Edwin Arnold as Wolfe
October 24, 1934: Rex Stout publishes Fer-de-Lance, his first novel featuring the detective Nero Wolfe. Wolfe was a bit unusual, in that he sent his leg man, Archie Goodwin, out to do the leg work, while he sat back and built his deductions around Goodwin’s findings.
Rex Todhunter Stout was born on December 1, 1886 in Noblesville, Indiana, and grew up in Topeka, Kansas. He served in the U.S. Navy, including as a yeoman on the Presidential yacht under Theodore Roosevelt. By 1910, he had stories published in magazines, but it took until 1929 for him to publish his first novel, How Like a God. From 1934 until his death on October 27, 1975), Stout published 33 novels and 39 novellas or short stories about Wolfe.
Rex Stout
Wolfe lives in a brownstone on West 35th Street in Manhattan, although no brownstones ever existed on that street in real life; and the address frequently changed in the stories, ranging from 506, which would put it between 10th and 11th Avenues; to several in the 900s, peaking at 938, which would put it into the Hudson River, past the furthest-extending piers.
In the 1957 novella Fourth of July Picnic, speaking from the living room in his brownstone, Wolfe describes himself as follows:
I was born in Montenegro and spent my early boyhood there. At the age of sixteen I decided to move around, and in fourteen years I became acquainted with most of Europe, a little of Africa, and much of Asia, in a variety of roles and activities. Coming to this country in nineteen-thirty, not penniless, I bought this house and entered into practice as a private detective. I am a naturalized American citizen.
According to a 1949 memo, Stout gave Wolfe's height as 5-foot-11, and his weight as a too-much 272. But Archie Goodwin, the narrator of the stories and the man who does Wolfe's "leg work," frequently describes Wolfe as weighing "a seventh of a ton," equivalent to about 286 pounds. This was intended to indicate unusual obesity at the time of the first book. In a 1947 short story, Archie makes it worse: "He weighs between 310 and 390, and he limits his physical movements to what he regards as the irreducible essentials."
That 1949 Stout memo lists Wolfe's age as 56, which would mean he was born in 1893, but the characters do not age. "Those stories have ignored time for thirty-nine years," Stout told his authorized biographer, John McAleer. "Any reader who can't or won't do the same should skip them. I didn't age the characters because I didn't want to. That would have made it cumbersome and would seem to have centered attention on the characters rather than the stories."
In a 1956 article for The Baker Street Journal, a magazine dedicated to Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective in fiction, science fiction writer J.D. Clark ran with the 1893 birthday, and suggested that, during his "hiatus" after his faked death at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland in 1891, Holmes reunited with the woman he described in A Scandal in Bohemia as "the woman," Irene Adler, and Wolfe's birth was the result.
In his fictional biography of Holmes, published in 1962, the writer William S. Baring-Gould ran with this, and many Holmes fans now accept it in their "head canon." Stout, still alive at this point, never confirmed the theory, starting only in the 1st novel that Wolfe's mother was still alive (this being 1934), living in Budapest, Hungary, and that Wolfe sent her a check every month. Stout did, however, place a painting of Holmes above Goodwin's desk in the brownstone.
Another popular theory is that Wolfe's mother is the Queen of "a Balkan principality," which could be Montenegro; and his father is Arsène Lupin, the French gentleman thief created in 1905 by writer Maurice Leblanc. It has been noted that the name Lupin comes from the root word "loup," the French word for "wolf."
Wolfe is described as being loath to leave his home for business, or for anything that would keep him from reading his books, tending his orchids, or eating the gourmet meals prepared by his chef, Fritz Brenner. In the 1947 story Before I Die, Wolfe says, "I rarely leave my house. I do like it here. I would be an idiot to leave this chair, made to fit me."
He is very demanding: His first line in his first story is, "Where's the beer?" His tastes are expensive: Gourmet food, and a rooftop greenhouse with rare orchids. And he does not suffer fools gladly: If he believes he is being disrespected by a guest in his brownstone, he has Goodwin physically remove him, in what usually results in a humiliation. (Goodwin, a native of Ohio but the exact city varies in the stories, describes himself as just under 6 feet and 180 pounds, and is very capable of such physicality.)
Goodwin also lives in the brownstone, and serves as Wolfe's bodyguard as well as his investigator. As he put it in a 1937 story:
I know pretty well what my field is. Aside from my primary function as the thorn in the seat of Wolfe's chair to keep him from going to sleep and waking up only for meals, I'm chiefly cut out for two things: to jump and grab something before the other guy can get his paws on it, and to collect pieces of the puzzle for Wolfe to work on.
Goodwin is a ladies' man. Wolfe is not: He is wary of them, and tends to keep them at arms' length, and trusts Goodwin's judgment on which women connected to cases -- whether Wolfe meets them are not -- are of good character, something Wolfe feels free to decide for himself among men.
Wolfe has been played by Edwin Arnold and Walter Connolly in 1930s films, Sydney Greenstreet in a 1951 NBC radio series, Robert Eckles in a 1957 ABC movie, Thayer David in a 1979 ABC movie, William Conrad in a 1981 NBC series, and Maury Chaykin in a 2000s series on the cable network A&E. An ad in TV Guide said of Conrad's version, "He likes his orchids rare, his steaks medium, and his murders well-done!" Each new version was set in the present day, until the A&E series, which went back to the character's 1930s roots.
Goodwin was played by Lionel Stander in the 1930s films, Wally Maher in the 1951 NBC radio series, future M*A*S*H co-creator Gene Reynolds in the 1957 ABC movie, Tom Mason in the 1979 ABC movie, future Matt Houston star Lee Horsley in the 1981 NBC series, and Timothy Hutton in the 2000s A&E series.
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October 24, 1934 was a Wednesday. Baseball season had ended 15 days earlier, when the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Detroit Tigers in Game 7 of the World Series. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL season started 15 days later. So there were no scores on this historic day.
