The Whimper of Whipped Dogs
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The Whimper of Whipped Dogs was used as the title for two unrelated works by author Harlan Ellison.
The first work was a teleplay for a 1970 episode of the TV series The Young Lawyers, which was serialised in Ellison's Los Angeles Free Press TV critique column at the time, The Glass Teat. At the end of the serialisation, Ellison wrote two more columns expressing his extreme frustration with what the ABC network, Paramount Pictures, producer, director, and cast members (especially co-star Lee J. Cobb) had done to his teleplay during production. The columns, including the complete teleplay, were published in 1975 in the collection The Other Glass Teat.
As Ellison was particularly proud of creating the title "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs," but the title was not used onscreen in The Young Lawyers episode, the author decided to use the title again for a 1974 short story. That story was inspired by the sensationalization of the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, a New York woman whose stabbing was supposedly witnessed by 38 neighbors, none of whom made an effort to help her or call the police (Subsequent investigations have shown that these initial reports were inaccurate).
The piece, published in Ellison's collection Deathbird Stories, won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award as the best short story of 1974.
