Sensational Strips: Paul Temple

Francis Durbridge's crime novelist turned private detective, Paul Temple, started out in a collection of 1938 radio show serials before later featured in four films produced in the 1940s. Durbridge further success with a novel and Paul Temple television show helped spur the Associated Press editors to develop a strip version which began in the London Evening News on November 19, 1951 for its twenty year run. Since Durbridge was hired to write the feature, he quickly picked up his main characters, Paul, his beautiful wife Steve, and Scotland Yard's Sir Graham Forbes. Alfred Sindall was chosen as the first artist, but soon left to develop his own strip property, and Bill Bailey too over the drawing chores. But most fans just remember the skilled pen work of artist John McNamara who changed the look of the title character to match his on screen persona. Numerous marketing items and pocket-sized comic books soon followed, but who can forget the fond memories of this delightful strip reprinted in America's Menominee Falls Gazette.