S.S. Van Dine Trivia Quiz

Answer: Willard Huntington Wright

The S.S. stood for 'steamship'. The 'Van Dine' was a family connection that has not been verified by later biographers. He had a classical education at Pomona College and Harvard, followed by study abroad in Munich and Paris.

Answer: Nietzsche

Van Dine's book "What Nietzsche Taught" was an attempt to explain Nietzsche's philosophy. During this period of his life Van Dine worked as a free lance journalist and critic for several periodicals.

Answer: Encyclopedia Britannica

Van Dine felt that the Encyclopedia Britannica was replete with distortions and inaccuracies. He also felt that it had too strong a British basis.

Answer: Cocaine addiction

Although it was thought that it was heart disease, it was really cocaine addiction, according to John Lougarty in his biography of Van Dine. On his doctor's advice Van Dine remained housebound for about two years.

Answer: Devoured and analyzed thousands of mystery/detective fiction works

Van Dine read thousands of mystery/detective tales, which gave him inspiration for a new writing career. He was to become one of the most popular writers of detective fiction.

Answer: Philo Vance

Van Dine's Philo Vance revised the public concept of the fictional detective. Vance was sophisticated, urbane, and at times, arrogant. He enjoyed art, music, literature. He represented something more than the idle rich; he was a man with wit and purpose. According to a review of Van Dine's life, Philo Vance was his mirror image.

His first appearance was "The Benson Murder Case" published in 1926.

Answer: He compiled an anthology of detective fiction with his own with essays and notes

Van Dine's anthology was called "The Great Detective Stories" to which he added many notes and essays. The most quoted and influential was his "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories". That essay is too long to include here but another writer, Ronald Knox, reduced his 'rules' to ten:

1. The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective himself must not commit the crime.
8. The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.
9. The "stupid friend" of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but only very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

Answer: David Niven

Niven never played Philo Vance but probably would have been well suited to the role. Of the several Vance movies I have viewed, Rathbone and Powell are closer to the hero Van Dine visualized. I can see little difference between William Powell's portrayal of Vance than his "Thin Man" series, except that Nick Charles was married and had a dog.

Other actors who had a turn as Philo Vance were Warren Williams, Edmund Lowe, Grant Richards, James Stephenson, Alan Curtis, and Paul Lukas (who played Vance with a European accent).

On radio, Jose Ferrar, John Emory, and Jackson Beck voiced Philo Vance.

Answer: Ignored criticism and continued in the same vein in spite of declining sales

Van Dine's sales were in serious decline. He had an expensive life style but that was slowly eroding. Van Dine viewed detective fiction as a game or puzzle that needed to be solved, thus for the most part his characters were shallow and were not in step with the waves of realism and naturalism of that time. This is reflected in his "twenty rules or commandments".

Answer: Sonja Henie and Gracie Allen

These experimental novels were not successful, but "The Gracie Allen Murder Case" did make it to the screen. Warren Williams reprised his role as Philo Vance but was upstaged by Gracie Allen who called him 'Fido'. Gracie also wonders why someone would take six months writing a novel when you can buy one for $2.95.

The other book was to be centered on Sonja Henie but Van Dine died and the title was changed to "The Winter Murder Case" and was published posthumously.

In 1912 Van Dine (under his birth name) published his first novel "The Man of Promise". The basic plot concerns a young writer who refuses to compromise his principles and resort to popular fiction. Van Dine drifted from his early scholarly works to works of popular fiction and at the end his writing seemed to be an ironic satire of himself.