Boston Blackie

Boston Blackie is a fictional character created by author Jack Boyle (1881–1928). Blackie, a jewel thief and safecracker in Boyle’s stories, became a detective in adaptations for films, radio and television—an “enemy to those who make him an enemy, friend to those who have no friend.”

The first four Boston Blackie stories appeared in The American Magazine in 1914, with Boyle writing under the pen name “No. 6066.” From 1917 to 1919, Boston Blackie stories appeared in The Red Book magazine, and from 1918 they were adapted for motion pictures. When Boston Blackie began to find success on the screen, Boyle edited the Red Book magazine stories into a book, Boston Blackie (1919).

The Stars

Actor Chester Morris played the character of Boston Blackie in 14 Columbia Pictures films (1941–1949) and in a 1944 NBC radio series. Morris gave the Blackie character his own personal charm: he could be light and flippant or stern and dangerous, as the situation demanded. His sidekick, the Runt, was always on hand to help his old friend, played by George E. Stone in all but the first and last films.

Key Dates

• The earliest Boston Blackie film adaptations were silent, dating from 1918 to 1927. Columbia Pictures revived the property in 1941 with Meet Boston Blackie, a fast, 58-minute B movie starring Chester Morris. The film was successful, and a series of 14 Boston Blackie films followed, running until 1949.
• Concurrent with the Columbia Pictures films, a Boston Blackie radio series—also starring Chester Morris—aired on NBC from June 23 to September 15, 1944, as a summer replacement for Amos ‘n’ Andy. A new incarnation of the Boston Blackie radio series aired from April 11, 1945 to October 25, 1950, starring Richard Kollmar.

Other Information

The Boston Blackie films are highly typical of Columbia’s B movies of the 1940s, with an assortment of veteran character actors, new faces on the way up, and stock-company players familiar from Columbia’s features, serials, and short subjects. The series was also a useful training ground for promising directors, including Edward Dmytryk, Oscar Boetticher, William Castle, and finally Seymour Friedman, who went on to work prolifically in Columbia’s television department.

In the 1955 film Tight Spot, Ginger Rogers exclaims “Well, aren’t we the real life-size Boston Blackies.” In a 1957 song “Searchin” by The Coasters, there is a reference to “Sergeant Friday, Charlie Chan and Boston Blackie.” A 1957 Daffy Duck cartoon, Boston Quackie, is a direct parody of the television serial, with Daffy as the detective.

Boston Blackie’s Restaurant was a bar and grill with locations in Chicago and Deerfield, Illinois, named after the character.