 | |
| Author | Cornell Woolrich |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Dell 10 Cent Books |
| Genre | Mystery novel |
| Publisher | Detective Fiction Weekly, Dell Publishing |
Publication date | 1941, 1951 |
| Media type | Print (Magazine & Paperback) |
| Pages | 64 pp |
| Preceded by | The Black Curtain |
| Followed by | Black Alibi |
Marihuana is a 1941 novella by Cornell Woolrich, published under the pen-name William Irish. The story is about a man who goes on a murder spree after being exposed to marijuana for the first time.
King Turner is in a deep funk after his wife, Eleanor, left him. He's fallen in with a pair of reprobates, Bill Evans and Wash Gordon, who are more interested in him as the butt of their jokes than as a friend. One night they drag King and a girl named Vinnie to a "ranch"—a sort of speakeasy where people smoke "grass".
After getting high, King hallucinates that Vinnie is his ex-wife and begins chasing her around the room. Bill hands him a knife as a lark and tells him to "pin her down." King does exactly that and then flees the room. He finds a sleeping bouncer and steals the man's gun. Before he can leave the ranch, a couple police officers arrive, but King manages to sneak past them.
King evades pursuit and hides out in the phone booth of a candy store. While there, a police officer enters and walks towards the store's proprietor to buy a numbers ticket, but King, paranoid from the marijuana, thinks the officer is there to arrest him, and responds by gunning the man down. King flees the store and heads to the hotel where his ex-wife is living.
Eleanor agrees to talk with King in her room. After hearing his story, she tries to calm him down but with little effect. She convinces him to let her order some sandwiches and coffee from room service. On the phone, she tells the clerk that she wants her order fixed "just like the other night," referring to the fact that she'd had sleeping powder added to her coffee to help with insomnia.
But before the order can arrive, King grows paranoid that Eleanor has betrayed him to the police. When he thinks room service is taking too long, King shoots Eleanor and flees the room. With nowhere else to go, he heads back to his apartment, where the police are waiting for him. King escapes onto the ledge of the building. Detective Spillane, the officer in charge of catching him, follows him out, but before he can save him, King jumps to his death.
The book ends with a final twist—back in her apartment Vinnie is alive and well, telling a friend about the gag she, Bill and Wash had pulled on King. Bill had only handed King a butter knife, and when King stabbed her, Vinnie took a ketchup-soaked piece of bread and squeezed it to simulate blood. Vinnie is completely unaware of subsequent events and thinks the whole situation hilarious, though her friend has doubts. The story ends with Detective Spillane arriving and Vinnie's friend thinking, "He's either a bill collector or a plainclothesman ... or maybe a little of both."
Detective Spillane appears throughout the story as a competent officer who is simply one step behind King, and genuinely wants to help him. However the rest of the police force does not fare so well. When the two officers arrive at the ranch, the proprietor lets them in without making any effort to hide the illicit behavior inside, indicating that the officers are on the take. Likewise, the officer King shoots was attempting to purchase an illegal numbers ticket from the owner of the candy store.
Woolrich's depiction of marijuana is in keeping with popular views of the time which saw the drug as causing "insanity, criminality, and death," according to Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger [1] In his efforts to circumscribe marijuana use, Anslinger disseminated stories based on the trope of "marijuana-crime-insanity", such as allegedly evidenced by the Victor Licata case in which the 21-year-old murdered his family with an axe. (Licata was schizophrenic with homicidal tendencies; there is no evidence that marijuana was a factor in the killings.) [2]
Inhaling marijuana smoke initially makes King lethargic and he loses all sense of time—something that continues throughout the story as he thinks several days have gone by despite it being the same night; his murder of Eleanor is prompted by his insistence that a half-hour has passed since she ordered room service, when in fact it was only five minutes. King and his friends also experience munchies which causes Bill to raid the ranch's kitchen for food; King later notes that "the hempseeds create a false, insatiable appetite." King's lethargy soon turns to hallucinations and paranoia, which causes him to embark upon his murder spree.
Though King and his friends are all middle class, they travel to Hell's Kitchen, an area that had been a center for bootleggers during Prohibition. The "ranch" operates similarly to a speakeasy—the proprietor bribes local police officers, visitors leave their cars several blocks away so as not to draw attention to the ranch, and a bouncer guards the door, inspecting each person through a peephole before letting them enter. Peculiarly, Woolrich has the ranch operate as a buffet, with each visitor paying a cover charge in exchange for an unlimited amount of marijuana.
The term "ranch" is Woolrich's own invention, derived from the slang term for marijuana, "grass." Characters also refer to it as "reefer," though they always describe the joints as cigarettes.
Marijuana first appeared in the May 3, 1941 edition of Detective Fiction Weekly . Dell later published it as volume 11 of their 10 Cent Book line. [3] Like the other books of this series, original editions are now collectors' items that can sell for more than $100. [4]
The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, Pub.L. 75–238, 50 Stat. 551, enacted August 2, 1937, was a United States Act that placed a tax on the sale of cannabis. The H.R. 6385 act was drafted by Harry Anslinger and introduced by Rep. Robert L. Doughton of North Carolina, on April 14, 1937. The Seventy-fifth United States Congress held hearings on April 27, 28, 29th, 30th, and May 4, 1937. Upon the congressional hearings confirmation, the H.R. 6385 act was redrafted as H.R. 6906 and introduced with House Report 792. The Act is now commonly referred to, using the modern spelling, as the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. This act was overturned in 1969 in Leary v. United States, and was repealed by Congress the next year.
I, the Jury is the 1947 debut novel of American crime fiction writer Mickey Spillane, the first work to feature private investigator Mike Hammer.
Harry Jacob Anslinger was a United States government official who served as the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics during the presidencies of Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy. He was a supporter of Prohibition, and of the criminalization of drugs, and spearheaded anti-drug policy campaigns.
Assassin of Youth is a 1937 exploitation film directed by Elmer Clifton. It is a pre-WWII film about the supposed ill effects of cannabis. The film is often considered a clone of the much more famous Reefer Madness. The thriller reflects perfectly the antidrug propaganda of its time.
Fear in the Night is an American 1947 film noir crime film directed by Maxwell Shane, starring Paul Kelly and DeForest Kelley. It is based on the Cornell Woolrich story "And So to Death". Woolrich is credited under pen name William Irish. The film was remade by the same director in 1956 with the title Nightmare this time starring Edward G. Robinson playing the cop and Kevin McCarthy.
The LaGuardia Committee was the first in-depth study into the effects of smoking cannabis in the United States. An earlier study, the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, was conducted by the colonial authorities in British India in 1893–94. The reports systematically contradicted claims made by the U.S. Treasury Department that smoking marijuana results in insanity, deteriorates physical and mental health, assists in criminal behavior and juvenile delinquency, is physically addictive, and is a "gateway" drug to more dangerous drugs.
The Guilty is a 1947 film noir directed by John Reinhardt, based on Cornell Woolrich's short story "Two Men in a Furnished Room". The film was produced by oil millionaire Jack Wrather, the husband of lead actress Bonita Granville.
Reefer Madness is a 1936 American propaganda film about drugs, revolving around the melodramatic events that ensue when high school students are lured by pushers to try marijuana – upon trying it, they become addicted, eventually leading them to become involved in various crimes such as a hit and run accident, manslaughter, murder, conspiracy to murder and attempted rape. While this is all happening they suffer hallucinations, descend into insanity, associate with organized crime and commit suicide. The film was directed by Louis J. Gasnier and featured a cast of mainly little-known actors.
Reefer Madness is a musical satire of the 1936 propaganda film and cult classic Reefer Madness that opened in Los Angeles in 1998. The book and lyrics were written by Kevin Murphy and the book and music by Dan Studney. Directed by Andy Fickman, it was initially shown at the Hudson Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles and then moved to the New York City "Off-Broadway" scene. The show opened Off Broadway on September 15, 2001, and closed shortly thereafter. Rodgers and Hammerstein Theatricals now administers the stock/amateur rights, and the show has been produced by local theater groups in several cities, including Long Island, Toronto, Seattle, Philadelphia, Charleston, Sacramento, Raleigh, Norfolk, Minneapolis, and London. The 2008 production at Washington, D.C.'s Studio Theater won two Helen Hayes Awards.
Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical, also known as Reefer Madness, is a 2005 American made-for-television musical comedy film directed by Andy Fickman, written by Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney, and produced by the three. It is a film adaptation of the trio's 1998 musical of the same name, itself based on the 1936 exploitation film also of the same title. It premiered on Showtime on April 16, 2005. The film also received a limited theatrical release overseas, and grossed $8,972 in its short run.
Marihuana is a 1936 exploitation film directed by Dwain Esper, and written by Esper's wife, Hildagarde Stadie.
She Shoulda Said No! is a 1949 exploitation film that follows in the spirit of morality tales such as the 1936 films Reefer Madness and Marihuana. Directed by Sam Newfield and starring Lila Leeds, it was originally produced to capitalize on the arrest of Leeds and Robert Mitchum on a charge of marijuana conspiracy.
Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities, the second series of the Nine Network crime drama series Underbelly, originally aired from 9 February 2009 to 4 May 2009. It is a thirteen-part series loosely based on real events that stemmed from the marijuana trade centred on the New South Wales town of Griffith. The timeline of the series is the years between 1976 and 1987. Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities primarily depicts the Mr. Asia drug syndicate and its influence on crime in Australia. Among the characters presented are real-life criminals Robert Trimbole, Terry Clark, George Freeman, Christopher Dale Flannery, Alphonse Gangitano and the Kane Brothers. The mini-series is a prequel to the 2008 production Underbelly, which was about the Melbourne gangland killings and forms part of the Underbelly series.
"If You're a Viper" is a jazz song composed by Stuff Smith. It was first recorded by Smith and his Onyx Club Boys in 1936 and released as the b-side to the song "After You've Gone".
The Black Angel is a 1943 novel by Cornell Woolrich, which was based on two of his own short stories, Murder in Wax and Face Work. Woolrich had reworked many of his short stories into full-length novels, including Black Angel.
Victor Licata was an American mass murderer who used an axe to kill his family in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, on October 16, 1933. The killings, which were reported by the media as the work of an "axe-murdering marijuana addict", were abused as prima facie evidence that there was a link between recreational drugs, such as cannabis, and crime. This led to the killings being abused in 1930s anti-drug campaigns against marijuana.
Cannabis in Florida is illegal for recreational use. Possession of up to 20 grams is a misdemeanor offense, punishable by up to a year in jail, a fine of up to $1000, and the suspension of one's driver's license. Several cities and counties have enacted reforms to apply lesser penalties, however.
Terms related to cannabis include:
The Dancing Detective is a 1946 short story collection by American crime writer Cornell Woolrich under the pseudonym William Irish. It comprises eight short stories all revolving around Woolrich's trademark themes of suspense, detection, horror and macabre irony.
After-Dinner Story is a 1944 short story collection by American crime writer Cornell Woolrich under the pseudonym William Irish. It comprises six stories, and includes two of Woolrich's best known works, novella Marihuana and Rear Window, which was made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock in 1954.
licata and reefer madness.