Dent, Lester (pulp fiction writer)

(1904-1959)

The legendary pulp hero Doc Savage and the chronicler of his awesome adventures were a perfect symbiosis of creator and creation. Many a writer found wish fulfillment in their larger-than-life fictional protagonists, but many who knew Lester Dent thought he really did seem quite a bit like the amazing Doc. Physically, both were prepossessing figures. Dent was a huge man, six foot two and more than 200 pounds, and a flamboyant dresser who often cultivated a narrow mustache or a full beard. Like Savage, Dent possessed vast and arcane knowledge and was a master of assorted technical skills. He was a pilot, electrician, radio operator, plumber, and architect. A self-taught architect and draftsman, he designed his own house from scratch. And like Doc Savage, Lester Dent loved exploring the deserts, sailing tropic waters, and diving for sunken treasure (for three years he sailed the Caribbean on his yacht Albatross, diving for treasure by day, his wife would recall, and sitting on the deck writing Doc Savage stories all night). Dent’s productivity as a writer alone qualified him for superman status: he could write around the clock, putting himself as much as a year ahead of schedule when he wanted time off, and often working on three different stories at once, moving from typewriter to typewriter to keep from getting bored.

The momentous pairing of Dent and Doc Savage came on the wings of pulp developer Street & Smith’s enormous success with The Shadow, the first of the superhero pulps. Soon they were looking for a follow-up. Their first choice was a less than creative one, reviving the old dime novel hero Nick Carter. Their second idea, however, was considerably more imaginative and more successful. Launched in March 1933, Doc Savage Magazine would last for 17 years—181 issues—and come to be regarded as one of the supreme highlights of the pulps, and arguably one of the great achievements in American popular fiction.

Street & Smith executive Henry Ralston’s initial idea was to do a high-adventure equivalent of the Shadow mysteries, with a more all-American continuing character, and a strong dose of the “science fiction” that had excited interest among some young readers. He talked it over with editor John Nanovic, who put their ideas into a detailed outline and character genesis for the proposed pulp. It would concern Clark “Doc” Savage Jr., a brawny “superman,” a master of many fields—surgeon, mineralogist, engineer, inventor, linguist. His skin color was a glowing bronze, “bespeaking of long years spent beneath tropic suns and northern skies.” His hair was a matching hue, and so too were his eyes, resembling gold flake. He would be known as the Man of Bronze.

Headquartered in a Manhattan skyscraper, Doc was the leader of an almost equally colorful and talented group of five other adventurers: Renny, another brawny giant and a world-renowned engineer; Long Tom, a skinny electronic genius; Johnny, scrawny, studious, a geologist and remarkable physicist; Monk, a chemist of genius with the body of a gorilla; and Ham, a sardonic, nattily dressed, Harvard-educated lawyer who wielded a sword cane with a drug-laced tip. Financed by gold reserves from a hidden Central American mine, Doc and his gang were assigned an exciting task: “To go here and there, from one end of the world to the other, looking for excitement and adventure; striving to help those who need help; to punish those who deserve it. . . . People, tribes and nations would gain their help when sore pressed. Industry would be served by them. Art and science would profit by their daring . . .”

Of course, it was a long way between such a stirring declaration of intent and the actual execution of Street & Smith’s conception. For that they needed a writer who could bring the intriguing ingredients to life and sustain them at novel length. They hired Lester Dent, a 28-year-old Missourian just beginning to find his way in the pulp jungle, a former small-town telegrapher without any major credits to his name but with plenty of energy and imagination.

Born in La Plata, Missouri, Dent had learned the telegrapher’s trade at Chillicothe Business College and went on to jobs with Western Union, the Empire Oil and Gas Company in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and the Associated Press office in Tulsa. Dent would cynically claim that it was not any burning creative urge but simply greed that got him going as a pulp fiction writer. When he met a reporter in the halls of the Tulsa World who bragged of receiving a check for $300 for a pulp story he had written, Dent was soon poring over a typewriter himself. Working the graveyard shift, from midnight to eight in the morning, Dent had plenty of free time to write. At four and five a.m. he would put the finishing touches on a story and send it to various pulp magazines in New York. Thirteen were rejected or received no answer at all. The 14th story was his breakthrough. Top-Notch magazine had enclosed a check for Dent’s tale “Robot Cay” (printed as “Pirate Cay” in the September 1929 issue). The story begins:

A man clawed wildly at festering, heat seared tropical vegetation, an almost impregnable barrier of interlocking creepers and twisted mangroves. . . . His frightened eyes, full of hope, crept continually upward, where the scorched heavens vibrated with a singsong drone like the buzz of a gigantic hornet. A parakeet, peacefully baking in the hot sun, fled with raucous squawks. The flutter of green and yellow started a bird panic that sent a cloud of feathered color above the tree tops. . . . It was a race, a race for life and death. And the huge pursuer, sweat soaked, panting, his hairy torso bare above the waist, was gaining, slowly, inexorably . . .

It was cliche-ridden, unreal, and overwritten, but showed enough energy and color for three stories. Dent cashed his check and went on writing. Over the next year he sold another two stories to Top-Notch, two to Air Stories, and one apiece to Popular Magazine and Action Stories. Dent sent a short story to one of the pulp titles put out by Dell Publishing. Soon, as the legend has it, Dent received a telegram from Richard Martinsen at Dell. It read, “If you make less than $100 a week on your present job advise you to quit. Come to New York and be taken under our wing with a $500-a- month drawing account.” Dent didn’t have to be asked twice. He told his wife they were moving to Manhattan. They got to town on the first day of January 1931. The Dell editor kept his word and put Dent to work on two magazines, Scotland Yard and Sky Raiders. Dent didn’t disappoint the developer: He churned out virtually the entire contents of both magazines. But, as it turned out, neither pulp showed sufficient strength, in those frantic days at the height of the depression, to warrant keeping them in business. Dent’s gravy train came to an early end, and by that first summer he was back on the street with all the other struggling pulpsters.

For nearly six months he went without a sale, but things improved by the end of the year. He started selling westerns and crime stories, and editors began to ask for more. Dent was something of an amateur inventor and knew a lot about science and engineering, tidbits of which made their way into his fiction. He wrote one story called “The Sinister Ray,” published in the March 1932 issue of Detective-Dragnet Magazine, about a brilliant “scientific detective” named Lynn Lash. It was likely this story that brought Dent to the attention of Henry Ralston at Street & Smith when he began looking for a writer to take on the new Doc Savage character. Indeed, Lash and his colorful assistants may well have been the inspiration for Ralston’s and Nanovic’s conception of Doc and his gang. At any rate, Ralston and Nanovic wanted the Doc stories to include plenty of strange science and nifty inventions along with the action and violence. Dent went to visit them at the Street & Smith building and presented some ideas about the new series. He accepted the assignment to write the new pulp’s monthly topic-length story. He would be paid $500 for each. Street & Smith retained copyright of the characters and the stories, and they would be published under a house byline—Kenneth Robeson (“Kenneth Roberts” on the very first, then altered to avert confusion with a well-known historical novelist of that name). It took Dent 15 days to complete the first, 55,000-word Doc Savage novel: The Man of Bronze.

The newly launched pulp was a smashing success. The varied, colorful cast, the fraternal inter play of Doc’s team, the brawny and brilliant bronze man himself, the inventive action and propulsive prose were an irresistible mixture (particularly in the years before superhero comic topics, on whose development Doc Savage would have an undeniable influence). Dent quickly turned out a second, equally exciting Savage adventure, and a third, and so on, writing—with the exception of a handful of stories farmed out to ghostwriters—each lead story for the magazine’s entire phenomenal run, ending with the final issue in the summer of 1949.

Dent was one of the true masters of pulp fiction, and his dazzling imagination and readabil-ity—his literary charisma—made nearly every issue of Doc a reliable delight. Dent filled Doc Savage’s pages with an endless supply of great villains (for example, the Mystic Mullah, the Sargasso Ogre, the dreadful John Sunlight, the tittering Tibetan Mo-Gwei, sadistic Count Ramadanoff); great gadgets (a 600-shot-per-minute handgun, oxygen pills for breathing underwater, a rocket-propelled dirigible, hollow false teeth containing explosive chemicals and tiny tools, a banjo rifle, bullets fired by plucking a string, a platinum suit for deflecting certain death rays); great threats (genetically mutating monsters, exploding terror falcons, flesh-eating ants, mind-freezing radiation); and even great buildings (Doc’s icelike Arctic refuge, the Fortress of Solitude, guarded by a tribe of Eskimos; his privately owned “college” where evildoers are sent for brainwashing). The stories transcended easy categorization, roaming freely from science fiction inventions and experiments to supernatural horror to whiz-bang action to lost-world adventure.

Dent claimed to be a firm believer in preordained fiction formulas and “master plots” (as found in the bible of the hacks, Plotto), and referred to the bulk of his output as “salable crap.” But if the Doc Savage novels were hackwork, then they were of an exalted sort. Dent was a recklessly generous storyteller, giving the developer and the reader more than their money’s worth. He provided each issue with enough imaginative material to supply a year’s worth of the average competing hero pulp. One typically over-the-top narrative, September 1933′s The Lost Oasis, for instance, involved a hijacked zeppelin, a gorgeous English aviatrix, trained vampire bats in New York harbor, a pair of Middle Eastern bad guys, a desert prison camp, Doc and gang in an autogiro dogfight, jewel-bearing vultures, car chases, man-eating plants, a slave revolt, and a lost African diamond mine. With Dent behind the typewriter, Doc Savage Magazine became a crazily exhilarating reading experience, a monthly ten-cent hallucinogen for 14-year-old boys of all ages.

In addition to his 55,000-word Doc novels each month, and his various nonliterary endeavors (treasure hunting, house-building, and so on), Dent continued writing for other pulp magazines, westerns, mysteries, serialized novels for Argosy, and two excellent (and much anthologized) hard-boiled detective stories for the great Black Mask magazine, edited by Joseph Shaw. “Sail” and “Angelfish” dealt with rugged, black-clad Oscar Sail, who lives on the water in Florida (decades before John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee), aboard an equally black (even the sails) 45-foot schooner. The two stories were perfect examples of the classic hard-boiled Black Mask school of crime fiction, as terse and powerfully understated as the Savage stories were throw-in-the-kitchen-sink expansive. Dent himself thought the Black Mask stories may have been the best things he ever wrote, and he cursed the editor’s subsequent firing from the magazine. With Shaw’s coaching and encouragement, Dent felt, he might have become a really first-rate writer, another Raymond chandler.

Dent returned to realistic crime fiction in the mid-1940s with a series of novels published under his own name, two of them (Death at the Take-Off and Lady to Kill) about the same character, Chance Malloy, the adventurous owner of an airline company. Ever adaptable to the market, in 1952 Dent sold Cry at Dusk direct to the Fawcett softcover line Gold Medal topics, and showed he could write a tough, sordid paperback original in the vein of such Gold Medal regulars as David goodis and Gil Brewer. Dent contracted to do another novel around this time but ended up returning his advance. With a host of new interests (an experimental cow-milking operation, a fertilizer factory), he explained to his agent, he just didn’t know when he could get around to the topic. Clearly, having gotten away from the nearly two decades of writing to a tight monthly schedule, Dent did not want to hear about another deadline.

Works

STORIES

• “Angelfish” (1936);
• “Behind the Ears” (1935);
• “Black Loot” (1932);
• “Corpse’s Code, A” (1933);
• “Dancing Dog, The” (1939);
• “Death Blast, The” (1933);
• “Death in Boxes” (1937);
• “Death Wore Skis” (1941);
• “Death Zone” (1930);
• “Devil’s Derelict, The” (1930);
• “Diamond Death” (1931);
• “Doom Ship” (1931);
• “Flaming Mask, The” (1933);
• “Genius Jones” (1937);
• “Gun Quest, The” (1932);
• “Hades” (1936);
• “Hairless Wonders, The” (1939);
• “Hair on His Chest” (1931);
• “Hang String, The” (1933);
• “Hell Hop” (1931);
• “Hell’s Seven Keys” (1932);
• “Hocus Pocus” (1937);
• “Invisible Horde, The” (1932);
• “Little Mud Men, The” (1939);
• “Mud Money” (1934);
• “Mummy Murders, The” (1932);
• “Murder in a Pipe” (1933);
• “Out China Way” (1931);
• “Pirate Cay” (1929);
• “Queer Bees, The” (1939);
• “Range Bats” (1932);
• “Red Owl, The” (1934);
• “River Crossing” (1948);
• “Sail” (1936);
• “Savage Challenge” (1958);
• “Scared Swamp, The” (1939);
• “Sinister Ray, The” (1932);
• “Smith Is Dead” (1947);
• “Stamp Murders, The”
• (1933); “Tank of Terror, The” (1933);
• “Teeth of Revenge” (1931);
• “Terror, Inc.” (1932);
• “Thirteen Million Dollar Robbery, The” (1930);
• “Trickery Trail” (1933);
• “Trigger Trap” (1932);
• “Vulture Coast” (1930);
• “White Hot Corpses” (1934);
• “Wildcat” (1931);
• “Zeppelin Bait” (1932)

BOOKS

• Cry at Dusk (1952);
• Death at the Take-off (1946);
• Lady Afraid (1948);
• Lady in Peril (1959);
• Lady So Silent (1951);
• Lady to Kill (1946)

DOC SAVAGE NOVELS As Kenneth Robeson:

• According to Plan of a One-Eyed Mystic (1944);
• All-White Elf, The (1941);
• Angry Canary, The (1948);
• Anni-hilist, The (1934);
• Awful Egg, The (1940);
• Birds of Death (1941);
• Black Black Witch, The (1943);
• Boss of Terror, The (1940);
• Brand of the Werewolf (1934);
• Cargo Unknown (1945);
• Colors for Murder (1946);
• Czar of Fear, The (1933);
• Dagger in the Sky, The (1939);
• Danger Lies East (1947);
• Death Had Yellow Eyes (1944);
• Death in Silver (1934);
• Death Is a Round Black Spot (1946);
• Derelict of Skull Shoal, The (1944);
• Derrick Devil, The (1938);
• Devil Genghis, The (1938);
• Devil Is Jones, The (1946);
• Devil on the Moon (1938);
• Devil’s Black Rock, The (1942);
• Evil Gnome, The (1940);
• Fear Cay (1934);
• Feathered Octopus, The (1938);
• Fiery Menace, The
• (1942); Five Fathoms Dead (1946);
• Flaming Falcons, The (1939);
• Fortress of Solitude (1938);
• Freckled Shark, The (1939);
• Giggling Ghosts, The (1938);
• Goblins, The (1943);
• Gold Ogre, The (1939);
• Golden Man, The (1941);
• Green Eagle, The (1941);
• Green Master, The (1949);
• Hell Below (1943);
• I Died Yesterday (1948);
• Invisible Box Murders, The (1941);
• Jiu San (1944);
• King Joe Cay (1945);
• King of Terror, The (1943);
• Land of Terror, The (1933);
• Laugh of Death, The (1942);
• Let’s Kill Ames (1947);
• Lost Giant, The (1944);
• Lost Oasis, The
• (1933); Mad Mesa (1939);
• Majii, The (1935);
• Man of Bronze, The (1933);
• Man Who Fell Up, The (1942);
• Man Who Shook the Earth, The (1934);
• Man Who Was Scared, The (1944);
• Measures for a Coffin (1946);
• Men of Fear (1942);
• Men Vanished, The (1940);
• Mental Monster, The (1943);
• Metal Master, The (1936);
• Meteor Menace (1934);
• Midas Man, The (1936);
• Monkey Suit, The (1947);
• Monsters, The (1934);
• Mystery Island (1941);
• Mystery on Happy Bones (1943);
• Mystery on the Snow, The (1934);
• Mystery Under the Sea (1936);
• Mystic Mullah, The (1935);
• No Light to Die By (1947);
• Once Over Lightly (1947);
• Other World, The (1940);
• Peril in the North (1941);
• Phantom City, The (1933);
• Pharaoh’s Ghost, The (1944);
• Pink Lady, The (1941);
• Pirate Isle (1942);
• Pirate of the Pacific (1933);
• Pirate’s Ghost, The (1938);
• Poison Island (1939);
• Polar Treasure, The (1933);
• Pure Evil, The (1948);
• Quest of Qui, The (1935);
• Quest of the Spider (1933);
• Red Skull, The (1933);
• Red Snow (1935);
• Red Spider, The (1979);
• Repel (1938);
• Resurrection Day (1936);
• Return from Cormoral (1949);
• Roar Devil, The (1935);
• Rock Sinister (1945);
• Running Skeletons, The (1943);
• Sargasso Ogre, The (1933);
• Satan Black (1944);
• Screaming Man, The (1945);
• Sea Angel, The (1938);
• Sea Magician, The (1934);
• Secret in the Sky, The (1935);
• Secret of the Su, The (1943);
• Se-Pa-Poo (1946);
• Shape of Terror, The (1944);
• South Pole Terror, The (1936);
• Speaking Stone, The (1942);
• Spook Hole (1935);
• Spook Legion, The (1935);
• Spook of Grandpa Eben, The (1943);
• Squeaking Goblin, The (1934);
• Stone Man, The (1939);
• Strange Fish (1945);
• Submarine Mystery, The (1938);
• Swooning Lady, The (1948);
• Talking Devil, The (1943);
• Ten Ton Snakes, The (1945);
• Terrible Stork, The (1945);
• Terror and the Lonely Widow (1946);
• Terror Takes Seven (1945);
• Terror Wears No Shoes (1948);
• They Died Twice (1942);
• Thing That Pursued, The (1945);
• Thousand Headed Man, The (1934);
• Three Devils, The (1944);
• Three Times a Corpse (1946);
• Three Wild Men, The (1942);
• Time Terror, The (1943);
• Too-Wise Owl, The (1942);
• Trouble on Parade (1945);
• Up from the Earth’s Center (1949);
• Vanisher, The (1936);
• Violent Night (1945);
• Waves of Death (1943);
• Wee Ones, The (1945);
• Weird Valley (1944);
• Whisker of Hercules, The (1944);
• Yellow Cloud, The (1939)

Ghostwritten by Harold Davis:

• Crimson Serpent, The (1939);
• Devils of the Deep (1940);
• Dust of Death, The (1935);
• Golden Peril, The (1938);
• Green Death, The (1938);
• King Maker, The (1934);
• Land of Fear, The (1938);
• Living Fire Menace, The (1938);
• Mental Wizard, The (1938);
• Merchants of Disaster (1939);
• Mountain Monster, The (1938);
• Munitions Master, The (1938);
• Purple Dragon, The (1940);
• Seven Agate Devils, The (1936);
• Terror in the Navy, The (1938)
• Ghostwritten by Ryerson Johnson:
• Fantastic Island (1935);
• Land of Always Night (1935);
• Motion Menace, The (1938)

Ghostwritten by William Bogart:

• Angry Ghost, The (1940);
• Awful Dynasty, The (1940);
• Bequest of Evil (1941);
• Death in Little Houses (1946);
• Fire and Ice (1946);
• Flying Goblin, The (1940);
• Hex (1939);
• Magic Forest, The (1942);
• Tunnel Terror (1940);
• World’s Fair Goblin (1939)