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Hill, Harry. Valy Arnheim (1883-1950) was a German film star and director from the 1910s through the 1940s. He was best known for his character “Harry Hill,” who he played in at least eleven films from 1920 to 1927, beginning with Das Unbewohnte Haus. In 1921 Harry Hill appeared in the German dime novel Harry Hill, der Weltmeister der Sensationen #1-27 (1921-1922).

Harry Hill was a kind of Celebrity Pulp, recycling the plots of Arnheim’s movies (before moving on to new adventures), using Arnheim’s image for illustrations of Hill, and portraying the fictional Hill in the way that the movies characterized him, as an adventurer and explorer active around the world and in the land, sea and air. Among others Hill fights the Confederation of Pickpockets, a Yellow Peril opium den operator, and a Mad Scientist whose experiments with solar power turn him into a crazed Superhuman at night. Hill endures "The Death Pilot," fights "The War with the Invisible Power," and ventures into "The Woods of Lead." In "Das Detektiv-Duell" (Harry Hill #3) and the film Das Detektivduell (1920) Hill has a friendly competition with Sherlock Holmes.

Hill appears in stories with titles like “Mask Number 74,” “A Detective Duel,” and “The Chinese Diamond.”

* I'm including Harry Hill, der Weltmeister der Sensationen in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because the heftroman was a fun one to read. Harry Hill is what happens when you mix a German Celebrity Pulp with typical heftroman ideasplosiveness. Now, if you're like me, and I know I am, that's a recipe for pulpy goodness--and sure enough that's what resulted. Harry Hill is in the Best of the Encyclopedia category not because it's the best of anything--there were better-written pulps, more ideasplosive pulps, and more wonderful Rogues Galleries--but because it did all the things necessary to elevate it into the "memorably fun" category. 

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