http://www.latimes.com/news/timesmag/20010429/t000036126.html
Sunday, April 29, 2001 The Metaphoric Rise of Glendale By TOM
NOLAN
The city of Glendale was a recurring presence in California
popular culture a half century ago -- as a running gag.
Glendale seemed to most Angelenos like the back of beyond: a
place so remote and socially deprived that its very name was
good for a laugh.
In a play on the CBS Radio show "Suspense" in 1948, private
eye Sam Spade answered the question, "Do you think all
private dicks are clever?" with: "I once knew an operative
who, while looking for a pickpocket at Santa Anita racetrack,
had his wallet stolen. He, uh, later became a lieutenant of
detectives in Glendale."
When Lew Archer was kidnapped by thugs in Ross Macdonald's
"The Drowning Pool" (1950) and driven from Hollywood to a
desolate burg: "I didn't know where I was, but I had the
Glendale feeling: end of the line."
Today Glendale is again a literary reference point--but in a
brighter way. When a Dodger scout wants to display the
California good life to a hot Dominican prospect in April
Smith's 2000 thriller "Be the One," she shows him the
"fountains and brass railings" at the Glendale Galleria's
food court. The high-tech LAPD Bomb Squad in Robert Crais'
2000 novel
"Demolition Angel" is, as in real life, "based in a low-slung
modern building adjacent to the Glendale police substation. .
. ."
The onetime "end of the line" is now even home to novelists
such as Mark Salzman ("Lying Awake") and Jerrilyn Farmer
("Dim Sum Dead")--a far cry from the era when the
social-climbing daughter of title character Mildred Pierce
spurns her Glendale roots in James M. Cain's 1941
novel.
But there are echoes from the past. This year will see
publication of a previously unprinted 1950s Ross Macdonald
story, "The Angry Man," in which a would-be client shouts in
Archer's Sunset Strip office: "You hear me?" The gumshoe
answers dryly: "They hear you in Glendale."
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