Florian Slappey
 Created by Octavus Roy Cohen (1891-1959)

Man, those were different times...

One of the first black detectives, and an early proto-eye, FLORIAN SLAPPEY was a tall, slim drink of water, a "colored gentleman," a well-dressed and well-known man about town who decides to leave his hometown of "Bumminham", Alabama, for the bright lights and big city of Harlem. Not that he seems to have been particularly well-received, since characters seem to frequently tell him "The onliest thing I got for you is no use."

Florian's comic misadventures, sometimes crimonious, sometimes not, were related in a string of short stories published in the "Darktown Birmingham" column in The Saturday Evening Post. With titles like "A Bounce of Prevention" and "Ham and Exit," it's obvious we were supposed to find the uncouth characters and exaggerated black dialect amusing. But Slappey was "little more than a caricature," according to Edward D. Hoch in The Whodunit, Then again, William DeAndrea, in Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, finds Slappey "a decent, if bumbling detective, and his cases are well enough constructed to stand up, if the reader can overlook the predjudices of an earlier age."

In fact, a December 1, 1920 issue of Maclean's Magazine features an ad promoting books as ideal Christmas gifts for various family members and it suggests Cohen's Come Seven for "one who likes nigger stuff." It goes on to say "there is a chuckle in every paragraph of these stories of the so-called "High Society" among the "Cullud" people of the south. Until he knows Florrie, Slappy and the others, he will not be getting everything out of life."

And all that for two bucks. I guess the 1920s were the "good ol' days" the anti-PC crowd look back on with such affection.

Still, back then, Slappey proved to be a very popular character, appearring regularly in The Saturday Evening Post over the next dozen years or so. He was also featured in a stage play, Come Seven (which Cohen adapted from his 1920 collection) and several black and white short films from Christy studios in the early days of the talkies, apparently black-cast shorts based on Cohen's stories, although in many of these Slappey's detectives skills were not much in evidence. It's also been suggested that Cohen produced -- or at least had a hand in producing -- at least some of these films. He may have also, under the pen name of Alfred A. Cohn, written the screenplays as well.

Octavus Roy Cohen was born to Jewish parents in Charleston, South Carolina in 1891 and worked as a newspaperman and a lawyer before becoming turning to writing fiction. He ended up writing more than fifty books and countless short stories, most of them mysteries, for The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers and other slicks of the time, as well as several collections of short stories, more than twenty motion picture screenplays and at least two known stage dramas, The Crimson Alibi, featuring early private detective David Carroll and the previously mentioned Come Seven. Cohen lived variously in South Carolina, Alabama and New york, before eventually settling in California, where he died in Los Angeles in 1959.

Although Cohen is pretty much forgotten now (unless it's to chastise him for his stereotypical depiction of blacks, of course), both Slappey and Cohen's other major series eye, Jim Hanvey, are pretty good examples of an early attempt to find an American style of mystery.

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Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Very special thanks to Stephanie Kelly for the Maclean's clipping..

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