The voice on the telephone seemed to be sharp and peremptory, but I didn't hear too well what it said -- partly because I was only half awake and partly because I was holding the receiver upside down. I fumbled it around and grunted.
"Did you hear me? I said it was Clyde Umney, the lawyer."
"Clyde Umney, the lawyer. I thought we had several of them."
"You're Marlowe, aren't you?"
"Yeah. I guess so." I looked at my wrist watch. It was 6:30 a.m., not my best hour.
"Don't get fresh with me, young man."
"Sorry, Mr. Umney. But I'm not a young man. I'm old, tired and full of no coffee. What can I do for you, sir?"
"I want you to meet the Super Chief at eight o'clock, identify a girl among the passengers, follow her until she checks in somewhere, and then report to me. Is that clear?"
"No."
"Why not?" he snapped.
"I don't know enough to be sure I could accept the case."
"I'm Clyde Um--"
"Don't," I interrupted. "I might get hysterical."
from the novel "Playback", 1958.
One of my favorite popular American writers is Raymond Chandler. His Philip Marlowe character is a great wit and a tough but flawed hero, a figure to conjour with the likes of James Bond and Sherlock Holmes.
For a time Philip Marlowe--roughly from World War II to 1980--was a popular figure on the big screen. Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Montgomery, George Montgomery, James Garner and Robert Mitchum all played Marlowe on screen. To me, Bogart, Mitchum and Powell were the best--in that order. There were also several radio and television serials featuring stories based on Raymond Chandler's principal character.
Chandler also wrote the screenplay, with Billy Wilder, for "Double Indemnity" (1944) , one of the greatest of the "film noir" cycle of American films, and also colaborrated later--rather testily I'm afraid--with Alfred Hitchcock on the famous film of Patricia Highsmith's novel, "Strangers on A Train" (1952).
Here is a clip from the first full depiction of a Phillip Marlowe novel, Dick Powell's turn as Marlowe (with a sexy Claire Trevor) in director Edward Dymtryk's "Murder, My Sweet" (1944). Chandler didn't write the screenplay but he apparently was pleased with the results. Powell must have been pleased, too, because the film was such a success that he managed to change his image from that of an aging musical-comedy star to a full-fledged leading man.
I know I have snne some of the movies. I liked Bogey best. I will have to say I like the looks of the actress in the scene
ReplyDeleteYes, Claire Trevor was quite the looker. I agree with you on Bogart--I'll get to his turn in "The Big Sleep" next.
ReplyDeleteBogey was the best Marlowe. I never figured Mitchum had a sharpe enough wit to play Marlowe, and Powell just wasn't tough enough. Bogey could pull off both..
ReplyDeleteI agree. Mitchum did have a certain world-weariness that I think suited the part as best as anybody could in the 1970's. Bogart was the real deal.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure he was the real but he could portray the real deal
ReplyDeleteThis is the stuff that Sunday afternoon viewing was made of when I was growing up in England of the 1960s. Double Indemnity was a fantastic film and of course Phillip Marlow was well known to me, he symbolizes a sort of gritty heroism and an organic intelligence obtained at the University of Life. I'm not sure I am qualified to pitch into the Mitchum -v- Bogart discussion here, except to say that both of those gentlemen frequently graced the screen of my youth. I have probably seen The African Queen more times than any other film except possibly Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but I digress.......an archetypal good guy here I think.
ReplyDeleteChandler's famous statement about the nature of the American PI--"down these mean streets a man must go who is neither mean nor afraid..." encapsulates so well the reason these movies beckon so many back to them...as does "gritty heroism". These works were not the stuff of blue skies and open spaces that the standard American Western myth of Restoring Eden was all about.
ReplyDelete"Double Indemnity" is indeed good stuff. James M. Cain, who also was the original writer of the piece and also "The Postman Always Rings Twice" had a knack for such fatalistic characters, which sharp-minded cynics like Chandler and Billie Wilder couldn't help but be inspired by.
The realtionship between Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) and Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) is so compelling: its a sadder film for me every time I see it; yet the film's dialogue has nary a note of sentiment.
I think the Bogart vs. Mitchum discussion is one that bears no real negatives against either of these guys. I imagine Frank (who can speak for himself, of course) is merely noting how above and beyond Bogey was as Marlowe. Mitchum's own strengths as an actor were a little different; less of a wit and more the unimpressed casual observer, even as a young man Mitchum could distill and project "organic" street-smarts better than any other leading men roughly his age in Hollywood. One look from Mitchum and you could sense him sum up and shrug at the casual pitfalls of human frailty and evil. He did it so often and with such economy! It's now a cliche to state it, but I think he was absurdly underrated for most of his career by critics.
His Jeff, the doomed private eye "Out of the Past" (1947)--a role written with Bogart in mind ironically--sealed Mitchum's unassuming-but-dangerous persona early in his career. Unique in his own way, this persona enhanced many a more routine urban drama the younger actor would fall into during over the next thirty-odd years.