Page 19 - Demo

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BEHIND THE
BLACK MASK
Last week we caHed up THEO- instantly became a brand-new, imported DORE TINSLEY and said to him, snapbrim fedora.
said we, "Ted, how about opening your Th at seemed queer ! Why should s@ulto us? Frank Gruber did it last Jerry Tracy toss his brand-new h~t in a month, and now it's your turn. How do
you write those Jerry Tracy stories ?" ~ed said, "What's that? T _he baby's
cry111gand I can't hear you."
~o we raised our voice and shouted,
which resulted in the following.
~eforc you turn over the page and ~egm_ Theodore Tinsley ' s new story, Statton K-I-L-L," perhaps you'd like
to share with us this look behind the scenes:
Ted Tinsley now btoadcasting:
The editor of Black Mask wants to kno:v. (a) how I think up Jerry Tracy st o~ies, ~b} how I write 'em.
I ~efpicked up Jerry Tracy ideas from
: .11kids of places-but this is the first
tmhe ever found one in an ashcan The as can ·
bl k bwas on 50th Street in the short
oc etween Br oad way and Seventh Avenue. Some one had thrown away an old peaked cap. I took ol1e look at it and thought about J erry Tra cy. (Nat- ural!y, when you're a writer of detective stories on a Broadway prowl for ideas you'r e n~t thinking about the price of potatoes 111 Ireland .) So the junked cap
50th Street ashcan? It wasn't so damned queer when I took a mental look at the Little Guy's h a t and found a bullet hole through the crown ! Tb.at was all the start I ne eded, par ticularly after I glanced east past the Sixth Avenue ele- vated and caught a glimpse of the dizzy stone pinnacle of Radio City. Flash! Someone must have taken a pot- shot at Tracy whtle he was on his way
to a broadcast ! And that, believe it 0r not, is how I got the idea.
Writing the yarn is a bit ~11ore_com- plicated. It usually happens !tke t_~1:s I rise as late as possible, enjoy a le1sun=- ly breakfast smoke two cigarettes , wait to see what the postman has hr-ought,
pla,y with my
daughter
rearrange my Royal portable, loo~ -o~t the window think wistfully how ntce 1t would be i/ I were a plumber, an avia-
tor or a subway moton11an.. . .
At this point my wife comes in very quietly , pulls down the shade! removes all books, papers and magazm 7s, t~en
goes away, locking the door behmd her. After th at I .write the story.
a while,
sharpen
three
pencils ,
thirteen-months-?ld
17