GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #39

BILL CRANE

Created by author Jonathan Latimore, Bill Crane was a private detective who worked and lived in Chicago, though he frequently traveled to New York and Florida in the course of his investigations.  Crane is 34 years old but looks younger, is a quiet and modest person whose clear-skinned face is often sun-tanned.  He smokes cigarettes and drinks anything - and often.  His brown tweed suits are rumpled and creased because he falls into a drunken sleep anywhere.  He is aided in his cases by his friends Tom O'Malley and Doc Williams.  And at the end of his last case Crane became engaged to the lovely Ann Fortune.

Crane is a decidedly hedonistic kind of guy, booze-soaked and possibly inept, he somehow managed, despite the ponderous and copious intake of a variety of intoxicating substances, to somehow crack the case.  Crane drank for the simple reason that he enjoyed it.  In the course of five novels Crane gulps down anything he can get his hands on - (including, accidentally, embalming fluid) and spent most of the time high as a kite or hungover.  Author Latimore said in a 1981 interview, "The Crane books were...not to be taken too seriously.  Booze, babes, and bullets."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jonathan Latimore (1906-1983) was born in Chicago.  He was educated at the Mesa (Arizona) Ranch School and Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois where he received a BA in 1929.  He became a newspaperman for the Chicago Herald-Examiner and later for the Chicago Tribune (1930-1935).  Latimore became a screenwriter in Hollywood for Paramount and MGM.  After serving in the Navy during WWII he returned to Hollywood and worked at RKO and Paramount.  He later wrote 32 scripts for the "Perry Mason" TV series.  His Bill Crane novels captured the mood, characterization, and atmosphere of the hardboiled school of literature, however, he imbued the stories with his own cynical, wry, slightly grotesque and bawdy sense of humor.

In his first adventure "Murder in the Madhouse" a series of murders take place while Crane is incarcerated in a mental institution.  "Headed for a Hearse" concerns Crane's efforts to save a man, convicted of murdering his wife, from the electric chair.  The book contains controversial material on social issues that was deleted when it was reprinted by Dell paperbacks in 1957.  "The Lady in the Morgue", Latimore's most popular success, begins with the discovery of a nude blonde hanging from her bathroom door.  The pace becomes frantic when the body disappears.  "The Dead Don't Care", set in the Florida sunshine, involves a series of threatening letters and another good-looking girl - found murdered in a well-guarded room.  In Crane's last case "Red Gardenias" he investigates a death threat made against the family of an industrial magnate by someone willing to prove he is not joking.

1935 "Murder in the Madhouse" (Detective Mystery Novel Magazine Winter 1949)/  1935 "Headed for a Hearse" /  1936 "The Lady in the Morgue" (Triple Detective Winter 1952) /  1938 "The Dead Don't Care" (Triple Detective Spring 1950) /  1939 "Red Gardenias" (Collier's June 10 - Aug 5, 1939).

FILMS

The films of Bill Crane are good portraits of a tough, resilient, hard-drinking private eye in a dark Depression world.  Crane drinks too much and naps at every opportunity.  Identifying and categorizing the various kinds of liquor is his passion.  Often he is unsteady, but his mind is sharp.

"The Westland Case" Universal, 1937.  Preston Foster (Crane), Frank Jenks, Carol Hughes, Barbara Pepper, Astrid Allwyn, Theodore Van Eltz.  Director: Christy Cabanne.  based on "Headed for a Hearse".  Just one week before an attorney is to be electrocuted for the murder of his wife, Crane is hired to save him.

"The Lady in the Morgue" Universal, 1938.  Foster, Jenks, Patricia Ellis, Tom Jackson.  Director: Otis Garrett.  Based on the novel.  Crane goes to the morgue to identify the body of a girl found hanged in a midtown hotel.  He thinks she may be the missing daughter of a client, but the corpse has disappeared and the morgue attendant murdered.

"The Last Warning" Universal, 1938.  Foster, Jenks, Frances Robinson, Joyce Compton, Raymond Parker, Robert Page, E. E. Clive.  Director: Al Rogell.  Based on "The Dead Don't Care".  Crane moves from the metropolis of NYC, the setting of the first two films, to sunny Los Angeles where, one by one, the members of a rich, troubled family are being kidnapped and murdered by someone who calls himself "the Eye".

RADIO

"The Lady in the Morgue" appeared May 15, 1945 on the show "Mystery Playhouse" with Ed Gardner as Bill Crane.  "Mystery Playhouse" was a radio anthology series of classic and original dramas that aired on the Armed Forces Network 1944-1946 for those serving in the military during WWII.  The show was hosted by Peter Lorre.