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W.T. BALLARD—INTERVIEWED
BY STEPHEN MERTZ
I first made contact with W. T. Ballard early in 1976. I was
researching an article on the detective pulp magazines for which Ballard wrote
extensively during the thirties and forties, and his response to my questions
was generous, informative and entertaining. Since I'd been a fan and collector
of his work for some years, I felt that the next logical step should be a piece
dedicated to the man himself. This interview is the result.
Ballard, along with Chandler, Hammett and Erle Stanley
Gardner, was one of that magazine's most popular contributors among
contemporary readers. His series starring Bill Lennox, troubleshooter for
General Consolidated Studios, set the tone and laid the ground rules for
countless Hollywood-milieu mysteries to follow.
"My life is not particularly interesting," Ballard
wrote me when agreeing to this interview. "As Dash Hammett used to say,
there are two types of people in the world. Those who make news and those who
write about them."
What follows is proof positive that W.T. Ballard is as
self-effacing as he is important to the development of the American detective
story.
********
First, the traditional question: How did you come to be a
professional writer?
Through a friend I found a job with a small group of local
newspapers, the Brush-Moore chain in the Midwest. It was a constant hassle. In
eight months I was fired at least eight times. Besides arguments with the
printers I had them with the old battle-axe who ran the front office. She had
been secretary to the Brush boys' father and considered that she owned the company
more than the boys did. It became a routine. She would call me in and fire me,
but before I could clear out my desk one or other brother would show up from
Europe and rehire me. This went on until one time no one appeared and I stayed
fired.
I walked down Hollywood Boulevard like any tourist. There
was a big parade in downtown L.A. and the Hollywood streets were all but empty,
most businesses closed. But a cigar store newsstand was opened and I stopped to
gawk in the window. I had been writing and submitting copy to New York without
much success, but there before me was a copy of Detective Dragnet featuring a story I had written months earlier. I
didn't take much notice. I had been paid long before and the money was spent. I
wandered on and was crossing Cherokee Street when a voice called, "Tod.
Tod Ballard..." I looked down the side street and, coming toward me, I saw
Major Harry Warner.
Why the Major was impressed by a dime pulp I'll never know,
but he was. The meeting culminated in his offering me a job writing for the
studio at seventy-five bucks a week. A bonanza at the time. He and his brothers
had just taken over First National Studios from Commodore (Commy) Blackton, who
had gone broke in New York real estate. I lasted with Warners for eight months—learning
a lot about screenwriting from a couple of wise old-timers—before I forgot to
watch my back. I made a derogatory crack about Jack Warner, turned my head to
find him at my shoulder, and the pink ticket beat me back to my office.
From there, I went to Columbia, an eye-opening experience.
Sam Cohan, who owned the studio with his brother, had worked out a crummy deal.
A Hungarian, he had brought eight of his relatives over to this country, with
no intention of personally supporting them. Instead, he set up an ingenious
company, gave each relative a share in the stock, and the titular title of
producer to make pictures as independents. Then he would buy these productions
and divide any profit with each contributing relative.
Most of our shooting was done inside. We couldn't afford to
go out. The studio was located on Gower Avenue. It was known locally as Gower
Gulch because of the preponderance of westerns being made on the lots lining the
street and the horde of unemployed actors who gathered outside the gates. When
we needed a couple of extras, we opened the window and yelled, then stood out
of the way of the stampede.
The job lasted six months and exhausted me. I never cared
for studio work. I hated having my scripts torn apart by producers, directors,
even the actors who had any clout. I returned to freelancing and made a living,
but barely.
How did you come to write for Black Mask?
This was not the later Bogie version, but an earlier one
starring Ricardo Cortez, who took his stage name from a cigar and acted like
it. But I had no interest in the acting. It was the dialogue that enthralled
me: Hammett's ear for words sounded the way I thought criminals and detectives
should talk. It rang true, the way I wanted mine to do.
The ad gave a credit to Black
Mask Magazine, which was the first I had heard of the publication. I left
the theater, walked to the corner, bought a copy of the then current issue and
read it on the ride back. I felt I was coming home. The story I most remember
was written by a boy from Oregon whose family, I later learned, owned the
biggest whorehouse in the state. His work sounded authentic.
Bill Lennox was the first hard-boiled series character who
worked exclusively against a movie industry setting. Can you tell us something
of how you went about creating the series?
The heroes of most of the Black Mask stories were newspaper crime reporters, which I thought
could get monotonous. I scratched my head for an alternative and came up with
the idea of a troubleshooter working for a studio. I could use my experience in
the movie world for realistic background.
I had been nickel and diming along, selling an occasional
story to Street & Smith, Short Stories, Argosy and so on. I was paid a quarter of a cent to a cent per word,
while supporting my parents and an aunt, long since regretting losing the
regular salary from Columbia and having quit my job—much as I had hated it.
Along with writing, I was looking for another spot, with no luck.
A week after I mailed the story to Black Mask, I received a letter from Joe Shaw. He wanted some
changes made, but he sent along a check with the letter, an unheard of
generosity and compassion among editors at the time. The major change he asked
for was that Bill Lennox not carry a gun as other fictional detectives did,
even newspaper reporters. That reporters went armed seemed odd to me, and that
a troubleshooter should go naked seemed odder, but it was not a time to argue
with an editor. No one with sense argued with Shaw. So, Lennox went without a
gun.
Joe Shaw was a strong guiding force where many of his writers
were concerned. Did you have any memorable experiences in your relationship
with him as an editor?
I loved Shaw better the more I knew him. He was a curious
bastard who wanted to write himself and couldn't. He had been president of a
highly successful manufacturing company before the First World War. How he got involved
in Europe I don't know, but Hoover used him to deliver relief in Belgium after
the armistice, then sent him to Greece.
He wrote two books, both of which Knopf published, not
because they were worthy of publication but because Joe wrote them—he was that
much appreciated. Both books were bad. I can't remember both titles, but one
was Blood on the Curb. At his request,
I worked over it with him trying to point out where he had gone off base, but I
was not the editor he was. It was an experience, believe me, trying to teach my
father how to write.
As I said, I loved him. I sold him more copy than anyone
else did, an average of ten stories a year, more than that including characters
other than Lennox. Erle Gardner never forgave that I sold one story more to
Black Mask than he did during a given period.
Through the years, I have worked with the leading editors of
the business. Ray Long, Fanny Ellsworth, Dorothy Hubbard. Erd Brandt. Ken
McCormick. Ken Littaur, Ken White, you name them. But none of them offered the
help, the assurance, the patience Joe Shaw gave to his writers. It is too bad
he has been so overlooked in the history of the craft.
Finally Shaw left Black
Mask because Warner and Cody decided to cheapen the quality of the content.
Fanny Ellsworth took over and I went along. It was a living. But although Fanny
was a good editor, it was never the same as with Joe. At the risk of sounding
euphoric, there never was a relationship between editor and writer to equal my
connection with Cap Shaw.
Your reminiscences of Raymond Chandler are quoted by Frank
MacShane, in his biography of Chandler. Did you know Dashiell Hammett?
Jumping to the other end of the spectrum, did you know Robert
Leslie Bellem? He's been called the worst
writer of the pulps, yet I've always viewed his Dan Turner, Hollywood
Detective series as superb private eye parody.
Yes, I knew Bob I suppose as well as anyone. I can't give
you the exact date of our meeting, sometime in the mid-1930's. Soon afterward,
we took adjoining offices in an old corner building on Colorado Boulevard in
Pasadena and worked there until I left for Wright Field during the Second World
War, in 1942. During that period, we collaborated a lot on Frank Armer's Super Detective Stories and a number of
other mags. Bob was always a good word man, but had trouble with story, which
was my field, and he did not work well under pressure. Frequently, he would
blow up, come apart and throw the thing in my lap. That was especially true
when the longer pieces became popular. His best work was in short material. He
was a pugnacious, small man, but easy to collaborate with, never pretentious
about his prose, and we edited each other without many battles.
Incidentally, Bob was not nearly as bad a writer as you make
him out. He looked over the markets, chose one he could handle fast and easily,
and hewed to the line. And was highly successful in so doing. When he went into
television, he was one of the most successful story editors in the trade. He
was a generous man, even professionally. Always busy with his and our work,
when Cleve F. Adams had a grave illness while in the middle of a detective book
manuscript Bob suggested the two of us finish it for him. We did. Cleve was a
father figure to the fiction writing group, much loved but a porcupine
nevertheless. His comment on reading the finished copy: It's a beautiful...typing job.
For all his popularity with private eye readers during the
forties, surprisingly little is known about Adams.
I met Cleve in '31. He and his wife, Vera, had a candy store
in Culver City, but he had always wanted to write, and broke in with the old
Munsey magazines. With varying success, he continued selling to the pulps until
he wrote his first book, Sabotage. It
was an instant hit and, on the strength of it, he did seven or eight others. He
was good, though hardly in a class with Ray Chandler. He had an exalted regard
for his own ability and seldom discussed his work with anyone, including
family. I knew him intimately until he died. His son phoned me at four o'clock
that morning to tell me Cleve had had a heart attack. He was dead before I
could drive over.
One Black Mask
writer who seems shrouded in obscurity is Raoul Whitfield, who just seemed to
vanish at the height of his career.
He died in North Hollywood in the early forties. I don't
recall what he died of or what he was doing at the time.
Would you tell us something about the lifestyle of a pulp
writer living in L.A. during the thirties and forties?
We all worked hard, played hard, lived modestly, drank—but
only a few to excess—gambled some when we had extra cash. Most of our friends
were other writers. In the Depression, when any of us got a check, he climbed
in his jalopy and made the rounds to see who was in worse straits than he and
loaned up to half what he had just received.
More and more interest is being shown these days in the
detective pulps and those who wrote for them. Are there any pulp writers who
are generally ignored today whom you think deserve recognition?
Here are a few from memory. Norbert (Bert) Davis was one of
the best with a light style and humor. He killed himself in the odd-forties.
John K. (Johnny) Butler who wound up at the studios. Dwight Babcock. Carroll
John Daly. Fred Nebel, who was very good.
What was your yearly average word output for the pulps?
My files are at the University of Oregon library, but a
shotgun guess would be about or over a million words per year.
Would you tell us something about your work habits both then
and now?
How about the marketing of pulp fiction? I've heard many of
the magazines (such as Frank Armer's) were closed to most freelancers. Was this
a widespread practice?
How did we market pulp fiction? Like selling any other
commodity. No magazine I remember was tightly closed to submissions, although a
couple of them were written entirely by one or two men for long stretches. It
was largely governed by how lazy the editors were, how much they were willing
to read.
After a highly successful career in the detective magazines
under your own name, much of your later work has been pseudonymous. Why the
switch?
Frankly, the market for detective, especially from picture
studios, became very slim and when I was forced into westerns, I chose to use
my middle name—Todhunter—to begin with. But unlike the detective publications,
the westerns would not absorb enough copy under a single byline to support me.
Especially when I jumped to books. The houses would take only one a year, and a
name was tied up solely by one house. Therefore, the shift to a long series of
pseudonyms under which I could work for several houses at once. They didn't
like it. But the practice became common, and they had to go along or do without
sufficient submissions. Later, resales to paperback, as they have reverted to
me, have been reissued under only one or two noms.
I developed the idea and editor Dick Carrol was
enthusiastic. Then he died and Knox Burger took over. Burger was chary of the
MacNeil byline because he knew the real Neil MacNeil of Washington. D.C., and
my use embarrassed him, although it was an honest family name for me. Knox did
his best to kill the series. However, the books were popular and went back into
reprint over which Knox had no control. It dragged on until Knox felt it was
safe and then did kill both the nom and the series. I had no recourse. Knox
left the house soon afterward, but the series was gone.
I did two books for Fawcett on the Mafia under my wife's
initials, P. D. Ballard. We already had a couple of titles out under P. D.
which were highly successful. Then the Mafia market collapsed, the old-time
editor, Ralph Deigh, retired, a woman came in as managing editor and my boy who
had replaced Knox was fired.
Is there a single work you look back on as the highlight of
your career?
Do you prefer writing westerns over mysteries?
In a way, yes. Most crime fiction is phony. Hammett made it
believable because he wrote about people he knew from his experience with the
Pinkertons in Baltimore and San Francisco. He avoided the mistake Chandler and
his imitators made and make in going psychological, with Little Sisters sucking
their thumbs. Westerns are of course exaggerated but there are many classics,
and the better recent books such as Elmer Kelton's Time It Never Rained are as near factual and convincing as you can
get. When I wrote my first western, I knew practically nothing about the West
and its history. Since then I have researched. Learned a lot and had a lot of
fun doing It.
For nearly fifty years you've remained popular to a most
precarious profession while other careers have come and gone. To what do you
attribute this staying power? Would you share some of your views on the writing
business with us?
My views on writing as a business? That it is not much
different from any other. You have to keep swinging, rolling with the punches,
keep alert and attuned to the changes that take place suddenly or gradually,
but always constantly. Copy written in 1930 would not sell today because it is
dated and shows it glaringly.
What I read now is very little. I enjoy history, but my eyes
don't take kindly to too much strain. I try to keep abreast of the current best
sellers to sample the wind and let it go at that. Very few current mysteries,
only an occasional John or Ross Macdonald, and neither of those men give me
much pleasure.
What can you tell us of your current projects? Is there any
chance of a new Lennox yarn or has Bill's day come and gone?
Currently, I have done nothing since a major operation a
year and a half ago. I have been long in regaining strength or enthusiasm. I
have just begun another western...not a Bill Lennox who, I fear, has outlived
his usefulness. We'll let him rest in his own time frame.
W.T. BALLARD
A CHECKLIST
INCLUDING MISCELLANEOUS READING
NOTES
The best of Ballard's novels, such as Say Yes to Murder, are highlighted by a crisp, clean prose style,
vivid characterization, rapid plot development and a singular humaneness.
The Death Brokers
is a prime example of his talent for introducing complex, fully dimensioned
characters who get under your skin and make you care about them after only one
page, involved in a twisty, imaginative story line. Originally packaged to cash
in on the Mafia fad, which infested paperback publishing during the early
seventies, the book stands on its own as a superb evocation of the
all-pervasive fear, treachery and moral decay that is life in the Brotherhood.
Murder Las Vegas Style
is neo-Black Mask; a beautifully
written private eye novel Raymond Chandler would have enjoyed. This one is
highly recommended.
Many of Ballard's books are set either completely or
partially in Las Vegas, and he always does a convincing job of portraying this
fascinating, seldom utilized desert locale with its swinging casinos, its moral
ambiguity and the uneasy alliance between gamblers and police.
THE BILL LENNOX
SERIES
•1. Say Yes to Murder. Putnam, 1942. Penguin pb, 1945. Also
published as The Demise of a Louse (as by John Shepherd). Belmont pb, 1962.
•2. Murder Can't Stop. McKay. 1946. Graphic pb, 1950.
•3. Dealing Out Death. McKay, 1948. Graphic pb, 1954.
•4. Lights, Camera, Murder (as by John Shepherd). Belmont
pb. 1960.
THE TONY COSTAINE/BERT
MCCALL SERIES
•1. Death Takes an Option. Gold Medal pb, 1958.
•2. Third on a Seesaw. Gold Medal pb, 1959.
•3. Two Guns for Hire. Gold Medal pb, 1959.
•4. Hot Dam. Gold Medal pb, 1960.
•5. The Death Ride. Gold Medal pb, 1960.
•6. Mexican Stay Ride. Gold Medal pb, 1962.
•7. The Spy Catchers. Gold Medal pb, 1966.
* Written as Neil MacNeil
THE LIEUTENANT MAX
HUNTER SERIES
•1. Pretty Miss Murder. Permabooks pb, 1962.
•2. The Seven Sisters. Permabooks pb, 1962.
•3. Three for the Money. Permabooks pb, 1963.
NON-SERIES BOOKS
•1. Murder Picks the Jury (as by Harrison Hunt). Curl, 1947.
•2. Walk in Fear. Gold Medal pb, 1952.
•3. Murder Las Vegas Style. Tower pb, 1967. Unibooks pb,
1976.
•4. Brothers in Blood (as by P. D. Ballard). Gold Medal pb,
1972.
•5. The Kremlin File (as by Nick Carter). Award pb, 1973.
•6. The Death Brokers (as by P. D. Ballard). Gold Medal pb,
1973.
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