THE BOOK CAVE PRESENTS: PANEL FEST EPISODE 17- PULPFEST 2013 ED HULSE

The Book Cave’s Art Sippo recorded Ed Hulse’s panel on Pulps in Hollywood at the 2013 PulpFest Convention.

You can listen to Panel Fest Episode 17: PulpFest 2013 Ed Hulse here.

About From Pulp Page to Silver Screen:
Blood ‘n’ Thunder editor Ed Hulse explores the pulp-to-movie connection in his PulpFest presentation Hollywood and the Hero Pulps, one of several pre-convention programs scheduled for Thursday, July 25th, at 9 PM.

Motion-picture incarnations of pulp magazine protagonists date back to the medium’s earliest days. Moviegoers of the nickelodeon era—the pre-World War I years—were treated to

cinematic adaptations of Short Stories’ Hamilton Cleek and The Popular Magazine’s Terrence O’Rourke, among others. Tom Mix became the industry’s top Western star on the strength of his 1920 portrayal of Max Brand’s Whistlin’ Dan Barry. And master detective Nick Carter, who successfully made the transition from dime novel to pulp magazine, appeared on screens both in the U.S. and overseas in several sets of short subjects produced between 1908 and 1927.

With the coming of talkies and the emergence of Hollywood as the world’s filmmaking capital, pulp fiction became an even more frequent source of story material. Hundreds of movies released during the Thirties, Forties and Fifties—feature films and short subjects alike—were made from yarns originally printed in rough-paper periodicals.

As Blood ‘n’ Thunder readers know, Ed is the leading authority on pulp-related movies, having researched and written about them for decades. His PulpFest presentation will touch on many, but concentrate on those adapted from hero pulps, with special emphasis on such serials as The Spider’s Web (1938), The Shadow (1940), and The Spider Returns (1941). He’ll present little-known, behind-the-scenes info gleaned in part from his own interviews with people who worked on these episodic epics, including Victor Jory (who played the serial Shadow) and Iris Meredith (who played Nita in The Spider’s Web). Ed will address the rumor that Columbia Pictures planned a G-8 and His Battle Aces serial for 1939 release, and he’ll also report what little is known about the proposed Republic chapter plays that would have featured Doc Savage and Nick Carter.

This program, leading into the screening of Chapters One through Five of The Spider’s Web, promises to get PulpFest’s 2013 hero-pulp tribute off to a fascinating start.

Kenneth Duncan as Ram Singh reads an issue of The Spider in this publicity photo for the 1938 Columbia Pictures movie serial, The Spider’s Web.

You can listen to Panel Fest Episode 17: PulpFest 2013 Ed Hulse here.