Alfred Hitchcock coined the term McGuffin to refer to whatever object put the plot of his films in motion (though not all of his films have a McGuffin). The mysterious bottles in Claude Rain’s cellar in Notorious. The microfilm in North by Northwest. The corpse in The Trouble With Harry. The tech secrets Paul Newman hunts in the Eastern bloc in Torn Curtain.
Hitchcock’s view was that the McGuffin didn’t matter, what matters is what you do with it. A bank robbery, for example, can give us Dog Day Afternoon or Cash on Demand.
Lester Dent used a fair number of McGuffins writing the Doc Savage books. In the first book, The Man of Bronze, it’s the golden treasure hidden in the Valley of the Vanished. In Spook Hole it’s a treatment that causes whales to mass-produce ambergris (whale snot) which at the time was an essential ingredient in perfumes, worth a fortune. In Repel it’s an anti-gravity element.
One of the things I’ve realized working on Savage Adventures is that one of Dent’s tricks is to make the McGuffin worthless: the villain has lost everything fighting for a useless prize. Dent first uses this ploy in The Phantom City: the Arab crimelord Mohallet is convinced the lost city’s gates are made of solid platinum but it was an error in translation: they’re solid lead. His dreams of wealth were a mirage.
The McGuffin in Colors for Murder is another ambergris-making process but this time it’s a scam — the treatment doesn’t work. In The Mental Wizard the McGuffin is the real deal — a drug that gives you invincible psi-powers — but it’s degraded through centuries in storage and doesn’t work.
I agree with Hitchcock, what Dent does with the McGuffin is more important than what it is. Even so, having a fake McGuffin can add an extra touch of irony.
I’ve seen this work outside Doc Savage stories. In Batman #81, “The Boy Wonder Confesses,” (David Reed, Sheldon Moldoff) Dick admits to being Robin as part of an elaborate ruse to prove he and Bruce aren’t the Dynamic Duo. Behind it is film footage that shows them changing into their costumes; disproving the connection before the film goes public will ensure nobody believes it. At the end of the story it turns out there film was underdeveloped to the point it doesn’t show anything.
It’s an effective trick for adding a little twist at the finish of the tale.
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