"I Don’t Thee Why They Have to Have Thankthgivin’ Anyway"

OUR AUTHOR TODAY, Johnston McCulley, is best known as the creator of Zorro (first appearance: "The Curse of Capistrano," 1919), a character that Hollywood returns to time
and again with movies and TV productions; but he had another really long-running series character that few remember today: Thubway Tham, who appeared in (if we've counted
right) 142 stories from 1918 all the way to 1960 [data from FictionMags].

McCulley defined what a pulp writer should be in those days as he churned out reams of highly readable multi-genre copy for the pulps and the slicks (the FictionMags listing runs

to six pages). In addition to "the fox" and the subway dip, he had other series characters: Dawson Clade ("The Bat") under a house name; El Torbellino ("The Whirlwind"); the Mongoose (Detective Fiction Weekly); the Spider, John Flatchley ("The Thunderbolt"),

Black Star, The Avenging Twins, Speed Sparke, Richard Staegel, Delton Prouse ("The Crimson Clown"), and Terry Trimble (Detective Story Magazine); Danny Blaney ("The

Green Ghost") (Thrilling Detective); James Peters ("The Rollicking Rogue") (All Star Detective); Peanut Pete (Clues); and Doctor Quartz (with McCulley writing as "Nick

Carter").

"Thubway Tham's Thanksgiving Dinner."
By Johnston McCulley (1883-1958).
First appearance: Detective Story, November 26, 1918.
Reprinted in Best Detective Magazine, November 1931.
Short short story (6 pages).
Online at the Pulpgen Archive (HERE).

"It appears that about every time you take a ride in the subway, some gentleman of means reports that his pocket-book is unaccountably missing."

Call it a generous impulse or call it self-pity, but Thubway Tham, the subway pickpocket, promises to buy a bunch of newsies a Thanksgiving dinner, only he doesn't have the moolah—and, of course, there's Detective Craddock constantly breathing down his neck. What's a mild-mannered dip to do?

Resources:

- There's more about Johnston McCulley at Wikipedia (HERE), and about Thubway Tham (HERE) and the GAD Wiki (HERE); the IMDb listing (HERE) shows that Zorro got all the attention from Tinseltown, with no visible credits for Tham.

- If you're in the mood for other Thanksgiving mysteries, see the lists at Cozy Mystery (HERE), Mystery Fanfare (HERE), and Mystery Sequels (HERE).

The bottom line: