Casey Crime Photographer was a radio program on CBS from 1943 to 1955...there was a television show for a short time, and then there were four issues of a comic book published by the 1949 version of Marvel Comics. Fascinated as I am by stories featuring simians, I chose the first story from the first issue. Reading the story’s intro on the splash panel I found this: “Orang-utans — known to science as simia satyrus.” Who says comic books aren’t educational? Someday I could haul that little factoid out to impress folks at a party. If I get invited to a party.
Casey was created by George Harmon Coxe, a mystery writer for many years, in an early '30s issue of
Black Mask, the widely respected pulp that taught the world what, besides eggs, “hard-boiled” means.
Art is credited by the Grand Comics Database to Vernon Henkel, an artist who worked in comic books from the very early days of the business.
Zo? Vas it an old choke? or vas it een gebroken nek?
ReplyDeleteThe classification “Simia satyrus” has been abandoned. Orangutans are now classified as three species, in the Genus Pongo. (Someone with no dignity might do a take-off of the 1947 song “Civilization” by Hilliard and Sigman.) They are indeed intelligent, but not particularly ferocious, and it's at best loose to refer to one as a “monkey”.
Radio episodes of Crime Photographer can be found on-line.
Casey's blonde companion was rather unpleasant in this story. She stirred-up increased trouble between Charles and Bernice King, and later insulted Casey out-of-the-blue. (On radio, Casey's companion was known as “Ann Williams”.)
Just what were those “harmless pills” that would make an orangutan “look ill”, and how did Casey come to have a knowledge of orangutan pharmacology?