What the hell were hotel detectives? What exactly did they do? When did they come into being, and when and why did they fall out of favor?
Did they have the authority of a real cop?
“In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” - Ecclesiastes 1:18
Whoah… calm down there. They were the hell a member of hotel security that were trained as detectives. I’d imagine much the same thing as having a PI in the permanent staff, but with less photo ops of messy marriages.
My guess is that they were there to:
(A) Make the hotel seem more secure to its richer guests. You never saw a hotel detective at the local Best Western.
(B) Act as a quick response to a problem before the cops arrived.
© Act in the best interests of the hotel in keeping a crime quiet.
Unless the detective was a member of the police force working on his spare time (my work hires cops on the off shift for security), he wouldn’t have any special authority, but could detain a suspect just like any other security member could at any establishment.
I don’t know if or when they fell out of favor since my current budget doesn’t allow for more than a cot at the YMCA.
“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
Just out of curiousity, were you wondering about this because of the They Might be Giants song “She Was a Hotel Detective”?
She’s got her ears to the walls and she’s tappin the calls so if you’ve got a secret boy, forget about it
'cause she’s a hotel detective
Not to be confused with the They Might Be Giants song (She Was a) Hotel Detective.
I don’t think it was the money.
Okay, you’re right. What’s the other song about the hotel detective called?
“She was a hotel detective, but now she’s better connected… she didn’t have to change anything, just the stencil on her window…”
i thought she was an angel?
“the shriners loaned us cars. we raced up and down the sidewalks twenty thousand million times”
-ellis
Don’t get off topic, now. This thread is supposed to be about TMBG songs that are about hotel detectives
when i was a private investigator, i actually did some undercover at a hotel. it was really internal security work. i only went out a couple of times w/ the p.i. who had a regular gig w/ the chain because he needed to look more like a relaxed guy on the town throwing around $$$.
we sat @ the bar, ate there, same thing next night to watch how the bartender interacted w/ customers. in order to get bigger tips, he was giving away stuff, which they guessed as the bar wasn’t making its projections.
the other p.i. had worked for another chain for a while, going to different locations & acting like the awful asshole customer no one wants to see to test what service was like.
“Hotel Detective” sounds a lot better than “Security Guard”.
I would think that in a different era, hotel detectives might be on the lookout for dangerous crimes like adultery, depending upon what type of crowd the hotel catered to.
The term “hotel detective” is somewhat archaic now. In the old days, they dealt with customer theft, kicked out undesirables, checked that there weren’t more people in the room than paid for (“That table is set for six.” “That’s nothing. My alarm clock is set for eight.”), made sure no on left without paying, and made sure there was no sexual hanky panky going on. Judging by portrayals, they were not particularly well regarded.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman
Actually, wasn’t familiar with the TMBG song.
You ocassionally see hotel detectives or “house dicks” referenced in old B&W movies.
Also the song “We’re An American Band” by Grand Funk Railroad immortalizes them with the line, “The hotel detective, he was out of sight.”
“In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” - Ecclesiastes 1:18
I hadn’t realized that they didn’t have house dicks anymore. My latest information on the subject comes straight out of Chandler. Do department stores still have store dicks?
Hotels are an ideal spot for a plethora of criminal activities (prostitution, drug transactions, visiting terrorists, etc.). If a first class hotel ever gets a reputation for being a hotbed of pimps, call girls, drug dealers, mobsters and vice-cops it won’t be ranked first class for long. The hotel detectives job is to keep all this riff-raff out. I’m sure they are still around, but have different titles like director of security.
Anybody else remember the one where Granny is trying to hide Tweety, Sylvester and a bulldog from a hotel detective?
Alright, to get back to the hijack:
They Might Be Giants recorded (She Was A) Hotel Detective on the Miscellaneous T complilation (1991).
“She’s got her ear to the wall, she’s tapping the calls”
and
They Might be Giants recorded She Was A Hotel Detective on the Back to Skull EP (1994).
“She used to be quite a lady. She drove the underworld crazy.”
I don’t want to be first in line to see Mrs. Train.
To get back to the OP, another major function of hotel detectives is to provide valuable information to the p.i. who is actually our hero, thus helping advance the plot faster and saving the main man much tedious legwork.
e.g. When Sam Spade wants to find out information about Joel Cairo, it’s evidently more convenient for him to ask his buddy the hotel detective than to have to hang around the hotel and spy the dubious character for a few days.
I don’t mind my threads being hijacked, but for a limp-wristed band like They Might Be Giants?
See THE HOTEL DETECTIVE, a most amusing novel by Alan Russell.
Or, as Arnold W says, just re-read THE MALTESE FALCON. You can never go wrong re-reading THE MALTESE FALCON.
Uke
One of the jobs of the hotel detective in certain hotels was to make sure that men didn’t illicitly sneak women into their rooms for a liason.
Now you pay for that by the hour.
Times have changed.
Nekosoft:
(She Was a) Hotel Detective was on They Might Be Giants first, self-titled (eponymous) album of 1986 prior to Miscellaneous T (of 1991).
Just to clear that up.
“…Giants” re: “…Giants’”