When did the hardboiled style of tough talk enter American life? I don’t know. But it certainly took off in movies during the Depression.
A friend’s favorite line is from a Cagney gangster film. When an underling uses the car radio while waiting on a heist, Cagney tells him,
“If that battery’s dead it’s gonna have company.”
That clipped style of tough faded in the postwar boom years in favor of fast-talking patter preferred by manic go-getters.
Krim captured it in ”Making It!”
Doesn’t my answering service hum with invitations, haven’t I made it with that crazy-looking blonde who sings at the Persian Room as well as that distinguished lady novelist who lives near Dash Hammett’s old apartment on West 10th? Don’t I jive with Condon as well as Wystan Auden, Jim Jones (when he’s in town), as well as Maureen Stapleton, Bill Zeckendorf, Bill Rose, Bill Styron, Bill Faulkner, Bill Basie, Bill Williams, Bill deKooning, Bill Holden—just on the Bill front?
Always good for a smile.
“Making It!” was published in the Village Voice in 1959 and republished in The Beat Scene in 1960. It’s in Missing a Beat: The Rants and Regrets of Seymour Krim.
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