Greg Clark Noir Art

  GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #56 HARRY LIME Harry Lime made his debut in the 1949 film noir "The Third Man", directed by Carol Reed and played by Orson Welles.  Graham Greene wrote the screenplay, based on a novella that he wrote in preparation for the film.  The film centers on an American writer (Joseph Cotten) who arrives in Vienna to accept a job with his friend Harry Lime, only to learn that Lime has died.  He finds the circumstances around Lime's death to be suspicious and stays in Vienna to investigate the matter.  It turns out that Lime is alive, having faked his death to allude the police.  Lime has been stealing penicillin, diluting it, and selling it on the black market, resulting in the death and severe health problems of many.  In the end, Lime is gunned down in the sewers of Vienna.  Critics hailed the film as a masterpiece, and it won an Oscar for cinematography. In the film, Harry Lime is a charming, totally amoral character - a sociopath who

GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #55 MARTIN KANE, PRIVATE EYE   "Martin Kane, Private Eye" was a radio series on the Mutual Broadcasting System from August 7, 1949 to June 24, 1951.  William Gargan starred as Martin Kane.  When the crime drama moved to NBC on July 1, 1951, Lloyd Nolan took over the role.  Nolan left in mid-1952 and Lee Tracy assumed the part until the series ended on December 21, 1952.  The show was created by J. Walter Thompson & Co., the advertising agency of the United States Tobacco Company, who sponsored the show with ads for Old Briar pipe tobacco and Encore and Sano cigarettes.  At the same time as the radio show was airing, a television series was launched on NBC.  The TV series ran September 1, 1949 to June 17, 1954.  Gargan, Nolan, and Tracy all took turns playing Martin Kane on TV, just as they did on the radio series.  The last actor to portray the sleuth was actor Mark Stevens.  The U.S. Tobacco Company integrated commercials into the

  GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #54 LEW ARCHER The most famous fictional private detective of the 1960s and 1970s is admittedly largely autobiographical in conception.  To creator Ross Macdonald, "He is less a doer than a questioner, a consciousness in which other lives emerge."  Archer is a "not unwilling catalyst for trouble" who probes the pasts of the people he investigates.  He is sympathetic to the problems of the young who are seeking their identity in society, and is committed to fighting those who would despoil the environment.  Archer was born in 1913 and was a policeman in Long Beach, California, until he was fired because he would not work under a corrupt police administration.  He became a private investigator and has remained in that profession ever since, except for the time he spent in intelligence work during WWII.  His marriage was a casualty of his work - his wife, Sue, divorced him because "she didn't like the company I kept.&

  GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #53 MIKE HAMMER Probably the toughest of all private detectives, Hammer never hesitates to kick a bad guy in the groin, gouge him in the eye, shoot him in the guts, or break several of his bones.  When finished, he has no regrets because he knows that his victim deserved it.  He's been called a fascist, a paranoid, and even a latent homosexual, but Hammer considers himself a "hardboiled dick" who never backs away from physical contact.  He's violent with villains and tender with beautiful women.  Of all the voluptuous females with whom he comes in contact, the most dazzling is Velda, his dark-haired assistant-secretary-girlfriend. Hammer's first appearance was in "I, the Jury".  The man who saved his life in the war, and lost his arm in the process, is murdered - and Hammer vows vengeance.  A gorgeous psychiatrist pursues Mike while he hunts the killer.  Eschewing the legalities of a trial, he shoots the murdere

GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #52 THE WHISTLER   "The Whistler" was an American radio drama that ran from May 16, 1942, until September 22, 1955, on the west-coast regional CBS network.  The show was also broadcast in Chicago and over the Armed Forces Radio.  It was sponsored by the Signal Oil Company  ("That whistle is your signal for the Signal Oil program, The Whistler...").  There were two attempts to bring the program to the east coast - July 3 to September 25, 1946, when it was sponsored by Campbell's soup, and March 26, 1947 to September 29, 1948 when it was sponsored by Household Finance.  In 1946, Chicago's WBBM radio produced their own version of "The Whistler" with local actors, and the show was sponsored by Meister Brau. Each episode of "The Whistler" began with the sound of footsteps and a person whistling an eerie tune.  The narrator would then speak, saying, "I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I

GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #51 MR. & MRS. NORTH   This famous husband and wife team made its detective debut in 1940 in the novel "The Norths Meet Murder", the first of 26 mystery books and many radio and television episodes.  The book series was written by husband-and-wife team Frances and Richard Lockridge.  In their first case, Pamela North, accompanied by her husband Jerry, finds a corpse in the vacant Greenwich Village studio she plans to use for a party.  Throughout the series, Mr. North, a publisher, is usually busy with prospective manuscripts.  His wife Pam has little to do (except care for their cats) and seems to fill her days with finding bodies and looking for murderers.  This happens whether their in New York or on vacation - in an upstate New York cabin in "Murder Out of Turn"; or the Florida Keys in "Murder by the Book";  or on a Caribbean bound cruise ship in "Voyage into Violence".  When not directly involved i