Karl Detzer (1891–1987) had several careers first, many experiences of which served as colorful backgrounds or story ideas for future work. At sixteen, he took a job at his hometown newspaper, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, as a reporter and photographer, and remained a reporter for several papers in the area until he joined the army in 1916. Sent to Mexico to fight Pancho Villa’s insurgents, he then went to France and took command of the newly formed Department of Criminal Investigation to battle the wave of criminals trying to take advantage of a chaotic government after years of war. He returned to the United States in 1920 to face a court-martial for having tortured and cruelly treated prisoners, with more than a hundred witnesses against him, but he was acquitted and resigned from the army.
He soon decided that he could earn a living as a writer and gained prominence for his series of articles about the “Fire House Gang” for The Saturday Evening Post, based on incidents he observed while riding with firemen. He replicated the idea and tone for a series based on his riding along with the Michigan State Police, also for the Post, which served as the basis for a movie, Car 99 (1935), starring Fred MacMurray and Ann Sheridan.
Detzer went on to write more than a thousand stories and articles, as well as several books, most notably True Tales of the D.C.I. (1925), which contained, in fact, fictionalized accounts of some of his exploits.
“Murder in the Movies” was originally published in the May 1937 issue of The American Legion Monthly.