Evening star., 1934-06-27

6O2dI " dIldNC AdlllI flOAAC sNAAN''
tough as it was for him to resist
throwing III a JavaneSe tumbler or a
Monaghan rhumba dancer somewhere
about the premises of his stories,
dressed some of his strangers and
stranglees in dinner Jackets. S S.
Van Dine appeared with his pal. Philo
Vance. and the novel notion that de-
tective thrillers might be written
about people who performed eerle'
bloody deeds because they were the
types of people who would 1t was
that simple.
Mr. Van Dine noticed that the
newspapers. the memoirs of fairly
credible liars who went adventuflng
around the world, and other printed
documents were full of weird anec-
dotes based on fact Very few of the
throat-slashers and other assorted
MAYHEM artists in them were really
wild men with buShy eyebrows. over
crown fingernails and sunken cheeks.
They were not normal. of course. OF
especlanv desira BILE companions Tor
came of rllmmv in a lonely monastery.
but still they were human beings,
So this perceptive gentleman began
to write clever and tricky halr-ralserS
inhabited bv sundry beheVaole loms
Dicks. HarrVs and James. and SorI
NJ surerman vclept Philo Vance. Mr.
Vance was on hand to find out Whlch
one of the citizens in the drama mao
hcen Gropped on his head when young
and thereafter never could resist the
tenontation TO do machete work on
ladies under 81 carrying pogo STICKS
in hand. or whatever was the pc
mania Of the eXtermlnator IN tle
stor".
Herewith the detective romance
took another step forward and up-
ward and became a popular sport
Within a short time there were al
most as many people writing them as
reading them At least one-thlrd OF
the literate. freeborn population be
gan. completed or sold piece ABOUT
murder in the market basket. murder
in the gymnasium. murder in the top
hat Of the murderer who was mur-
dered bv the market basket murderer.
This was all very fine as 1t kept
great manv men and women or all
ages and sizes too busy with Wrltlng
to get into trouble with their oean
shooters or whatever thev used Gus
tonarilv to start something.
Like the war to end wars. however.
il had to come to an end and allow
things to get back to normal. Fortu-
natelv there was a man conveniently
nearby to fill the gap. He was
capable not only of setting things back
on keel in the detective story world.
but he could do it more good than
if he had been a treaty of peace.
He improved it This noble savior.
who wore his tongue handsomely in
his cheek. vas Dashiell Hammett.
II you are rot acquainted with his
evangelism. look into it.
WHICH. after an extraordinarily
brief introduction. brings us
down to the point One of Mr.. Ham
mett's best brain children has been
made into a film and duly sched-
uled for presentation at LoeW's Palace
this week end The Thin Man"
as it is called. is a mystery yarn that
does not have to flap its wings to be
exciting. All the old tricks have been
tossed out the window and new and
better ones invented 1t represents
precisely what should have been done
to the boogie man tales 10 years ago.
While the picture could not possibly
live up to all the claims Alexander
tho hook II Is
swift. gay. adult and outside the
threadbare formulas of the past.
More than that cannot be said about
it until the debut here is more OH
cial than the one Lew Brown pro-
vided the drama desks yesterday.
Slgnor Brown apparently thinks it a