And Then There Was Philo Vance

What do Nick Charles, Perry Mason and Sherlock Holmes have in common? Well, if you answered that the film actors who played these fictional detectives all played Philo Vance before they achieved fame as the above characters, you’d be correct.  Actors William Powell, Warren Williams and Basil Rathbone all played Philo Vance in the movies before garnering fame as Charles, Mason and Holmes, respectively.

So who was Philo Vance? He was the creation of Willard Huntington Wright who wrote under philo_vancethe pen name of S. S. Van Dine. Philo Vance was the ultimate American super detective. He was rich, friends with the local District Attorney, versed in all things cultural and psychological and fascinated by murders. He was tall, handsome and athletic, and an expert in Chinese ceramics and Renaissance art.  He was educated in Europe and spoke in the manner of an upper-class Englishman complete with monocle wearing. He often spoke contemptuously of most of the people he met or dealt with in his stories. In short, he was perfect and that was the problem with him.

Philo Vance was so irritatingly perfect to the point that readers of the late 1920s and 1930s fell out of love with the detective. By the late 1930s the rich detective was openly mocked for being out of touch with the rest of the Depression era audience. Nevertheless, Philo Vance remains one of the greatest detectives, if not one of the most pompous and arrogant blowhards of all times.

Van Dine wrote 12 books between 1926 and his death in 1939. Ten of the 12 were turned into movies. But none of the Philo Vance films ever attained the stature of the Nick Charles, Perry Mason or Sherlock Holmes movies. Six of the movies are available on DVD and can be found at Amazon.

The Philo Vance novels are out of print, but 10 of the 12 can be found on the Australian Guttenberg site as follows:

The Canary Murder Case

The Greene Murder Case

The Bishop Murder Case

The Scarab Murder Case

The Kennel Murder Case

The Dragon Murder Case

The Casino Murder Case

The Garden Murder Case

The Gracie Allen Murder Case

The Winter Murder Case

They are interesting, but not great reading. Enjoy!