The Paul Cain Omnibus (5 page)

I owe my deepest gratitude to Mike and Peggy Harrelson, son and second wife of the man at the center of this essay. To say that they have been gracious would be an understatement. Their generosity and warmth were an unexpected gift. I would not have made contact with Mike were it not for a chain of remarkable coincidences, one of which placed me in the basement of UCLA’s Young Research Library on the same day that Professor William Marling of Case Western Reserve University was conducting his own research on the Hagemann collection. Bill asked me what I was up to, I told him, and he mentioned that he was in touch with the Harrelson family. I remain in his debt.

Mike’s initial letter to Bill Marling, in which he describes himself and his brother, is worth quoting: “Peter [Craig Harrelson is an] emergency room doctor who works very little and incessantly travels the planet’s backwaters. He’s a colorful cat who marches to his own drummer. I, while much less charismatic, have made part of my living with a pen.” Their father, of whom they knew very little until recently, seems to have passed on a gift for language and a thirst for adventure, as well as some other curious traits. I am told that, like his father, Peter Craig has been known to rename his girlfriends.

The Harrelsons have supplied me with a wealth of information about Paul Cain/Peter Ruric’s later years, which I am honored to pass on to his readers. Peggy’s memories and insights have added color and nuance to an unnaturally stark image – an image of Cain’s own making. Nothing represents this contribution more vividly than the three photographs of Cain/Ruric, Peggy, and their son Peter Craig, taken in the summer of 1957 at the Gregson family home in Varina, Virginia. These candid, animated family portraits are a necessary corrective to Cain’s stylized black-and-white author photo from the early ’30s; the author photo was intended to disguise his identity, while the later shots capture the man at his happiest, among his loved ones, off-guard.

Much of what we know about Sims’s ancestry and early childhood owes to the pioneering work of Lynn F. Myers, Jr. and Max Allan Collins, whose research has cleared up a great number of longstanding mysteries. I am grateful to Lisa Burks, a journalist and author working on the history of Glendale’s Grand View Memorial Park, who provided invaluable information about Sims/Ruric/Cain’s cremation records. I must also thank David A. Bowman, whose writing on Cain was nothing short of groundbreaking. Bowman’s work was interrupted by a terrible accident in 1989, from which he recovered. He continued to write fiction, but abandoned his biography of Cain. He passed away on February 27, 2012, at the age of 54.

Cain/Ruric, Peggy, and their son Peter Craig, taken in the summer of 1957 at the Gregson family home in Varina, Virginia. Copyright © 2012 Peggy, Michael Sean, and Peter Craig Harrelson. Published here for the first time from the Cain/Ruric/Harrelson family records, and the
Black Mask
Magazine archives.

Works Cited and Further Reading:

Adamic, Louis.
Laughing in the Jungle: The Autobiography of an Immigrant in America
. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932.

Ballard, Todhunter. “Writing for the Pulps.” In
Hollywood Trouble­shooter: W. T. Ballard’s Bill Lennox Stories
, edited and introduced by James L. Traylor. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1985. Pp. 8-18.

Bogdanovich, Peter. “Edgar G. Ulmer.” In
Who the Devil Made It:
Conversations with Legendary Film Directors
. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1997. Pp. 558-604.

Bowman, David A. “Cold Trail: The Life of Paul Cain.” In
Fast One
. Berkeley, CA: Black Lizard, 1987.

Brandon, William. “Back in the Old
Black Mask
.”
The Massachusetts Review
28, no. 4 (Winter 1987): 706-16.

Carr, Larry. “Myrna Loy.” In
More Fabulous Faces: The Evolution and Metamorphosis of Dolores Del Rio, Myrna Loy, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, and Katharine Hepburn
. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979. Pp. 53-108.

Duhamel, Marcel.
Raconte pas ta vie
. Paris: Mercure de France, 1972.

Faust, Irvin. “Afterword.” In
Fast One
.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978. Pp. 305-16.

Fischer, Dennis.
“The Black Cat.” In
Boris Karloff
. Edited by Gary J. Svehla and Susan Svehla. Baltimore: Midnight Marquee, 1996. Pp. 91-113.

Gunn, Peter. “Paul Cain, 1902-1966.” In
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 306: American Mystery and Detective Writers
. Edited by George Parker Anderson.
Detroit, MI:
Gale, 2005. Pp. 35-43.

Hagemann, E. R. “Introducing Paul Cain and His
Fast One:
A Forgotten Hard-Boiled Writer, a Forgotten Gangster Novel.”
Armchair Detective
12, no. 1 (January 1979): 72-76.

Haut, Woody. “The Postman Rings Twice but the Iceman Walks Right in: Paul Cain and James. M. Cain.” In
Heartbreak and Vine: The Fate of Hardboiled Writers in Hollywood
. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2002. Pp. 76-101.

Loy, Myrna, and James Kotsilibas-Davis.
Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming
. New York: Knopf, 1987.

MacShane, Frank.
The Life of Raymond Chandler
. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1976.

Myers, Lynn F., Jr. and Max Allan Collins. “Chasing Shadows: The Life of Paul Cain.” In
The Complete Slayers
. Lakewood, CO: Centipede Press, 2011. Pp. 9-32. This volume also carries introductions to individual stories by Ed Gorman, Joe Gores, Edward D. Hoch, John Lutz, and Bill Pronzini, Robert Randisi, and others.

Schorer, Mark.
Sinclair Lewis: An American Life
. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961.

Shaw, Joseph. “Greed, Crime, and Politics.”
Black Mask
(March 1931).

Stein, Gertrude.
Everybody’s Autobiography
. New York: Random House, 1937.

—. “What Are Master-pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them.” In
What are Masterpieces
(Los Angeles, CA: The Conference Press, 1940). Pp. 83-95.

Weaver, Tom. “Shirley Ulmer.” In
I Was a Monster Movie Maker: Conversations with 22 SF and Horror Filmmakers
. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001. Pp. 227-49.

Wilt, David E. “Paul Cain.” In
Hardboiled in Hollywood
. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1991. 97-120.

1
Joseph Shaw, discarded introduction to
The Hard-Boiled Omnibus
(1946), box 5, folder 6, of the Joseph T. Shaw Papers (2052), UCLA’s Young Research Library. Quoted more extensively in E. R. Hagemann, “Introducing Paul Cain and His
Fast One:
A Forgotten Hard-Boiled Writer, a Forgotten Gangster Novel,”
Armchair Detective
12, no. 1 (January 1979): 75.

2
William Brandon, “Back in the Old
Black Mask
,”
The Massachusetts Review
28, no. 4 (Winter 1987): 707.

3
Ibid., 708.

4
Joseph Shaw, “Greed, Crime, and Politics,”
Black Mask
(March 1931), 9. Quoted in Frank MacShane,
The Life of Raymond Chandler
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1976), 46.

5
Irvin Faust, “Afterword,” in
Fast One
(
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 311.

6
See Lynn F. Myers, Jr. and Max Allan Collins, “Chasing Shadows: The Life of Paul Cain,” in
The Complete Slayers
(Lakewood, CO: Centipede Press, 2011), 13-17, for information on Sims’s ancestry and early childhood.

7
Myers and Collins, 17;
Los Angeles City Directory
(1923), 2810.

8
Louis Adamic,
Laughing in the Jungle: The Autobiography of an Immigrant in America
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932), 218.

9
Los Angeles City Directory
, 2810.

10
Myrna Loy and James Kotsilibas-Davis,
Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming
(New York: Knopf, 1987), 42. See also Larry Carr, “Myrna Loy,” in
More Fabulous Faces: The Evolution and Metamorphosis of Dolores Del Rio, Myrna Loy, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, and Katharine Hepburn
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979), 55.

11
Tom Weaver, “Shirley Ulmer,” in
I Was a Monster Movie Maker: Conversations with 22 SF and Horror Filmmakers
(Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001), 233.

12
Peter Bogdanovich, “Edgar G. Ulmer,” in
Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors
(New York: Knopf, 1997), 575.

13
David A. Bowman, “Cold Trail: The Life of Paul Cain,” in
Fast One
(Berkeley, CA: Black Lizard, 1987),
vii. See also Dennis Fischer,
“The Black Cat,” in
Boris Karloff
, ed. Gary J. Svehla and Susan Svehla (Baltimore: Midnight Marquee, 1996), 94-95
.

14
Bowman, viii.

15
Ibid
.

16
Myers and Collins, 29-30.

17
Mark Schorer,
Sinclair Lewis: An American Life
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), 727. See also ibid., 707.

18
Catalog of Copyright Entries. Third Series. Parts 3-4: Dramas and Works Prepared for Oral Delivery
, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, Copyright Office, 1947), 206;
Catalog of Copyright Entries. Third Series. Part 2: Periodicals
, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: Copyright Office, Library of Congress, 1949), 76.

19
Gertrude Stein,
Everybody’s Autobiography
(New York: Random House, 1937), 4.

20
Idem, “What Are Master-pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them,” in
What are Masterpieces
(Los Angeles, CA: The Conference Press, 1940), 87.

21
Marcel Duhamel,
Raconte pas ta vie
(Paris: Mercure de France, 1972), 549-50. This episode is also discussed in Peter Gunn, “Paul Cain, 1902-1966,” in
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 306: American Mystery and Detective Writers
, ed. George Parker Anderson (Detroit, MI: Gale, 2005), 42.

22
Ibid., 549.

23
Ibid., 550.

24
Bowman, x.

25
Myers and Collins, 28.

26
Ibid., 22.