Talk:Philo Vance

Missing Philo Vance films
I added the list of films and verified them with IMDB, then checked them against my own collection; to my surprise, I was missing one. I have a note from TCM's website (http://forums.turnerclassicmovies.com/jive/tcm/thread.jspa?threadID=96272&tstart=0) that suggests that Night of Mystery is only available through either the U.S. Library of Congress or UCLA. The same note cites The Scarab Murder Case (1936) starring Wilfrid Hyde-White as Philo Vance as being lost. Does anyone have any information about these two films? Accounting4Taste 22:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I've been cleaning up the descriptions of the novels, giving citations where possible. If anyone could take on describing the novels that remain (because I don't have copies of the novels) that would be great. Accounting4Taste 04:20, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

To the original article, I have added content, slightly revised/deleted some of the original text, and added links where called for--all to make a more complete article. I have shown respect for the original author's pride of authorship.

I plan in the future to supplement text in the articles on the individual novels, as requested by Accounting4Taste. I have copies of all the novels.

Marshall H. Pinnix 01:40, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

The content you've added largely comes under the heading of "original research". Please read through the article at WP:OR to find out why your original research is not what should go into Wikipedia articles. (I have little hope that you are going to understand this or agree with it, judging by the contents of your talk page, but I thought I'd start there.) In the process of adding your original research, you have also spoiled the formatting, broken all the links between the footnotes and their associated reference works, and added multiple paragraphs of nonsense to the end of the article. I'm not sure where to start with this, but please, don't "improve" any other articles without consultation. By the way, everyone has copies of all the novels; links to the public-domain content of each novel are at the end of the article about each individual novel. Accounting4Taste 01:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've started the long and discouraging process of cleaning this up... I've removed the nonsense characters, and I'm going to work backwards with an old version of this article and try to restore the footnotes and references.  Anyone who'd like to help out would be more than welcome.  Accounting4Taste 04:48, 5 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm sure someone who owns a copy of Catalogue of Crime will be able to return the recently-deleted footnote/citation, and to IMDB at the same time. Accounting4Taste 15:21, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Socio-economic Class
The disparagement of Philo Vance and Lord Peter Wimsey is a symptom of the Marxist class warfare that began to burgeon in the 1930s and is in full force today. Hardboiled, working class detectives were violently opposed to aristocratic sleuths, wanting to punch their noses and kick them in the pants.Lestrade (talk) 21:06, 16 August 2012 (UTC)Lestrade

Philo Vance Parodies?
Is their enough material to justify adding a section to the main article?

1. "Sherlock Holmes: The Archive Collection: The Strange Case of Hennessy." An escaped lunatic poses as famed detective Silo Dance in this musical comedy mystery set in an old dark house in this spoof of S.S. Van Dyne's famed sleuth Philo Vance. Season 1 Episode 5 | Aired on 01/01/1933. Source: 16 minute video on hulu.com

2 Soupy Sales had a recurring sketch about Philo Kvetch, a parody of Philo Vance.

AdderUser (talk) 05:37, 13 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I think that would make a fine addition to the article with proper sources. However, despite the serious tone of the article, the Philo Vance novels stand on their own as parodies of the detective genre. The "solution" to the crime, given by Vance after his usual erudite and obfuscatory speech running for a couple of pages, is based on the flimsiest evidence only tangentially related to the actual events. The books were meant to be absurd entertainment, and the "decline" in the last half-dozen or so can be attributed partly to a contractual obligation and partly to the disappointment of the author when people actually took them seriously. IMHO. Wastrel Way (talk) 19:10, 20 January 2023 (UTC) Eric