Brannigan (1975)

"Well, if it was up to me, I'd get some men out thumping on the streets, passing out some 'e pluribus unum'. That's what ninety percent of police work is today."

"The murder rate in your country, I'm sure, gives ample testimony to your superior police methods."

1954

until the mob rubbed out his straight arrow rookie cop kid brother.

I devoured this many, many summers ago at a cottage with no tv but a bookcase stocked by an uncle or older cousin.

Rogue Cop by William P. McGivern

Rogue Cop by William P. McGivern 1954 Dodd, Mead & Company

A crooked cop tries to warn off his clean cop brother, who witnessed a murder the mob wants hushed up. There's a decent novella in here underneath the clichés, padding, and moralizing. Gets dark when a gangster gets fed up with his moll lush, drops her off with some boys to be gang raped, then wants to get her back.

I'm not one that requires likeable main characters, but I also had no interest in this heel being redeemed. Could also do without the Irish priest.

Available from Amazon

Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford in The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953) Cast: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby, Lee Marvin, Jeanette Nolan, Adam Williams, Peter Whitney, Willis Bouchey, Howard Wendell, Chris Alcaide, Dorothy Green, Dan Seymour, Edith Evanson. Screenplay: Sydney Boehm, based on a novel by William P. McGivern. Cinematography: Charles Lang. Art direction: Robert Peterson. Film editing: Charles Nelson. Music: Henry Vars.  So many of the roles in Glenn Ford's career established him as a figure of middle-American blandness that it comes as a surprise to see the cold-eyed intensity of which he was capable in the role of the vengeful Dave Bannion in The Big Heat. He's still the good guy, fighting crime bosses and corrupt cops, but with the film noir twist that he's willing to resort to some pretty bad means to achieve his ends. He's also a solid foil for Gloria Grahame at her sultriest and a tough foe for Lee Marvin at his thuggiest. We get a glimpse of the more familiar Ford in the scenes with Bannion and his wife and daughter that verge a bit on stickiness, though the more to emphasize Bannion's quest for vengeance after his wife is killed and his daughter threatened by Alexander Scourby's suave mobster, Mike Lagana. (Is it just my prurient imagination, or does the scene in which Lagana is wakened for a phone call by George (Chris Alcaide), his bodyguard, wearing a bathrobe, suggest that George may be doing more to Lagana's body than just guarding it?) The Big Heat is a classic, one of the highlights of Fritz Lang's American career, and it still has the power not only to startle and shock but also to amuse, thanks to a solid screenplay -- Grahame in particular is given some delicious lines to speak, including Debby's classic riposte to Bertha Duncan (Jeanette Nolan), "We're sisters under the mink."

Nemesis - Two Novelettes by William P. McGivern Ordinary people get caught up in frame ups, #fraud and #murder. #CrimeFiction #mystery www.pulpfictionbook.store https://www.instagram.com/p/CmSIqnOvu2M/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Objetivo: Wall Street (Lie Down, I Want To Talk To You) by William P. McGivern (Club del Misterio Magazine No. 118, 1983).

From a street market in Seville, Spain.

Very Cold for May, by William P. McGivern (Pocket, 1951). Cover illustration by Clark Hulings, who painted the front for at least one other paperback edition of a McGivern crime novel.

vintagebookseller

1963 Dodd Mead hardcover

1964 Bantam reissue, first print

cover art by Robert McGinnis

Seattle Mystery Bookshop

The Pulps: 'Manchu Terror'

The Pulps: ‘Manchu Terror’

This story by William P. McGivern, published in 1946 in Mammoth Adventure, inspired a magazine cover which in turn provided the cover art for this anthology. This is yet another adventure story that, like the vast majority of pulps, is competently constructed yet forgettable. Nonetheless, it appears in this collection as an example of a type, and it serves that purpose well. The story involves…

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Artist: Robert Fuqua

Malcolm Smith (1910-1966), 'Fantastic Adventures', Vol 4, #5, May, 1942

Harold W. McCauley (1913-1977): Cover art of Fantastic Adventures featuring the story The Ghost that haunted Hitler by William P. McGivern published by Ziff-Davis Publishing, in December 1942.

William P. McGivern created Harry Callaghan, better known as Dirty Harry. Not literally. He created the literary environment that made Harry Callaghan possible, as well as Paul Kersey, the vigilante at the center of DEATH WISH (’74). McGivern was the writer who gave us THE BIG HEAT (’53) and ROGUE COP (’54), both made into movies in the fifties and the former, The Big Heat, gave us the character of Detective Sergeant Dave Bannion, the cop at the heart of the film who fights against a corrupt system outside the lines, quitting his job to pursue vigilante justice on his own. It’s a good story but is Dave Bannion a good guy? Is there a good guy in the story? Maybe.

THE BIG HEAT certainly earns its title. The heat is on Bannion (Glenn Ford in a terrific performance) to close a case no one wants him to solve, people are tortured with heat throughout (cigarette burns, boiling coffee to the face, and bombs, blowing up the family car with Bannion’s wife inside), and , of course, everyone’s packing heat, in one way or another. The story begins when Bannion looks into the suicide of a fellow cop and gets contacted by the cop’s mistress who tells him it definitely was not a suicide. When Bannion visits the cop’s wife, things get worse and when he gets back to the station he is told to back off and close the investigation. He doesn’t and his wife gets killed in an explosion that blows up the car as she starts it. Bannion quits his job, convinced corruption runs too deep in the department, and sets out to get revenge.

StreamLine: Vigilante Justice: THE BIG HEAT ('53)

Seven Lies South by William P. McGivern Crest 499, 1962 Cover by Harry Bennett

NOIR CITY 19 wraps up today at Oakland's Grand Lake Theatre with ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1:00), THE PROWLER (3:00), ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (7:00) and FORCE OF EVIL (9:00). All films introduced by Eddie Muller.

Sunday Matinée • March 27

ON DANGEROUS GROUND1:00 PM

Big-city cop Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan), embittered by his job, has become a ticking time bomb. Aware that Wilson's unhinged brutality is a lawsuit waiting to happen, his boss sends him to a snowy upstate town to cool off. There, Wilson meets Mary Malden (Ida Lupino), a sage blind woman who sees through his cynicism and vitriol. But before she can melt his defenses, a young girl is found murdered, and Wilson throws himself into the vengeful manhunt for the killer. Ryan and Lupino give powerhouse performances in this unusually structured film, ingeniously and aggressively directed by Nicholas Ray. Half of it takes place in the nocturnal city, the other half in blinding white snowscapes; notions of natural and human duality abound. Featuring brilliant cinematography by George Diskant and one of Bernard Herrmann's most distinctive scores, which plays up the film's themes through an astounding juxtaposition of propulsive brass and wistful strings.

1952, RKO [Warner Bros.] 82 minutes. Screenplay by A. I. Bezzerides, based on the novel Made with Much Heart by Gerald Butler. Produced by John Houseman. Directed by Nicholas Ray.

THE PROWLER 3:00 PM

Patrolman Webb Garwood is more interested in achieving the American Dream than he is protecting it for others. After answering a woman's distress call about a peeping tom, Garwood hatches a nefarious plot to worm his way into her affluent but lonely life — and into her husband's life insurance policy. Van Heflin and Evelyn Keyes give stellar performances in this disturbing spider-and-fly romance, written covertly by legendary blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and directed by the soon-to-be-blacklisted Joseph Losey. Largely dismissed by critics upon its release, it's now regarded as Losey's best American film, one that offers a compelling warning about small-minded people's willingness to abuse power for selfish gain. Restored in 2007 by the Film Noir Foundation and UCLA Film & Television Archive, the first triumph in a long-running partnership.

1951, Horizon Pictures/United Artists [FNF/UCLA Film & Television Archive]. 92 minutes. Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo (fronted by Hugo Butler) . Based on a story by Robert Thoeren and Hans Wilhelm. Produced by John Huston and Sam Spiegel (as S.P. Eagle). Directed by Joseph Losey.Sunday Evening •

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW 7:00 PM

Disgraced ex-cop Dave Burke (Ed Begley) masterminds a piece-of-cake bank robbery in upstate New York, but to pull it off he requires the cooperation of two dangerously mismatched cohorts: hot-headed redneck war veteran Earle Slater (Robert Ryan) and gambling addict jazzman Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte); their racist antagonism threatens to thwart a seemingly fool-proof plan. Silent producer Belafonte hired blacklisted screenwriter Abraham Polonsky to adapt William P. McGivern's novel, specifically to subvert the sanctimony of The Defiant Ones (1958), a "feel good" movie about racism. Robert Wise's direction is as fresh and expressive as anything being done by the French New Wave of the period, and the score by John Lewis's Modern Jazz Quartet is innovative and exhilarating. With vivid supporting performances by Shelley Winters, Kim Hamilton, and Gloria Grahame. An all-time classic heist thriller—and much more.

1959, United Artists [Park Circus]. 96 minutes. Screenplay by Abraham Polonsky, with Nelson Gidding (fronted by John O. Killens). Based on the novel by William P. McGivern. Produced by Harry Belafonte (uncredited) and Robert Wise. Directed by Robert Wise.

FORCE OF EVIL 9:00 PM

One of the most distinctive works of the noir era, Abraham Polonsky's directorial debut is an exposé of the New York numbers racket and a riveting tale of a fallen man's attempt to reclaim his soul (John Garfield, in one of his best roles). Unfortunately for Polonsky, the House Committee on Un-American Activities also felt the film was a thinly veiled attack on the nation's capitalist system, suggesting parallels between the operations of businessmen and gangsters. Polonsky was blacklisted, unable to put his name on any work he produced over the next twenty years. Force of Evil is innovative and superlative in every respect; its stylized art direction complementing vivid New York location footage. With an evocative score by David Raksin and memorable performances by Thomas Gomez, Beatrice Pearson, Marie Windsor, and Roy Roberts.

1948, MGM [Park Circus]. 78 minutes. Screenplay by Abraham Polonsky and Ira Wolfert, from Wolfert's novel Tucker's People. Produced by Bob Roberts. Directed by Abraham Polonsky.

Nemesis - Two Novelettes by William P. McGivern #CrimeFiction #mystery #murder www.pulpfictionbook.store https://www.instagram.com/p/CkrtV_9rS35/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=