David Goodis
Encyclopedia
David Loeb Goodis was an American
noir fiction writer.
Born to a respectable Jewish family in Philadelphia, Goodis had two younger brothers, but one died of meningitis at the age of three. After high school in Philadelphia, Goodis studied at Indiana University
for a year before transferring to Temple University
, where he graduated in 1938 with a journalism
degree.
, where he wrote under several pseudonyms for pulp magazines, including Battle Birds, Daredevil Aces, Dime Mystery, Horror Stories, Terror Tales and Western Tales, sometimes churning out 10,000 words a day. Over a five-and-a-half-year period, according to some sources, he produced five million words for the pulp magazines.
, House of Mystery, and Superman. Novels he wrote during the early 1940s were rejected by publishers, but in 1942 he spent some time in Hollywood as one of the screenwriters on Universal's Destination Unknown. His big break came in 1946 when his novel Dark Passage
was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post
, published by Julian Messner and filmed for Warner Bros.
with Humphrey Bogart
and Lauren Bacall
heading the cast. Delmer Daves
directed what is now regarded as a classic film noir, and a first edition of the 1946 hardcover is valued at more than $800.
Arriving in Hollywood, Goodis signed a six-year contract with Warner Bros., where he scripted The Unfaithful, a remake of Somerset Maugham's The Letter. Some of his scripts were never produced, including Of Missing Persons and an adaptation of Raymond Chandler
's The Lady in the Lake.
However, research by Larry Withers and Louis Boxer has produced a marriage license for Goodis and Elaine Astor. It shows that they were married on October 7, 1943 by Rabbi Jacob Samuel Robins, Ph.D., at Ohev Shalom Congregation, 525 South Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles. According to a divorce decree found in the attic of Philadelphia's City Hall, Astor received a divorce on January 18, 1946.
Withers is Astor's son by a later marriage. He learned about her marriage to Goodis only after her death in 1986 from a stroke.
filmed Down There (1956) as the acclaimed Shoot the Piano Player
(1960).
Goodis died at 11:30pm on January 7, 1967, at Albert Einstein Medical Center, Northern Division, not far from his home. He was 49. His death certificate lists "cerebral vascular accident," meaning a stroke, as the cause of death. Days earlier, Goodis had been beaten while resisting a robbery. Some have attributed his death to his injuries. It is also said that he keeled over while shoveling snow. He was buried in Roosevelt Memorial Park, in Pennsylvania.
Goodis stated that The Fugitive was based on his novel Dark Passage. In 1965, he sued United Artists-TV and ABC for $500,000, alleging copyright infringement. His cousin's law firm, Goodis, Greenfield, Narin and Mann, represented him and several groups supported him, including the Author's League of America, the Dramatist's Guild, and the American Book Publishers Association. Coudert Brothers
represented United Artists and ABC.
During a deposition on December 9, 1966, Goodis stated that The Saturday Evening Post had serialized Dark Passage, a fact that would become critical to the case.
One month later, Goodis was dead. The lawsuit continued to wind its way through the courts, however.
The dispute did not so much concern whether the theme of Dark Passage had been used, but whether the book was in the public domain. In a victory for UA and ABC, the District Court held that Goodis had, in effect, "donated his work to the public domain" when he published it in The Saturday Evening Post without using a copyright notice that listed his name.
The Goodis estate appealed. In 1970, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the lower court's decision and remanded the case for trial. The decision is reported at Goodis v. United Artists Television, Inc., 425 F.2d 397 (2nd Cir. 1970). The court wrote, "We unanimously conclude that where a magazine has purchased the right of first publication under circumstances which show that the author has no intention to donate his work to the public, copyright notice in the magazine's name is sufficient to obtain a valid copyright on behalf of the beneficial owner, the author or proprietor." (425 F.2d 398-399)
By then, Goodis's main beneficiary, his brother Herbert, was also dead. So in 1972, the Goodis estate agreed that the case now had only "nuisance value" and accepted $12,000 to settle the matter. Despite the significant difference between the initial claim and the final monetary settlement, the case is still regarded as a landmark decision in intellectual property rights and copyright law.
began to reissue Goodis titles. In 2007, Hard Case Crime
published a new edition of The Wounded and the Slain for the first time in more than 50 years. Also in 2007, Street of No Return and Nightfall were re-published by Millipede Press. His novel Down There was reprinted as part of American Noir of the 1950s, in The Library of America
.
Goodis has influenced contemporary crime fiction writers, notably Duane Swierczynski
, and Ken Bruen
. A character in Jean-Luc Godard
's 1966 film Made in U.S.A.
was named after Goodis.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
noir fiction writer.
Born to a respectable Jewish family in Philadelphia, Goodis had two younger brothers, but one died of meningitis at the age of three. After high school in Philadelphia, Goodis studied at Indiana University
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
for a year before transferring to Temple University
Temple University
Temple University is a comprehensive public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Originally founded in 1884 by Dr. Russell Conwell, Temple University is among the nation's largest providers of professional education and prepares the largest body of professional...
, where he graduated in 1938 with a journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
degree.
Pulp magazines
While working at an advertising agency, he started writing his first novel, Retreat from Oblivion. After it was published by Dutton in 1939, Goodis moved to New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where he wrote under several pseudonyms for pulp magazines, including Battle Birds, Daredevil Aces, Dime Mystery, Horror Stories, Terror Tales and Western Tales, sometimes churning out 10,000 words a day. Over a five-and-a-half-year period, according to some sources, he produced five million words for the pulp magazines.
Radio and screenplays
During the 1940s, Goodis scripted for radio adventure serials, including Hop HarriganHop Harrigan
Hop Harrigan first appeared in All American Comics #1 created by Jon Blummer as one of the first successful aviation heroes in comic history...
, House of Mystery, and Superman. Novels he wrote during the early 1940s were rejected by publishers, but in 1942 he spent some time in Hollywood as one of the screenwriters on Universal's Destination Unknown. His big break came in 1946 when his novel Dark Passage
Dark Passage
Dark Passage is a novel by David Goodis which was the basis for the 1947 film noir Dark Passage.-Plot:Vincent Parry, convicted of murdering his wife, escapes from prison and is taken in by Irene Jansen, an artist with an interest in his case...
was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
, published by Julian Messner and filmed for Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
with Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
and Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in The Big Sleep and Dark Passage ,...
heading the cast. Delmer Daves
Delmer Daves
Delmer Daves was an American screenwriter, director, and producer.-Life and career:Born in San Francisco, Delmer Daves first pursued a career as a lawyer...
directed what is now regarded as a classic film noir, and a first edition of the 1946 hardcover is valued at more than $800.
Arriving in Hollywood, Goodis signed a six-year contract with Warner Bros., where he scripted The Unfaithful, a remake of Somerset Maugham's The Letter. Some of his scripts were never produced, including Of Missing Persons and an adaptation of Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
's The Lady in the Lake.
Marriage and divorce
Until recently, it was generally believed that Goodis never married. His friend Harold "Dutch" Silver said Goodis never spoke of a wife, and no wife was mentioned in Goodis's obituary. Attorney correspondence also repeatedly stated that Goodis never married.However, research by Larry Withers and Louis Boxer has produced a marriage license for Goodis and Elaine Astor. It shows that they were married on October 7, 1943 by Rabbi Jacob Samuel Robins, Ph.D., at Ohev Shalom Congregation, 525 South Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles. According to a divorce decree found in the attic of Philadelphia's City Hall, Astor received a divorce on January 18, 1946.
Withers is Astor's son by a later marriage. He learned about her marriage to Goodis only after her death in 1986 from a stroke.
Return to Philadelphia
In 1950, Goodis returned to Philadelphia where he lived with his parents and his schizophrenic brother Herbert. At night, he prowled the underside of Philadelphia, hanging out in nightclubs and seedy bars, a milieu he depicted in his fiction. Cassidy's Girl (1951) sold over a million copies, and he continued to write for paperback publishers, notably Gold Medal. There was a renewed interest in his novels when François TruffautFrançois Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
filmed Down There (1956) as the acclaimed Shoot the Piano Player
Shoot the Piano Player
Shoot the Piano Player is a 1960 French film directed by François Truffaut, starring Charles Aznavour.The film is loosely based on the novel Down There by David Goodis.- Plot summary :...
(1960).
Goodis died at 11:30pm on January 7, 1967, at Albert Einstein Medical Center, Northern Division, not far from his home. He was 49. His death certificate lists "cerebral vascular accident," meaning a stroke, as the cause of death. Days earlier, Goodis had been beaten while resisting a robbery. Some have attributed his death to his injuries. It is also said that he keeled over while shoveling snow. He was buried in Roosevelt Memorial Park, in Pennsylvania.
The Fugitive and the lawsuit
In 1963, ABC television began airing the television show The Fugitive, the story of Richard Kimble, a doctor who had been wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife. Kimble subsequently escaped and began a long search for the "one-armed man," the person he believed to be the real killer.Goodis stated that The Fugitive was based on his novel Dark Passage. In 1965, he sued United Artists-TV and ABC for $500,000, alleging copyright infringement. His cousin's law firm, Goodis, Greenfield, Narin and Mann, represented him and several groups supported him, including the Author's League of America, the Dramatist's Guild, and the American Book Publishers Association. Coudert Brothers
Coudert Brothers
Coudert Brothers LLP was a New York-based law firm with a strong international outlook that practiced from 1853 until its dissolution in 2006.-History:...
represented United Artists and ABC.
During a deposition on December 9, 1966, Goodis stated that The Saturday Evening Post had serialized Dark Passage, a fact that would become critical to the case.
One month later, Goodis was dead. The lawsuit continued to wind its way through the courts, however.
The dispute did not so much concern whether the theme of Dark Passage had been used, but whether the book was in the public domain. In a victory for UA and ABC, the District Court held that Goodis had, in effect, "donated his work to the public domain" when he published it in The Saturday Evening Post without using a copyright notice that listed his name.
The Goodis estate appealed. In 1970, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the lower court's decision and remanded the case for trial. The decision is reported at Goodis v. United Artists Television, Inc., 425 F.2d 397 (2nd Cir. 1970). The court wrote, "We unanimously conclude that where a magazine has purchased the right of first publication under circumstances which show that the author has no intention to donate his work to the public, copyright notice in the magazine's name is sufficient to obtain a valid copyright on behalf of the beneficial owner, the author or proprietor." (425 F.2d 398-399)
By then, Goodis's main beneficiary, his brother Herbert, was also dead. So in 1972, the Goodis estate agreed that the case now had only "nuisance value" and accepted $12,000 to settle the matter. Despite the significant difference between the initial claim and the final monetary settlement, the case is still regarded as a landmark decision in intellectual property rights and copyright law.
Influence
After his death, his work went out of print in the United States, but he remained a popular favorite in France. In 1987, Black LizardBlack Lizard
Black Lizard was a publisher imprint during the 1980s. A division of the Creative Arts Book Company of Berkeley, California, Black Lizard specialized in presenting rediscovered forgotten classic crime fiction writers and novels from the decades between the 1930s and the 1960s. Creative Arts Book...
began to reissue Goodis titles. In 2007, Hard Case Crime
Hard Case Crime
Hard Case Crime is an American imprint of hardboiled crime novels founded in 2004 by Charles Ardai, also known as the founder of the Internet service Juno Online Services, and Max Phillips....
published a new edition of The Wounded and the Slain for the first time in more than 50 years. Also in 2007, Street of No Return and Nightfall were re-published by Millipede Press. His novel Down There was reprinted as part of American Noir of the 1950s, in The Library of America
Library of America
The Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
.
Goodis has influenced contemporary crime fiction writers, notably Duane Swierczynski
Duane Swierczynski
Duane Louis Swierczynski is an American crime writer who has written a number of non-fiction books, novels and also writes for comic books.-Early life:...
, and Ken Bruen
Ken Bruen
Ken Bruen is an Irish writer of hard-boiled and noir crime fiction.He was born in Galway, and educated at Gormanston College, County Meath and later at Trinity College Dublin, where he earned a Ph.D. in metaphysics. He spent twenty-five years as an English teacher in Africa, Japan, S.E. Asia and...
. A character in Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
's 1966 film Made in U.S.A.
Made in U.S.A. (film)
Made in U.S.A is a 1966 French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Greatly inspired by the Howard Hawks film The Big Sleep and unofficially based on the novel The Jugger, by Richard Stark , it stars Anna Karina, Jean-Pierre Léaud, László Szabó and Yves Afonso...
was named after Goodis.
Filmography
- Street of No ReturnStreet of No ReturnStreet of No Return is a 1989 crime film directed by Samuel Fuller. It stars Keith Carradine and Valentina Vargas, based on the 1954 novel with the same title written by David Goodis.-Cast:*Keith Carradine as Michael*Valentina Vargas as Celia...
(1989) - Descent into Hell (1986) from The Wounded and the Slain
- Rue Barbare (1984) from Street of the Lost
- The Moon in the GutterMoon in the GutterMoon in the Gutter is a 1983 French drama film directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix. It was entered into the 1983 Cannes Film Festival.Although it immediately followed Beineix' big, commercial success Diva and featured two very big stars, Gérard Depardieu and Nastassja Kinski, Moon in the Gutter was...
(1983) - And Hope to Die (1972) from Black Friday
- Le Casse (1971) from The Burglar
- The Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode: "An Out for Oscar" (broadcast April 5, 1963)
- Bourbon Street BeatBourbon Street BeatBourbon Street Beat is a private detective series which aired on the ABC network from 1959-1960 and featured Andrew Duggan as Cal Calhoun, Richard Long as Rex Randolph, Van Williams as Kenny Madison, and Arlene Howell as Melody Lee Mercer, the secretary at the New Orleans detective agency in which...
episode: "False Identity" (broadcast May 23, 1960) - Shoot the Piano PlayerShoot the Piano PlayerShoot the Piano Player is a 1960 French film directed by François Truffaut, starring Charles Aznavour.The film is loosely based on the novel Down There by David Goodis.- Plot summary :...
(1960) from Down There - The BurglarThe BurglarThe Burglar is a 1957 crime/thriller film released by Columbia Pictures, based on the 1953 novel of the same name by David Goodis .-Production background:...
(1957) - Nightfall (1957)
- Section des disparus (1956) from Of Missing Persons
- Dark Passage (1947)
- The UnfaithfulThe UnfaithfulThe Unfaithful is a 1947 film noir based on the W. Somerset Maugham penned 1940 Bette Davis movie The Letter. The film was directed by Vincent Sherman.-Plot:Chris Hunter stabs a man in her home one night while her husband Bob is out of town...
(1947) - A Professional Man, adapted as part of the second series of Showtime's Fallen AngelsFallen Angels (TV series)Fallen Angels was an American neo-noir anthology television series that ran from 1993 to 1995 on the Showtime pay cable station and was produced by Propaganda Films. No first-run episodes were shown in 1994....
(aka Perfect Crimes) in 1995. - A film adaptation of Cassidy's Girl is being developed by rouge director Edward Holub.