2009 Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention

[Doug]

The first pulp convention of the year, the Windy City Pulp & Paper
Convention, is now only 3 months away! To be held on May 1 - May 3,
2009, we're returning to last year's hotel, the Westin Lombard
Yorktown Center (in the suburbs of Chicago). Windy City has been the
largest pulp convention in the country the past few years, with over
125 dealer tables and over 400 attendees last year. To date we've
sold over 100 tables, and if our pattern of the last few years
holds, we anticipate selling out of tables in late February.

As always, you can check the con's website,
www.windycitypulpandpaper.com, for updates and registration
information and forms, but we'll mention just a few highlights
below. We hope to see you in Chicago in May at pulp fandom's largest
party!


Doug Ellis & John Gunnison
www.windycitypulpandpaper.com


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HUBERT ROGERS ART DISPLAY:


For this year's con, we're pleased to announce that the family of
pulp artist Hubert Rogers will be attending, bringing an incredible
amount of art for display in our art show. Between works that his
family is bringing and other pieces from private collections, we
should have around 2 dozen paintings by Rogers and several dozen
black and white interiors on display, in what promises to be an
amazing art room! Rogers was a top pulp artist for decades, and
while most may remember him for his covers for Astounding, he was
prolific in many pulp genres. We'll be scheduling some talks about
the artist, and tours of the art, with his family.


CELEBRATING 75 YEARS OF THE SPICY PULPS:


In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the spicy pulps, we will
also have several spicy pulp paintings -- including some by H.J.
Ward -- on display, and we plan a number of other special exhibits
around the spicies.


FRANK HAMILTON ESTATE FRIDAY NIGHT AUCTION:


In addition to our regular Saturday night auction (at which we
anticipate the return of more rare materials from the Munsey pulp
archives), we will also be holding a special estate auction on Friday
night, with loads of material from the estate of Frank Hamilton.
Frank was one of the giants in the pulp fan community, winning one of
the first Lamont awards for the terrific art he regularly contributed
to pulp fandom, and a longtime collector, especially of hero and
Burroughs pulps. We'll be cataloging the material from his estate in
advance of the convention, and posting lists and photos on the
website as they're prepared, so keep checking back.


FILM PROGRAMMING:


Our film programming, which showcases films based on pulp stories,
has been tentatively set. Once again, thanks go to Ed Hulse for
organizing an amazing program. Any updates will be posted to the
website. Incidentally, Ed is now known as the busiest man in the
pulp convention business, as he's also on the committee of Pulpfest,
to be held this summer -- check out www.pulpfest.com for details.


The tentative film schedule -- with Ed's commentary -- is:


Friday:


12:00 pm — The Mark of Zorro (1920). The first Zorro film is also
the most faithful adaptation of Johnston McCulley's "The Curse of
Capistrano," serialized in All-Story Weekly during August and
September of 1919. Dashing Douglas Fairbanks was already a popular
leading man when he essayed the role of Don Diego Vega, but Mark of
Zorro's surprise success turned him into one of the cinema's first
true superstars. Although this film has always been available in one
form or another, we're showing the most recently restored version,
which was mastered from archival film elements deriving from the
original negative and boasts a newly recorded orchestral score. If
you think of silent films as hopelessly creaky, sit in on Mark of
Zorro. You just might be surprised.


02:00 pm — Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective (aka The Raven Red Kiss-
Off, 1990). This year our convention celebrates the Diamond
Anniversary of the Spicy pulp line, and this made-for-TV movie was
the second of only two films we've identified as having been adapted
from Spicy yarns. Based on a Robert Leslie Bellem story and scripted
by regular Windy City attendee John Wooley, this fast-paced mystery
is a bit too campy but great fun for pulp fans nonetheless. Note:
We're showing the seldom-seen Fries Entertainment home-video cut,
which contains a few shots of partial nudity that weren't in the
original broadcast version.


04:00 pm — The Return of Wild Bill (1940). This above-average "B"
Western, directed by cult favorite Joseph H. Lewis, was adapted from
Walt Coburn's "The Block K Rides Tonight," which appeared in the July
1939 issue of Star Western. Popular cowboy star Gordon "Wild Bill"
Elliott plays the two-fisted lawman who avenges the murder of his
father. Lovely Iris Meredith, who played Nita Van Sloan in the Spider
serial we showed last year, assumes leading-lady chores. We ran an
old 16mm print of Return of Wild Bill at our 2003 convention, but
this DVD has been specially mastered for us from a 35mm archival
print.


Following Friday Night Auction — Bombay Mail (1934). An extremely
rare film, never made available on home video or to cable movie
channels, this nifty programmer combines high adventure and murder
mystery. It was adapted from a Lawrence G. Blochman novel of the same
name, which originally appeared in the August 15, 1933 issue of
Complete Stories. The first of several Blochman yarns featuring
Detective Inspector Leonidas Prike (renamed Dyke for this movie),
Bombay Mail revolves around the murder of a British official aboard a
Calcutta-Bombay train. The suspects include a Maharajah, a Russian
opera singer, several Americans, and anti-British rebels. Edmund Lowe
plays Dyke; the supporting cast includes Shirley Grey, Ralph Forbes,
Onslow Stevens, and Hedda Hopper. Pieces from the evocative musical
score by Heinz Roemheld were reused in part many times in subsequent
years, most notably in the Flash Gordon serials.


Saturday:


09:00 am — Blackmail (1947). This fast-paced, action-packed
Republic Pictures whodunit was the first Dan Turner film and,
therefore, the first adapted from a Spicy pulp story. William
Marshall, a blond "himbo" who Republic desperately tried to make a
star, plays the hard-boiled private eye, called to investigate the
blackmailing of a famous movie director (former matinee idol Ricardo
Cortez). Luscious blonde Adele Mara and haughty brunette Stephanie
Bachelor are the femmes fatale, and Grant Withers appears as Dan's
foil, Police Inspector Donaldson. Fans of Robert Leslie Bellem's
yarns will get a kick out of hearing the author's wacky dialogue
spouted by these colorful characters, their verbal exchanges
alternating with fistfights and car chases galore.


10:15 am — Blue, White and Perfect (1942). An entry in 20th Century-
Fox's Michael Shayne series, this polished whodunit was actually
adapted from a Borden Chase novel featuring "Smooth Kyle." Chase's
yarn, bearing the same title, was serialized in Argosy during
September and October of 1937. Fox's screenwriter Samuel G. Engel
simply appropriated the pulpster's plot and substituted Shayne for
Kyle. One of the suspects is played by TV's future Superman, George
Reeves. Fast-moving and fun, Blue, White and Perfect is among the two
or three best entries in the entire Michael Shayne series.


12:00 pm — Saturday Matinee: The Ivory-Handled Gun (1935) plus
selected short subjects. We're replicating a complete program that
any American kid might have seen at his neighborhood theater on a
Saturday afternoon in the mid `30s: coming-attractions trailer,
cartoon, newsreel, serial episode (Chapter Two of Gordon of Ghost
City, a 1933 chapter play loosely adapted from a Peter B. Kyne
story), and feature film. The main attraction is The Ivory-Handled
Gun, a Buck Jones Western adapted from the Charles E. Barnes novel of
the same title published in the Second October 1930 issue of Ace-
High. It's one of Buck's best starring vehicles of this period.


02:00 pm — I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes (1948). No Windy City film
program would be complete without a movie taken from one of Cornell
Woolrich's pulp yarns, and this year we've dug up one of the
scarcest. Based on the novelette of the same title published in the
March 12, 1938 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly, this Monogram "B"
stars Don Castle, Elyse Knox, and Regis Toomey in an adaptation
scripted by former pulp writer Steve Fisher. It's an exercise in low-
budget film noir revolving around the familiar Woolrich situation of
an ordinary guy framed for a murder he didn't commit. Afraid that
Woolrich's ambiguous denouement wouldn't make a satisfactory ending
for the movie version, Fisher actually called his fellow pulpster for
advice. Woolrich suggested that Fisher graft onto Shoes the ending
from one of his famous stories—but you'll have to see the film here
to find out which Fisher tale was thus cannibalized.


03:30 pm — Private Detective (1938). Perky Jane Wyman stars in this
minor but zippy little "B" from Warner Brothers, based on Kay
Krause's "Invitation to Murder," published in the May 1937 issue of
Pocket Detective. A seemingly routine child-custody hearing leads to
murder, and female detective Myrna "Jinx" Winslow cracks the case
with timely assistance from police lieutenant Jim Rickey (Dick
Foran). Clearly fashioned after Warner's popular Torchy Blane series
(adapted from Frederick Nebel's MacBride-Kennedy stories in Black
Mask), Private Detective sports a supporting cast that's practically
a Who's Who of popular `30s character actors.


Following Saturday Night Auction — The Law of the Forty-Fives
(1935). An obscure little Poverty Row horse opera forgotten by all
but the most rabid Western-movie fans, this is the first screen
adaptation of a "Three Mesquiteers" novel by prolific pulpster
William Colt MacDonald. The movie only features two of the three
heroes, however; in his novel of the same title (serialized in Quick-
Trigger Western from December 1929 to April 1930 and published in
hard covers in 1933), MacDonald focused on his already-established
twin protagonists, Tucson Smith and Stony Brooke. A deputy sheriff,
Lullaby Joslin, joins them at story's end and becomes the third
Mesquiteer. This movie, which stars Guinn "Big Boy" Williams as
Tucson and silent-screen comedian Al St. John as Stony, doesn't give
a name to the deputy character (played by Curley Baldwin). But let's
not quibble. The film is great cornball fun, with the numerous
shortcomings—most owing to a minuscule budget and truncated shooting
schedule—adding to its charm. And you won't see it anywhere but here.