Noir Factory Podcast

Case#01.5: Kate Warne-America's First Female Detective REVISITED Hi Steve Gomez here. A lot has happened behind the scenes at the Noir Factory during the last month or so. Our offices in the Sierra Foothills have moved lock, stock, and barrel up to the Pacific Northwest. Way up to the icy clutches of the Pacific Northwest. Past Seattle and into kissing cousin territory with Canada. That kind of Pacific Northwest. Now those were the offices we know and love. My home. Our everyday offices. Not to worry about the International Office in Prague. Those are still doing well. In fact, I’m told the less said about them, the better. I’m actually told not to say anything about them. It’s best for everyone if we never speak of them again. Please forget you ever heard about any office in Prague. There are no offices in Prague. So. In addition to the big move up north, there have been other big life changes. I’ve taken a new day job that is more podcast friendly and should help with the production of more Noir Factory epi

Noir Factory Interrogation #1 Dan Slater-Author Dan Slater’s novel Wolf Boys had been banned from prison by the Texas State Department of Corrections. That is a shame because there is much there for the inmates, as well the public, to learn. Dan Slater is a former legal reporter for The Wall Street Journal and has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, GQ, and Fast Company. He is also the author of Love in the Time of Algorithms. Today he joins author Steven Gomez to discuss his newest book, Wolf Boys-Two American Teenages and Mexico’s Most Dangerous Drug Cartel.   Facebook.com/TheNoirFactory

Noir Factory Podcast Case #026: Victor Lustig-Con Man Extraordinaire “I’ve always loved movies about con men. I think con men are as American as apple pie.” -Bill Paxton, actor Victor Lustig was born on January 4th, 1890.  Maybe. He said, more than once, that he came from the Austria-Hungarian town of Hostinné, in what is now the Czech Republic. He said once that he was the son of the town’s burgomaster. He also said that he was the son of the poorest couple in the village. Believe what you like about the childhood of Victor Lustig, just know that there’s not a lot of upside in taking the word of a con man. As a boy, Victor Lustig was an excellent student. Not of books and notes, not of procedure and equations. He was a student of people. He picked up languages quickly and he saw patterns in people’s behaviors where others didn’t. He studied at the University of Paris and became fluent in Czech, French, English, German, and Italian. While he never was an imposing person, he learned charm and poise, and he lea

“Whether in a white dinner jacket or in a trench coat and a snap-brim fedora, he became a new and timely symbol of the post-Pearl Harbor American: tough but compassionate, skeptical yet idealistic, betrayed yet ready to believe again, and above all, a potentially deadly opponent.” -Ann M. Sperber, author A lot of what we do here at the Noir Factory revolves around noir films, crime history, and pulp stories. And like it or not, whenever the subject of noir comes up, it has only one face. And that face has a scar on its upper lip, sleepy eyes, a fedora worn at a roguish angle, and a cigarette dangling from its lips.And most of us wouldn't have it any other way. Humphrey DeForest Bogart was a Christmas baby, born on December 25th, 1899 in New York City. And while that sounds like a typical "tough-guy" bio, it was anything but. Bogart was the son of a prominent New York surgeon with the unfortunate name "Belmont Bogart," and successful commercial illustrator Elizabeth Bogart. Humphrey Bogart was raised in the

“...My husband pointed out that kids frequently have an instinctive desire to follow the good example rather than the bad, once they find out which is which. We agreed that a good moral background and thorough grounding in the Hardy Boys would always tell in the long run.” -Shirley Jackson, author They are still in print today and they are still popular, even though they aren’t really like the stories you remember. Today there are smart phones and text clues, hackers and virtual reality, but don’t let that bother you. They really weren’t for you in the first place. They were for the person that you used to be. They were for the ten year old that you were. The one who stayed up late and smuggled a flashlight under the covers because you had to know what The Secret of the Old Clock really was or because you had to learn the true meaning behind the Mystery of the Whale Tattoo. And if you are unhappy with the changes in the text or because Frank and Joe don’t look the way you remember them as kids, then that’s no

NOIR FACTORY PODCAST CASE #23- The Real Life Inspiration for Professor Moriarty.   “He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city, He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans.” -Arthur Conan Doyle     He was the World's Greatest Detective, but what did that mean if he went up against purse snatchers and sneak-thieves. He matched wits with the best criminals in London, but how impressive was that if you always came out on top? If you always won?   Doyle’s detective bored quickly and needed the game to keep his senses sharp, his intellect keen. So if you are Arthur Conan Doyle and you have the great Sherlock Holmes at your disposal, you don't need a good villain or even a brilliant foe

NOIR FACTORY PODCAST CASE #22-The Inspiration Behind Sherlock Holmes   “Science gave us forensics. Law gave us crime.” -Mokokoma Mokhonoana, author     Arthur Conan Doyle published his first Sherlock Holmes story in 1887 to mild reception. The story, A Study in Scarlet, introduced  the Holmes character to the world. An eccentric investigator with an encyclopedic mind, razor-sharp instincts, and a lightning-fast wit, Holmes is the prototype detective, the model against which all others are measured.   Arthur Conan Doyle, himself a medical doctor, was considered a highly-intelligent man by those who knew him, and it was thought he brought much of himself to the creation of the perfect detective. Doyle was fascinated with puzzles and riddles, the great mysteries. He studies procedure and methods of investigation and criminology, and even lent his voice to the odd court case.   Later on the Noir Factory will open a case on Arthur Conan Doyle, but for today, we’ll focus on the inspiration for Sherlock

NOIR FACTORY PODCAST CASE #21: The Shadow- Pulp Hero   “The world of Doc Savage and The Shadow was one of absolute values, where what was good was never in the slightest doubt and where what was evil inevitably suffered some fitting punishment.” -Alan Moore, writer   The Shadow first cast his presence over the airwaves on July 31st of 1930. It was on CBS's The Detective Story Magazine Hour where a mysterious narrator introduced a dramatic story that appeared in the latest issue of Street and Smith’s Detective Story Magazine. Back then the Shadow was merely a story-telling device, a mysterious identity to bookend a detective story. "I...am The Shadow! Conscience is a taskmaster no crook can escape. It is a jeering shadow even in the blackest lives. The Shadow knows... and you too shall know if you listen as Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine relates for you …” Yada yada yada… The intro was followed by a hard-boiled detective story, and each episode ended with the now-famous maniacal laughter. Th

"My agent told me that he was going to make me the Janet Gaynor of England-I was going to play all the sweet roles. Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers.” -Ida Lupino   There are certain family names in Hollywood make you sit up and take notice. Today those names are the Fonda and the Bridges, Coppola and Sheen. It wasn't any different in the early days of Tinseltown. The names were different, but royalty was still royalty. Back then if you were a Barrymore than it caught people's attention, and if you were a Huston, then folks wanted to see what you had. For Ida Lupino, the family tree she grew out of was just as solid and sturdy as any in Hollywood, but the roots went deeper than most. She wasn't a Coppola or a Barrymore. She was a Lupino. And that name had a weight all of its own.    

NOIR FACTORY PODCAST CASE #19: The Kray Twins   “They were the best years of our lives. They called them the swinging sixties. The Beatles were rulers of pop music, Carnaby Street ruled the fashion world...and me and my brother ruled London. We were fucking untouchable.” -Ronnie Kray, from his autobiography   The East End of London during the sixties was a mixture of poor and artistic, of modern and bohemian, of classic and diversity that England had never seen before or since. It was like Bauhaus before Hitler. It was like Harlem in the 20's. It was like.... well, it wasn't like anything ever, and that's what made it special. Clubs and art galleries sprang up amid the squalor that was the East End, and with them came the rich and the beautiful. It was said, rather famously, that “London's West End has all the money and leisure and that the East End monopolizes most of the labor and nearly all of the dirt.” In the 60's it was time for the dirt in the East End to shine. The wealthy and the influential came to

NOIR FACTORY PODCAST CASE #18: The Cotton Club-Nightclub “It was infamously racially exclusive. W.C. Handy wished to go one evening to the Cotton Club and he was turned away. And he could hear his music being performed!" -Levering Lewis, historian   It was the greatest nightclub of its day and there's a convincing argument to be made that it was the greatest nightclub that ever was. Opening its doors during the Harlem Renaissance, The Cotton Club was part Speakeasy, part dance-hall, part supper club, and all entertainment. Owned by Chicago gangster Owney Madden, the Cotton Club featured expensive food, cold beer, even during prohibition, and the greatest lineup of black entertainers in America of its time, and perhaps of any time. And all of it was available for a small cover charge. But only if you were white. We can talk about the spectacle and grandeur that was the Cotton Club literally for hours. It was the greatest showplace of its day. If a song or a band was a hit there, it was a hit in America. If a d

NOIR FACTORY PODCAST CASE #17: Raymond Chandler-Writer   “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. “He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. “The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.” -Raymond Chandler, Writer   Raymond Chandler didn’t in

“A pulp story without a detective and, obviously, somebody for him to do battle with is unthinkable, and I can't remember reading a pulp story that didn't have a dame - either a good girl or a bad girl.” -Otto Penzler     The 1890’s in Europe was, for all intents and purposes, a golden age for serialized stories in print. In England Charles Dickens became the first rock star the world had ever seen, and in France, serialized versions of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo were spread out over hundreds of installments, making their publishers wealthy.   In one case, a German novel published in serialized form for Die Gartenlaube catapulted their circulation to over 350,000 readers in 1875.   The public was hungry for serialized literature, and the novel, thanks to writers such as Dickens and Wilkie Collins, was still in its infancy. Put those two facts together, and you were truly on to something.   In 1890 George Newnes and Editor H. Greenhough Smith founded The Strand Magazine, named for a fas

“It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night.” –Willie Sutton-Bank Robber William Francis “Willie” Sutton Jr. was born on June 30th, 1901 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a poor tenement neighborhood known at the time as Irishtown. He was the son of a blacksmith and the fourth of five children. His mother was a devout Irish Catholic who suffered from depression, which was said to be caused by the early death of a daughter. His father, William Sr., traveled for work and was absent more times from home than not. It was a tough time for the US, but for Irishtown in particular. Willie, a small child who was always fast, wiry, and quick-witted, left school before the eighth grade, but didn’t give up on education entirely. Brooklyn in the early twentieth century was a master-class in crime for a guy who knew how to apply himself, and if Willie Sutton was anything, it was industrious. He tried his hand early on at gainful employment, but honest work didn’t seem to suit Willie. He toiled as a store cler

Even as a boy Eliot Paul Ness seemed destined for excellence and if you asked his fellow students, probably seemed most likely to be a crime fighter. He was the youngest of six siblings born to Peter and Emma Ness, a Norwegian immigrant couple that operated a small bakery in Chicago. Eliot Ness was a bookish young man and a good student, with a reputation for a neat appearance as well as being a loner. As a kid he grew up with a healthy appetite for Sherlock Holmes mysteries and as a son, he kept his nose to the grindstone. He occasionally helped his family out with their bakery, but his parents had bigger plans for their children. He attended Christian Fenger High School in Chicago where he graduated in the top third of his class. There he was an average athlete who didn’t seem to care for team sports. After high school he attended the University of Chicago, where he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He also excelled at tennis, a sport where he had only himself to rely on. He grew to ap

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to a family of poor Jewish immigrants, who came from Eastern Europe. His parents, Max and Jennie, worked whatever jobs they could find to provide for their five children, and their neighborhood constantly invented new definitions for the word “Poor.”   As a child, the second of five, Benjamin saw that struggle as well as what his parents struggled against, and he vowed that he would rise above a life of poverty.   He dropped out of school somewhere around the age of eleven and started his life of crime. Even as a child he was familiar with violence and intimidation, learning most of what he knew from the Irish and Italian street gangs around him.  

The name evokes visions of a dancer, slithering through a smoke-filled parlor, wisps of cloth snaking over her as she moves. Her eyes are like polished opals in the moonlight, dark, mysterious, and you can’t bring yourself to look away.   You dare not look away.   Okay it probably didn’t play out exactly that way, but I imagine that is how she would have enjoyed being remembered, so let’s go with that.   There are many questions that still linger about her. The easiest is “was she guilty?”   The answer is obvious. She was Mata Hari, and she was as guilty as sin.   What was she guilty of?   Well, that takes a lot more thought, and we may never have the answer to that.    

He was born in Pawnee, Oklahoma in 1900, seven years before the territory became a state. His grandparents, all four of them, were pioneers of the territory. His father, Gilbert was a minister and a printer. In fact Gilbert Gould was everything a small town in a harsh territory needed him to be, but mostly he was a man who believed in good storytelling.   He was also the editor of the local newspaper, and he loved his politics.   Little Chester Gould was born in the last year of the nineteenth century and Gilbert raised him on a steady diet of newsprint. The young man fell head over heels for comics, and like most boys his age, followed the daily adventures of Budd Fisher’s comic strip misfits “Mutt and Jeff” with fierce loyalty.   In 1908 the Democratic County Convention came to the Pawnee Courthouse and Gilbert Gould covered the story for his paper. He also encouraged his son, who was already beginning to show his chops as an artist, to sketch some of the local politicians.   Chester’s talent was evident e

Letter to Henry Ford on April 10, 1934….   Dear Sir,   While I still have breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car make. I have driven Fords exclusively when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got ever other car skinned and even if my business hasn’t been strictly legal it don’t hurt anything to tell you what a fine car you got in the V8-   Yours truly,   Clyde Champion Barrow  

Agatha Christie was the bestselling author of all time, and living in the days of Stephen King and J.K. Rowling, that means something. In literature, it goes the bible, Shakespeare, and Christie.   In short, she is what legends in mystery writing aspire to be.   But it wasn’t always like that for her.   When you look at Agatha Christie’s story, is helps to know something about her mother, Clara Boehmer. Clara was the only daughter of a military man and an Englishwoman. She older brothers, one of which died very young, but they had left home to join the armed forces or to make their own way in the world.   But Clara was the youngest and she stayed behind at the family’s home in Belfast, Ireland. At least as long as she could.   Clara was still very young when her father, a captain, died in a riding accident. Her mother scraped by on a meager income and could barely support herself, let alone her daughter. So in her daughter’s best interests, she sent her to live with her aunt in West Sussex. Clara’s aunt had