Pop culture history: From Kennedy to Lois

There’s been a lack of cheer on this site lately.  The obvious response: some analysis of trivial, ephemeral pop culture. 

So, a question before the jump:  If I were to mention “the MacBride and Kennedy stories”, who would raise a hand and say “I know!” ?   — It’s okay to say “no idea”, btw. This is a fairly deep cut.  But here’s a hint:  it connects to a recently released summer blockbuster.  

Okay then, MacBride and Kennedy.  Back in the 1920s and 30s, there was a writer named Frederick Nebel. He wrote for the pulps for many years.  And he was one of those ridiculously prolific pulp writers — thousands of words per day, for years.  He ended up writing hundreds of short stories and several novels.

As with a lot of these guys, if a story was popular, he’d quickly write more with the same protagonist or setting. So before long he had a whole stable of characters (Jim Cardigan, Sergeant Brinkhaus) and settings (the “Northwest Stories”).   You can find a *very partial and incomplete* list here — it’s just recent collections of his more popular stuff, doesn’t include his novels or romance stories. 

Nebel is of course almost completely forgotten today, except by aficionados of pulp.  But back in the 1930s, he held some moderately popular and successful IP! Including his most popular:  the MacBride and Kennedy stories. These were, if not household names, at least somewhat known outside the confines of pulp.

MacBride was a tough cop in a noir-ish world. Kennedy was an alcoholic but brilliant journalist. Together, they solved crimes!  And the combination of noir MacBride and comic relief Kennedy, two-fisted hard cop and tipsy clever reporter with a nose for a scoop, was a modest hit.  So Nebel ended up writing lots of MacBride and Kennedy stories.

But Nebel  wanted to move up in the world, from the pulps to better-selling stuff. This turned out to be writing drama and romance for Colliers and such.  Basically he went from genre to slightly more respectable and better-paying genre.  So he sold MacBride and Kennedy to Hollywood and walked away. Lump sum, I’ll take the money, all yours.

(And credit where it’s due: Nebel was on the very short list of pulp writers who not only survived to retirement age, but actually retired.   That’s a small group.  So, dude was no fool.)

Hollywood being Hollywood, they decided it would be more interesting if they made Kennedy female and also added a will-they, won’t they romance subplot. So alcoholic male journalist Kennedy became somewhat tipsy female journalist Torchy Blane. She was, of course, blonde.  But to be fair, Torchy was still very intelligent and had a nose for a scoop! For some reason, 1930s media allowed female journalists to be both single and competent.  So Torchy was one of a constellation of smart female journalists who appeared in 1930s Hollywood, many of them in romantic and/or will-they won’t-they relationships with more down-to-Earth males. 

The first Torchy Blane movie was literally called “Smart Blonde”.  I say “first” because there ended up being like ten of them. 



These were moderately but consistently popular B-films.  They were made on the cheap, with predictable plots, but they were a pleasant enough 90 minutes — some action, some drama, some comedy.  The character of Torchy wobbled around a bit, but she was usually allowed to be smart.  (If not wise — “Torchy figures something out using clues and her wits, but then gets in over her head and has to be rescued by hunky MacBride” was a recurring theme.)  And by all accounts Glenda Farrell’s depiction of Torchy Blane was very solid.   — Glenda Farrell, btw, had a moderately successful career in movies theater and TV for 40 years.  She never quite broke into the big time, but was still in the game right up to the end.  She picked up an Emmy late in life, and if you’re of a certain age you might remember her guest turns on a bunch of 1960s TV shows, from Ben Casey to Bewitched.    

That said, these days the Torchy Blane movies are quite gone.  You can find them complete on YouTube, which is generally a strong indicator of a dead IP.  As far as I can tell even Turner Classic Movies doesn’t show them any more. 

So what’s the point of all this?  Well… a couple of things.

First, Torchy Blane is forgotten, but she ended up inspiring two young guys named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to add a smart, diligent female reporter as a foil to a character they were creating for the comics.

Yes: Torchy Blane was the direct inspiration for Lois Lane.

More on this shortly.  The other things is, the MacBride and Kennedy stories are  completely dead IP.  They’re mostly out of copyright, and… nobody cares.  They have fallen over the cultural event horizon.  But they led to Torchy, and Torchy gave us Lois, and Lois is very much still with us.  Pop culture is an ourobouros, a compost pile.  Stuff is always being repurposed and recycled; one thing leads to another.

Right, so.  How /is/ Lois Lane doing these days?

Well, a new Superman movie hit theaters, and it’s doing pretty well.  But for the last few years, the most widely viewed version of Lois is the one in My Adventures With Superman, which is an animated cartoon aimed at tween kids.  

 

My Adventures is — for a kids cartoon — a pretty serious hit.  It’s on its third season with solid ratings, a bunch of award nominations, and a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  It’s about young, vaguely college-age Superman just starting his career, but it’s mostly told from the POV of his journalist friends:  young Jimmy Olsen and young Lois Lane.

 

 

So an obvious interesting choice here: they changed the races of both Lois and Jimmy.  Lois’ appearance has changed a lot over the years, but the basics were consistent: she was a white woman with dark brown or black hair.

 

The Lois of “My Adventures” is mixed-race: her father is an American military officer, her mother is Korean.  And this is absolutely a plot point!  Multiple episodes deal with it.  This version of Lois had a distant, strict father who was struggling with PTSD and a loving mother who died young, and she’s definitely what is known in the business as a Third Culture Kid.  (Former professional expat here.  My kids were/are Third Culture, and so are most of their friends.)   Like a disproportionate number of 3Cs, Lois is a driven overachiever who secretly struggles with insecurities.  Even as an intern, she’s already very good at being a reporter —

— but she also is perpetually concerned about impressing her boss and more senior reporters.  And she is — shades of Torchy Blane — somewhat obsessed with getting “scoops”.
 
The show actually sets competent-and-driven-but-insecure young Lois as a compare/contrast with Superman-but-also-dweeb-from-Kansas Clark Kent.  Which is some fairly nuanced writing for an adventure cartoon aimed at tweens, but then I’m on record as saying there has been some /darn/ interesting stuff going on in American kids’ cartoons in the last couple of decades.  

So: did this version of Lois Lane attract much pushback?  No, not much.  There was more fannish butthurt about Jimmy Olsen from the usual suspects, of course.

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Which is weird, because while Lois’ background is repeatedly important to the story — like, in one episode it’s a plot point that she knows how to handle a gun because she’s an Army brat, and going to the shooting range was one of the few ways she could bond with her Dad — Jimmy’s background firmly is not.  Jimmy’s blackness is just a palette swap.  Otherwise, he’s pretty much the same earnest, slightly annoying Jimmy Olsen he’s been since he first appeared on the radio back in 1940.

So the African-American male character is palette-swapped non-threatening comic relief, while the Asian-American female character is complex and interesting in ways that are essential to the story, and… hey, kids cartoons!   Silly stuff, am I right?

More seriously, I think there’s room for several long essays on these topics.  But I’m probably imposing on the patience of our readers enough.  Still, here’s a takeaway: the through-line that has lasted for 100 years now is “smart journalist chases scoop, finds trouble — story ensues”.   That’s a good, solid story engine!  It’s carried us from Frederick Nebel’s tipsy Kennedy, to Glenda Farrell’s clever-but-not-wise Torchy, to an animated mixed-race Korean-American service brat.  Probably it’ll still be with us, in some form, for a long time to come.

And that’s all.