Frederick Nebel(1903-1967)
- Writer
Largely self-educated, Frederick Lewis Nebel was sent to live with his
grandfather in northern Canada in order to escape the 1918 Spanish
Influenza pandemic ravaging New York City. There he soaked up Canadian
pioneer history, which he'd draw upon in the 1920s writing for the
pulp, Northwest Stories, which is where he'd score his initial success
as an author. Nebel spent his early adulthood working his way across
the Atlantic and Europe as a merchant seaman. In Paris, he'd met his
future wife, Dorothy and together they wandered back stateside and the
couple took up residence in St. Louis, Missouri where Nebel began his
writing career in earnest. After his first successful sales to
Northwest Stories, he branched out to other burgeoning pulp publishers,
writing effectively across several genres. Aside from Northwest
Stories, Nebel scored big with Black Mask in 1926. Its legendary
publisher Joe 'Cap' Shaw promoted Nebel as its first star author,
probably in an effort to upgrade the image of the 6-year old magazine,
which he felt was hindered by the almost inexplicable popularity of the
mindless writing of Caroll J. Daly. Nebel's characters were denizens of
Richmond City; police captain Steve MacBride and a sometime
acrimoniously-teamed local news reporter simply named Kennedy. Nebel
burned through 37 actioned-packed stories that were among the most
popular entries in the magazine. Nebel went on to create another
memorable hard-nosed character, Donny Donahue that Shaw promoted as a
replacement from the high-profile loss of
Dashiell Hammett. Donny Donahue, a
private detective from the Interstate Detective Agency debuted in 1930 and
kept readers happy over the next 3 years. Although Nebel has several
film credits, he maintained a very negative view of Hollywood. He would
often cite examples of how the studios chewed up his colleagues. Nebel
would license the film rights to his stories (most famously Torchy
Blaine) to the highest bidder, steadfastly declining to write the
screenplays. In later years he discontinued writing crime stories
altogether, shifting to romance stories for the women's magazine
market. Plagued with health problems in his 50s his writing ground to a
premature stop. He died in 1967.
