Authors and Creators
Jonathan Latimer
(1906-1983)

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Jonathan Latimer was educated in Arizona and Illinois. He worked as a reporter at the Chicago Herald Examiner for a few years before he started writing fiction. His first book, 1935's Headed For a Hearse, was one of the first hardboiled screwball comedies, following closely on the heels of the previous year's The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett. Like Hammett's Nick and Nora, Latimer's Bill Crane was a booze-soaked, seemingly-inept detective who somehow always managed, despite always being either drunk or hung over, to crack the case, despite the ponderous and copious intake of a variety of intoxicating substances.

Crane appeared in five novels in all. Latimer published at least one more classic, 1941's Solomon's Vineyard, a true hardboiled classic, and pretty hot stuff, evidently, at least in the eyes of the protectors of American decency. Gone are the goofy, good-natured gin-swilling dicks of the Bill Crane series. Instead we have private eye Karl Craven in a tale of "murder, violence, perverse sexuality and twisted religion in a corrupt Midwestern town (that) echoes Hammett...and anticipates the work of both Ross Macdonald and Mickey Spillane," according to William DeAndrea, in his introduction to the first uncensored American edition of the book (in 1988! More than forty years after it had been published in Britain!)

By the late thirties, Latimer had begun working as a screenwriter, a profession he continued for several decades. He worked on the Charlie Chan and Lone Wolf series, as well as classics such as The Glass Key and The Big Clock. In the sixties he moved on to television, and became a major contributor to the Perry Mason series.

NOVELS

• Headed for a Hearse (1935; Bill Crane)
• The Lady in the Morgue (1935; Bill Crane)
• Murder in the Madhouse (1935; AKA. The Westland Case; Bill Crane)
• The Search for My Great-Uncle's Head (1937; as Peter Coffin)
• The Dead Don't Care (Doubleday, 1938; Bill Crane)
• Red Gardenias (1939; AKA Some Dames Are Deadly; Bill Crane)
• Dark Memory (Doubleday, 1940)
• Solomon's Vineyard (1941; AKA The Fifth Grave; Karl Craven)
• Sinners and Shrouds (1955)
• Black is the Fashion for Dying (1959; AKA The Mink-Lined Coffin)

FILM

• THE WESTLAND CASE
  (1937, Universal)
  ..
• THE LADY IN THE MORGUE
  (1938, Universal)
  ..
• THE LAST WARNING
  (1938, Universal)
  .
• THE LONE WORLD SPY HUNT
  (1939)
  .
• PHANTOM RAIDERS
  (1940, with William R. Lipman)
  .
• A NIGHT IN NEW ORLEANS
  (1941)
  .
• TOPPER RETURNS
  (1941, with Gordon Douglas and Paul Gerard Smith)
  .
• THE GLASS KEY ..Buy this video
  (1942, Paramount)
  Based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett
  Screenplay by Jonathan Latimer
  Directed by Stuart Heisler
  Starring Alan Ladd as ED BEAUMONT
  .
• WHISTLING IN DIXIE
  (1942, with Nat Perrin and others)
  .
• NOCTURNE
  (1946, with Frank Fenton, Rowland Brown and Joan Harrison)
  .
• THEY WON'T BELIEVE ME
  (1946, with Gordon McDonnell)
  .
• THE BIG CLOCK
  (1947, with Harold Goldman)
  Based on the novel by Kenneth Fearing
  .
• BEYOND GLORY
  (1948, with Charles Marquis Warren and William Wister Haines)
  .
• THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES
  (1948, with Barré Lyndon)
  .
• SEALED VERDICT
  (1948)
  .
• ALIAS NICK BEAL
  (1949, with Mindret Lord)
  .
• COPPER CANYON
  (1950, with Richard English)
  .
• THE REDHEAD AND THE COWBOY
  (1950, with Liam O'Brien and Charles Marquis Warren)
  .
• SUBMARINE COMMAND
  (1951)
  .
• BOTANY BAY
  (1953)
  .
• PLUNDER OF THE SUN
  (1953, Warner Brothers)
  Based on the P.I. novel by David Dodge
  Directed by John Farrow
  Screenplay by Jonathan Latimer
  Starring Glenn Ford as AL COLBY
  .
• BACK FROM ETERNITY
  (1956, with Richard Carroll)
  .
• THE UNHOLY WIFE
  (1957, with William Durkee)
  .
• THE WHOLE TRUTH
  (1958)
  .
• Also supposedly worked on screenplays for the LONE WOLF and CHARLIE CHAN film series.
  

TELEVISION

• CHARLIE CHAN
  .
• THE LONE WOLF
  .
• PERRY MASON
  (1960-65, the actual show ran from 1957 to 1966)
  .
• COLUMBO: THE GREENHOUSE JUNGLE
  (1972, NBC)