Transmissions

The legend of Zorro – the cunning swordsman and masked champion of 19th century California’s downtrodden masses – has been adapted to the big screen and television dozens of times since his story was first told by pulp writer Johnston McCulley more than a century ago....

As a member of the Boss army for the better part of fifty years, I walked into a screening of Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere over the weekend with some measure of trepidation. I wanted to like it, but I knew I might encounter many reasons why I wouldn’t. Written...

Since the publication of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the story has been adapted to the stage, screen, radio and television more than 120 times by American, British and European producers. Film historian Troy...

I’m not deeply immersed in the work of Elmore Leonard yet. But I’m heading in that direction. He’s best known for his gritty crime novels, many of which have been adapted to film or television and have done well commercially and critically. Jackie Brown, the 1997...

If you were a young kid anytime between the mid-1950s and the mid-1980s, you probably remember him. He had a funny haircut and a mustache, and he wore a jacket with enormous pockets. He welcomed you every morning at eight o’clock into a place he called the Treasure...

I recently finished reading The Dime Detectives, Ron Goulart’s comprehensive history of the genesis of modern American detective fiction. The 238-page journey took me much longer than it should have, because a demanding writing schedule since the beginning of the year...

With the exception of Robert Johnson or Muddy Waters, few blues artists of the 20th century were more influential and enduring than guitarist, singer and songwriter B.B. King. In a span of nearly seventy years, he cemented a reputation as the primary ambassador of the...

I was not even two years old in mid-September of 1965, so I have no memory of the premiere of Lost in Space on network TV sixty years ago. I vaguely remember watching an episode here and there from the final season in 1968, but that’s the extent of my connection to...

“If you write one story, it may be bad. If you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.” —Edgar Rice Burroughs   When I was about twelve years old, my aunt gave me the first five books in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan series as a gift for either my...

Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen’s third studio album, turns fifty this week. A half-century after the fact, most rock critics and historians consider it a monumental recording. At the time, though, it was a struggling musician’s Hail Mary. By the end of 1973, the...