The Black Mask Boys
This must be the only photograph of most of the great hard-boiled crime writers who wrote for Black Mask magazine in the 1930s. In the back row, from left to right, are Raymond J. Moffatt, Raymond Chandler, Herbert Stinson, Dwight Babcock, Eric Taylor and Dashiell Hammett. In the front row, are Arthur Barnes, John K. Butler, W. T. Ballard, Horace McCoy and Norbert Davis.
William F. Nolan wrote novels featuring them as the Black Mask Boys.The original photograph is online here.
Here's the website of Black Mask Magazine.
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Looks like pulp fiction at its greatest!
Anyone know if Black Mask Boys is any good?
These book covers are so rich. The Maltese Falcon! Goodness. The original source material for the Bogart cinema milestone? I love that these images still exist. These provoke thoughtfulness and imaginings on life contemporary to these publications. All too often I presume it to be a simpler time, but of course it wasn't!
Class!
Hey, Roger! Thanks for the link to my site. I'm flattered. Really. But then, I always knew you had a taste for the good stuff.
To answer another comment here, the Black Mask Boys were indeed awesome, the best of the best of the pulp writers. There's a rich and now sadly neglected vein of stories there mouldering in those slowly decaying magazines, just waiting for adaptation to film. Not just Hammett and Chandler, but now almost forgotten names like John Butler, Erle Stanley Gardner, John Carroll Daly, Norbert Davis, W.T. Ballard, Roaul Whitfield et ll.
Vibrant, colourful characters, a cheeky wit that never goes out of style, good guys, bad guys and plenty of action -- what's not to love?
Ebert: Erle Stanley Gardner is forgotten??? I grow old, I grow old...