its powers. For now, I leave you with a word from this issue's sponsor:

THE PULP CALENDAR: February 2

The fellow making a hasty getaway is Tizzo, "the Firebrand," the Italian Renaissance swashbuckler created by George Challis. Challis was created by Frederick "Max Brand" Faust as a brand name for historical swashbucklers like the Firebrand series. Tizzo dominated Argosy in 1935 like no other character. First appearing in the November 24, 1934 issue, the turbulent redhead, whose actual favorite weapon is an axe, would get six covers the following year, beginning with this one. He starred in two serials (this one is The Great Betrayal) and four "short novels" during a blistering run that ended in August. You'll be seeing more of Tizzo on the Calendar because I own several of those issues, though not yet this one.

While Tizzo's print career was meteoric, that of Hashknife Hartley was far more enduring. Hashknife is one of W. C. Tuttle's comical western detectives, the star of a genre Tuttle pretty much had to himself. Tuttle wrote Hashknife stories for more than 30 years, starting in Adventure in 1919. As I've noted before, series characters like Hashknife belonged to their authors, for the most part, rather than any publisher. That meant that Tuttle could place a Hashknife story in Complete Western Book for Newstand Publications in October 1934, another in a December Argosy, then this one, and then another in Adventure the following month. Eventually, in 1938, Hashknife settled down at Short Stories, where new stories kept appearing until 1951. The prolific Tuttle would create a new character for Argosy later this month who would prove Hashknife's nearest rival in popularity; we'll attend to his birth in due time.

J. Allen Dunn was a big enough name that he could be billed by his last name only above the logo, like Boris Karloff was in Universal movies around the same time. "Magee of the Mounted" is, to take a wild guess, a Mountie story and a one-off. Another old-timer, William Merriam Rouse, contributes "The Shorn Lion," while F. Van Wyck Mason wraps up his Captain Long Knife serial. James Edward Grant, soon to go to Hollywood and make his name as a screenwriter, and Don Waters add short stories to round out what looks like a typical solid 1935 Argosy. Over the next few Tuesdays we'll look at some 1935 Argosies from my own collection; then I'll really know what I'm talking about.