Customer Reviews

Private Eye-Lashes: Radio's Lady Detectives

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Jack French's startling new book, PRIVATE EYELASHES: Radio's Lady Detectives, provides fresh insight into a little researched, but important corner of old-time radio---lady sleuths with a penchant for adventure, discovery, and danger. These remarkable women significantly enhanced the glory days of radio drama. They were smart and tough with unyielding determination to solve crimes and assist their victims.

Jack French chronicles forty-four unusual female characters with
studiously cross-referenced notes about their many counterparts and associates. He intersperses the text with actual dialogue taken directly from the program scripts.

This book is a "must read" for detective lovers and fans of old-time radio.

First, I am a friend of the author. However, I am also a long-time fan of Old Time Radio - and read his history of female radio detectives with great interest and enjoyment.
Jack puts you almost in front of the radio as you read and I increasingly became engrossed as he lists in detail the specific background and history of each show, I also found the anecdotes and bios - including what happened after they left the show - of some of the actresses involved to be especially interesting.
This is a readable history of a brief period of entertainment history that has left its mark on many of us "of a certain age" and presents a fine introduction to those who may not be as familar.

If you're a fan of old radio shows, this is a must read item. Jack French has a warm, easy to read style that informs and entertains.

If you're not a current fan of old radio shows, might want to troll the internet to check them out. Lots of good things available online from the 1930s, 40s and 50s, including many of the shows mentioned in Private Eyelashes.

A fun read plus a great reference book that is perfectly at home, stacked alongside my Dunning, Buxton and Harmons.

Long before Marica Muller's Sharon McCone, Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone, or Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski, a San Francisco op named Candy Matson was proving that a strong, capable woman could carry the lead in a hard-boiled private eye story.

And she was doing it on radio.

Jack French devotes one full chapter to this pioneering PI series in his excellent, copiously researched history of women sleuths on old-time radio, PRIVATE EYE-LASHES.

The rest of his book is devoted to the rest of radio's female detectives, professional cops like Mary Sullivan on POLICEWOMAN (based on the career of real-life NYPD Detective Mary Sullivan, this may have been the first realistic fictional treatment of women in law enforcement in any medium), the distaff side of crime-solving married couples like Nora Charles on THE THIN MAN and Pam North on MR & MRS NORTH, helpful secretaries like Effie Perrine on SAM SPADE or Della Street on PERRY MASON, newpaperwomen, lawyers, gifted amateurs, international agents, they're all here.

Whether you're interested in the history of women detectives in fiction, or are an OTR buff, Mr. French's book is a definite must-have.

As a long time fan of old-time radio, I have found it necessary not only to collect tapes and CDs of those wonderful programs from that Golden Age, but books written about them as well. An essential amount of space must be made in one's library for the books written by John Dunning, Jim Cox, Martin Grams, Jr., etc...and no OTR fan should be without a copy of Jack French's Private Eye-Lashes: Radio's Lady Detectives.

It's very simple, really...many of the programs discussed in this truly incredible book no longer exist in recorded form, and author French has undertaken the necessary research to provide a background and history of radio crime dramas and detective shows from the distaff side of the medium's usually macho male heroes. Included in this volume are informative, fascinating chapters on the likes of characters such as Candy Matson, Phyl Coe, Kitty Keene, etc. and probing profiles on those actresses who played these parts like Marlene Dietrich, Arlene Francis and Mercedes McCambridge.

Jack French not only painstakingly took the time to get the facts right--he also writes with a breezy, tongue-in-cheek style guaranteed to please both the seasoned OTR veteran and new-to-the-hobby novice. Without this amazing book in my old-time radio library, the shelf would be kind of...naked. Kudos to Jack and this truly outstanding book.

The brown box in the corner was like a TV to my family. We saw in our "mind's eye" everything that was going on in that box. Our radio was our picture window, and the mysteries that took place in front of that window captured our imaginations.
This book carries our memories back all those years, and does it in a easily read, can't put down manner. That brown box is now on paper in front of us, and the memories, even some of the phrases, leap out.
Mr. French has done marvelous research into this sliver of radio history, and makes us wish our grandchildren had the opportunity to hear the mysteries that captured us each day in those fabulous days of radio.
Margot Lane was one of my favorites, and I didn't even care about her personal relationship with the Shadow...one can only imagine if he clouded her mind....isn't imagination wonderful?
And so was radio, and so is this very special book.

"Find out how the women of America and Drama stomped crime and solved mysteries in "Private Eyelashes," by Jack French. The book is also an excellent reference book for the programs of The Golden Years of radio. A must buy." Phillipa Lord.

Private Eyelashes is emphatically a book of great interest to a general reader as well as to Old Time Radio fans. Although not a devotee of old time radio's lady detectives, I was hooked as soon as I started reading Mr. French's extremely accessable treatment of the topic. He does a topnotch job of describing specific shows and heroines with helpful and interesting quotations from programs. The analysis is orderly, informed, and entertaining. The book includes a good bibliography as well as photos and background on authors and performers. I highly recommend this book.

Jack French's enthusiasm for his topic shines through on every page of this small, but densely packed book. Facts and anecdotes abound. As a fan of "The Shadow" and owner of several audio tapes of the old radio mystery shows featuring Dick Powell and others, I found it immensely refreshing to read about the ladies of the crime world. In many radio crime shows, women are either holy as nuns or evil as the devil herself. Often, the men in the dramas are appalled at the shenanigans of an upstart woman wielding a pistol. So it's thrilling to find a large number of nervy, savvy, ambitious and beautiful women on the right side of the law, particularly as they were created in an era when women were routinely confined to the home. These gals, in taking Nancy Drew to the next level, were an inspiration.
Thank you, Jack, for bringing them back to us in such an accessible and entertaining way! Makes me want to order some more new/old audio tapes of old mystery shows.