In a message dated 10/3/2004 2:08:28 AM Eastern Daylight
Time,
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com writes:
> Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 20:37:51 -0700
(PDT)
> From: Victoria Lavagette <
lavagette@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Pulp pleasures + death
certificate
>
> There is a mystery story lurking in these details
and trying to get written.
>
> Victoria
>
>
>
>
DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net wrote:
> Richard wrote:
>
> "As I've learned from his half-brother Don Torrey
(who sent me the death
> certificate), . . ."
>
> Richard, this isn't the first time you've mentioned
contact with an
> author's surviving family members (I remember your
mentioning Ralph
> Dennis's sister, for instance). You clearly research
the pasts of
> writers you like. Any chance of your putting
together a collection of
> stories you've gathered about your favorites? I'd
buy it.
>
> Mark
>
I did track down Ralph Dennis' sister Irma Spence, who alas
died this summer before signing contracts to publish (via
PointBlank) unpublished Dennis novels. I still hope this will
take place.
But Roger Torrey's half-brother Donald contacted me based on
my posts on Rara-Avis about his brother's writing. This is
not that unusual as I get emails all the time based on Rara
posts I've written. Which raises an interesting question? Now
that the list is on Yahoo, are the posts available to
outsiders doing Internet searches? If not, I will find it
regrettable. I've learned a lot from these contacts.
The Torrey story is fascinating. Don and Roger shared a
father but that father had three separate families (one at a
time) but apparently he never mentioned the other wives and
children to the later families. Don was part of family number
three and did not learn (IIRC) of the others until his
father's funeral, which came decades after Roger's death. He
thinks Roger (who was in family number one) knew of the
second family but not the third.
Almost nothing was known in the mystery world about Roger
Torrey, other than the fact that like his detective Shean
Connell, he was a "barrelhouse piano player" and an
alcoholic. Frank Gruber mentions spotting him one morning on
the streets of New York and he was either still on a long
evening or getting an early start on the day's drinking. He
was also described as looking as tough
(of the short and wiry type) as any of his characters. Dennis
Macmillan's reprint of 42 DAYS TO MURDER has a blurb that
said he "...supposedly died in the arms of his mistress
somewhere in Florida in the late 1940s." This sounds like an
old-timer heard something close to the truth and passed down
the oral tradition.
So I was excited to hear from Don because he pinpointed the
key facts. Roger Denzel Torrey was born May 5, 1901 (although
the death certificate says 1900, it is more probably the 1901
date) the son of Neil Baldwin Torrey
(1880-1967). He died on January 11, 1946 at 1009 S.E. 4th
Street, Ft. Lauderdale, FL with the cause of death as acute
intoxification and cirrhosis of the liver. It's doubtful he
died in the arms of a mistress as he was living with his then
wife Helen at the time of his death. This would have been
Roger's second wife and perhaps she had previously been known
as his "mistress."
The death certificate also mentions that he had been in
the Canadian Army during World War I. Half-brother Don
tracked that down and, indeed, learned that having been
turned down for U.S. service, he crossed the border and
enlisted in the Canadian Army at the age of 17. He was living
in Oregon at the time and his occupation was listed as
"logger."
The war ended before he could be sent to Europe. Yet, I find
it interesting that two of the mainstays of Black Mask in the
1930s were veterans of the Canadian Army. While today
Chandler's reputation dwarfs most of his contemporaries,
Torrey debuted along about 1933 and his name was soon
featured prominently on the cover of Black Mask and I am sure
they shared many issues. I doubt they were aware of this
common point.
This is all fascinating stuff but all the credit goes to Don
Torrey, who over the last couple of years I have encouraged
to write it up. I did find out for him that Roger was in New
York for at least some of the organizational meetings of what
became the Mystery Writers of America and so it seems he was
still New York-based within a few months of his death. Were
he and his wife just wintering in Ft. Lauderdale or was this
a permanent move? I doubt we will ever know.
Beyond this one point (and passing on the Gruber quote), my
only repayment to Don for this fascinating information is to
send him copies of the Roger Torrey stories I managed to pick
up at reasonable prices on eBay and elsewhere. As so many of
his better stories, including several Shean Connell
novelettes, are in Black Mask issues from the classic era, I
will need to win the lottery to obtain those issues. The
prices for those are really amazing.
So where was I? Don't credit me for being that much of a
literary detective.
I do a bit here or there but mostly I just read my
email. And again, I wonder if the Yahoo lists are searchable
on the Internet. My experience on other Yahoo lists is that
they are not. If so, I will miss getting these
"out-of-the-blue" emails that have added so much to my
knowledge.
Richard Moore
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03 Oct 2004 EDT