Acknowledgments and Afterword

Like the other novels in this series, Jimmy and Fay is a work of fiction based on fact. It really began when I interviewed Fay Wray. She was one of the most charming women I ever met, and, like Jimmy, I fell a little bit in love with her. In her autobiography, On the Other Hand, she neglects to mention being in New York for the premiere of King Kong. She does write about being in the city a year later to make the film Woman in the Dark. She received an extortion threat then and said, without more explanation, that it was handled by studio executives Howard Hughes and Joseph Schenck. The sad details of her marriage to John Saunders, their 1931 trip to New York, and her appearance in the production of Nikki are in agreement with Jimmy’s version of them. So are his memories of Polly Adler, her various addresses, and her introduction to the business of prostitution. The Projectionists were real and some of their films still exist, at least in stills and clips.

Thanks to my agent, Agnes Birnbaum.

And more thanks to Berenice Abbott, Reginald Marsh, John Sloan, Rian James, Frederick Lewis Allen, and Arthur Leipzig, who paid attention to the city and the people and recorded those times.

Rachel Warren Ratliff gave the book an early test drive and said that it handled pretty well. Editor Charles Perry made valuable suggestions. Copyeditors Lauren Chomiuk, Laurie McGee, and Anna Stevenson tried their best to improve Jimmy’s grammatical lapses and his many insensitivities. More often than not they were unsuccessful, but they made this a better book.

Finally, once again, thanks to publisher Otto Penzler for his belief in crime fiction.