For my third installment for Noir-vember, I decided to delve into the career of David Goodis (1917-1967). Goodis grew up in Philadelphia. He became known as the “Poet of the Losers” to crime noir afficionados. Ed Gorman referred to his novels as “suicide notes.” Then again, the Paperback Warrior blog/podcast referred to his books as “literary blues songs.” Goodis aspired to become a writer early in life and published his first novel Retreat from Oblivion (1939) and also contributed fiction to the pulps, particularly detective and aviation-themed magazines.

Careerwise, he really hit a home run with Dark Passage (1946). The story is about Vincent Parry, a man who was wrongly convicted for killing his wife. He escapes from prison and has his face changed by a plastic surgeon so he can try and clear his name without being recognized. The book was optioned and adapted into the classic film of the same name starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

The adaptation of the book prompted Warner Bros to hire Goodis as a screenwriter. This didn’t end well. After a few years in Hollywood, very little came of this arrangement. He wrote a single produced screenplay and made few connections while living there, which seemed to be partly due to his eccentric personality.

Nightfall (1947) is one of Goodis’ most popular novels and reprinted by Lion as The Dark Chase. It is about a commercial artist, James Vanning who gets mixed up with a couple of robbers. By a strange twist of fate, he escapes with the money they stole. Now he lives in hiding, living beneath his potential, in hopes of avoiding being noticed by the crooks and the cops. A short and fast-moving thriller, this one is more optimistic than what Goodis’ later novels turned out to be. It seems to follow a Woolrichian plot of an innocent, living in fear due to circumstances beyond his control. This was adapted into a great film by Jacques Tourneur (who worked with Val Lewton on several of his horror films and directed the class Night of the Demon.)

Cassidy’s Girl (1951) was a hit as far as paperback originals were concerned. It became one of Fawcett Gold Medal’s biggest sellers in the 50’s. It is about Cassidy, a disgraced pilot who becomes a bus driver. He has a wife who hates him and has no direction in his life. He thinks he finds a chance at redemption with a girl he meets at a bar, but things go sideways when he is set up to cause a fatal accident while driving the bus. This one is a good example of the “dominating woman” trope that comes to play in several of his books.

The Burglar (1953) may be Goodis’ best paperback original that was released through Lion. It is about Nat Harbin who leads a close-knit group of burglars. He was practically raised into the business, so much so that he feels obliged to take care of Gladden, the daughter of the man who mentored him and took him in. Nat wants out and that eventually leads to the destruction of the group. Nat is evidently a man who doesn’t understand himself. He doesn’t know what he wants but knows he needs something different than what he has, which creates an opening for men who want to muscle in on the gang’s latest take. It’s a powerful and compulsively readable novel about guilt. I said that noir fiction involves stories of people who try take the easy way, the illegitimate path, to get what they think they need. In this case, Nat is doomed by his conscience to be a father to Gladden when she no longer had one. In 1957, Goodis penned a screenplay and the adaptation, called The Burglars, starring Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield, was directed by one of his few Hollywood pals, Paul Wendkos. Although not as potent as the book, this one is still fatalistic, removing the deeper Goodis sting, but keeping the guts of the story.

Black Friday (1954) is among the bleakest noirs that Goodis ever wrote, another paperback published by Lion. Hart was an artist, now he is a man on the run and freezing to death on the streets of Philadelphia. He encounters a dying man who gives him a wad of cash. Hart eventually joins the gang that the dead man was once a part of. He becomes wrapped up in a love triangle, his attention drawn to one girl while he falls under the lustful gaze of the boss’ main squeeze. There is a macabre bent to this story and like The Burglar, things spiral out of control in the gang. Another top-notch piece of crime fiction.

Down There (1956) was published as a paperback original by Fawcett Gold Medal and is regarded by many as his best work. It is about Eddie, formerly a concert pianist who is brought down by the suicide of his unfaithful wife. Now, he plays piano in a sleazy bar, but apparently, he can’t suffer in peace because his criminal brother tries to drag him into the family business. He also has a chance at happiness with Lena, a waitress who he comes to care for. Unfortunately, his association with his brother brings any chance of a happy ending to a halt. This was filmed by Francois Truffaut as the great film noir Shoot the Piano Player.

The Night Squad (1961) was published by Fawcett Gold Medal. This one is about Corey Bradford, an ex-cop and a drunk, who saves the life of a crime boss Walter Grogan. Grogan hires him to find out who wants to kill him. On the other hand, McDermott, captain of the police’s night squad drafts Corey as its new member. The Night Squad is a shady group of cops who do a lot of the work that no one else wants to do. At first Corey plays both sides in a book that is part-treasure hunt, part-survivor story as he encounters one danger after another. In the end, Corey makes a choice that gives the book a moral center.

Goodis was a bit of a cipher to some people. Many people who knew him personally didn’t know he was married. He seemed to be a serious person to some while he was known by others as a practical joker. He had a fondness for walking through slums, and so it is easy to see why he was able to write about life on the streets so convincingly. It seemed whenever he was poised to success, something would bring him down, whether it was his failure with Hollywood that caused him to live a life of relative seclusion, writing paperback originals or falling in love and entering a destructive marriage. His ex-wife’s son eventually made a documentary about him, David Goodis: To a Pulp.

In the early 60s, Goodis sued ABC Television because the plot of their TV show, The Fugitive resembled Dark Passage too closely. In ABC’s defense, they tried to say that Dark Passage was in public domain after it was published in The Saturday Evening Post. He wouldn’t see the end of the litigation, however. During one of his walks through a Philly slum, Goodis was struck down by a mugger. He didn’t seem to have any problems until he collapsed and died while shoveling snow from his driveway a few weeks later. The certificate listed that he died of a stroke, although some people credit his injury from the mugging to have brought that one. Eventually, the Goodis estate won the case, that turned out to be a landmark decision for intellectual property law.

I’ve gone on for a long time on this piece, so I’ll wrap up by saying that I like most of his novels that I’ve read. He was a great writer and remains underappreciated by the mainstream.

Written by Nick Montelongo

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