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Re: RARA-AVIS: Introduction 

On Fri, 11 Apr 1997, Matthew F. Stevens wrote:

: 1) Peter Haining's book, THE FANTASTIC PULPS, includes a story
: called "The Sardonic Star of Tom Doody."  It's attributed to
: Dashiell Hammett; Haining says it was published in BLACK MASK
: magazine in 1924, but I can't find an entry for it in any other list
: of Hammett's works.  Was this story written by Hammett, or by
: somebody else?

I looked it up on the bibliography of Hammett stories some of us put
together, at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/biblio/hammett.html:

     * "The Sardonic Star of Tom Doody" (Brief Stories, February 1923)
        (as Peter Collinson)            

That's a very early one.

: 2) When I saw the film "MILLER'S CROSSING," by the Coen brothers (a
: damn fine film, by the way), the similarities between the story and
: THE GLASS KEY were glaringly obvious to me.  Have the Coen brothers
: ever acknowledged their debt to Hammett?  Or are the similarities
: purely coincidental?

There's been talk about this in the mystery and past-films
newsgroups.  I could well be wrong, but I think I remember people
saying they acknowledged the source when directly asked, but otherwise
didn't mention it.  To anyone who's read _The Glass Key_, it's obvious
where they got the story - and they did a really good job of it - but
I think they should have put up an "Adapted from" credit or something.
Unfortunately, nobody I know personally who saw the movie has ever
read any Hammett, so they missed it until I told them about it (at
some length :]).

Bill
-- 
William Denton : Toronto, Canada : buff@vex.net : Caveat lector.
http://www.vex.net/~buff/        <-- Anything on io.org is toast.

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