8/19/1967 The Fugitive's final TV Guide cover

August 19, 1967.  This week's TV Guide celebrated the end of the line for one of the most popular escaped criminals in television history.  If I am counting correctly, this is the fifth time David Janssen made the cover of the media's main magazine in four years of The Fugitive.

This was probably the first series in TV history to be given the dignity of an actual ending, as opposed to merely vanishing forever between summer and fall. After 120 episodes of chasing and being chased Richard Kimball finally catches the guy who killed his wife.  And TV Guide was there to celebrate.  

4/26/1975 McCloud rides onto the cover of TV Guide

April 26, 1975.  McCloud ran for seven years but only produced 45 episodes.  Sounds almost BBC, doesn't it?  No, it was very American, but part of NBC's Mystery Movie series, along with Columbo and some lesser lights.  Dennis Weaver starred as a Taos, New Mexico lawman shipped east to teach them New Yorkers a thing or two.  The ever popular fish out of water, rube- outsmarts-city-slicker theme.

This is his third appearance on the cover of TV Guide, and this time he brought along a couple of castmates.

11/7/1950 Black Mask fires its last editor

November 7, 1950.  H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan founded Black Mask in 1920, a more commercial spinoff from their literary magazine, Smart Set  (whose mascot was Satan wearing a black mask).  Eight issues later they sold it for 25 times their initial investment.

While Black Mask started willing to publish any commercial genre it soon found its focus on hardboiled crime fiction, especially under the legendary editor Captain Joseph Shaw.  Many great mystery writers found a home there including Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon began as a serial there).

But after World War II magazines of this type started to lose their market.  On this day in 1950 Black Mask fired Henry Steeger, their last editor.  Steeger, by the way, was a co-founder of  Popular Publications, one of the major producers of pulp magazines, including Battle Aces and Terror Tales.

10/5/1915 Detective Story: the first crime pulp

October 5, 1915.  The first issue of Detective Story bore this date, the first pulp magazine dedicated to crime fiction. It lasted to 1949, producing more than 1000 issues.

4/22/1985 Elmore Leonard, cover boy

April 22, 1985.  Thirty years ago today Elmore Leonard appeared on the cover of Newsweek, representing a new wave of highly successful crime writers.

4/9/1883 Old Cap Collier Library opens for business

April 9, 1893.  You have probably never heard of the Old Cap Collier Library but how about "dime novel?"  This was apparently the first of the extremely cheaply produced series of crime fiction.  All the great and not-so-great detective magazines owe a father's day card to this weekly (later monthly) that ran until 1899.  The most prominent inhabitant was Cap Collier, a mysterious fellow who worked unoffically with the police department.  You can view some of the issues here.

1/28/1946 Craig Rice graces Time

January 28, 1946.  Craig Rice was the first mystery writer to make the cover of Time Magazine.  Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig is not so well remembered  these days, but her comic mysteries about Hildegarde Withers, Helene Justus, John J. Malone, and others were very successful in the mid-twentieth century, and several were made into movies, such as Home Sweet Homicide.  

(Thanks to Noah Stewart for catching my mistake.  Hildegarde Withers was created by Stuart Palmer.  Rice and Palmer collaborated on one book.)