Phillip Marlowe is on the way back to the big screen

Liam Neeson is to don a fedora and walk the mean streets for a new movie based on Chandler's writings - well, actually the forthcoming movie, Marlowe is actually based on the novel, The  Black-Eyed Blond written by Benjamin Black, the pen name of the Irish writer William John Banville. The highly praised book continues the adventures of Chandler's tarnished knight

"It was one of those summer Tuesday afternoons when you begin to wonder if the earth has stopped revolving." So begins a new novel featuring Philip Marlowe--yes, that Philip Marlowe. Channeling Raymond Chandler, Benjamin Black has brought Marlowe back to life for a new adventure on the mean streets of Bay City, California. It is the early 1950s, Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. Then a new client is shown in: blond, beautiful, and expensively dressed, she wants Marlowe to find her former lover. Almost immediately, Marlowe discovers that the man's disappearance is merely the first in a series of bewildering events, and soon he is tangling with one of Bay City's richest--and most ruthless--families.

The book has received praise from none other than Stephen King who wrote, “Somewhere Raymond Chandler is smiling, because this is a beautifully rendered hardboiled novel that echoes Chandler's melancholy at perfect pitch. The story is great, but what amazed me is how John Banville caught the cumulative effect Chandler's prose had on readers. It's hard to quantify, but it's also what separated the Marlowe novels from the general run of noir (which included some damn fine novelists, like David Goodis and Jim Thompson). The sadness runs deep. I loved this book. It was like having an old friend, one you assumed was dead, walk into the room. Kind of like Terry Lennox, hiding behind those drapes.”

William Monahan, writer of The Departed, will be adapting Benjamin Black’s The Black-Eyed Blonde  for the screen.

Big Sleep, Long Embrace

It took some good old fashioned detective work worthy of a Philip Marlowe novel to finally fulfill the wishes of the late author, Raymond Chandler. This is a fascinating story that I knew nothing about until I stumbled across an episode of the podcast, Criminal.

Chandler was devoted to his wife Cissy and when she died in 1954, Chandler was left a broken man and it is well documented that he attempted suicide barely two months after losing his wife. Chandler had initially met his future wife shortly after the first world war - she was the stepmother of his army buddy, Gordon Pascal, a woman who was 18 years his senior but the two soon fell head over heels in love. Cissy was a free spirit, she never admitted her true age and would clean the house in the nude.

Chandler and Cissy were married for thirty years and during the final years of Cissy's life Chandler was devoted to her and when she died the author fell apart.

'For thirty years, ten months and four days,' Chandler wrote shortly after his wife's death. 'She was the light of my life, my whole ambition.'

Chandler would die himself in 1959 and because it was believed Chandler left no burial instructions the author was buried at Mountain Hope Cemetery. Many years later in 2010 Chandler fan Loren Latker was researching the author and he discovered papers that revealed Chandler had wanted to be buried alongside Cissy's ashes and he, feeling that Chandler's wishes should be carried out, contacted Cyprus View mausoleum to ensure that these wishes were finally carried out.

Loren and his wife at the service to reunite Chandler and Cissy

The problem was that Cissy's ashes had gone missing and when Latker and his wife, also a devoted Chandler fan pushed the matter they were told that no one could find Cissy's ashes. 

Latker kept onto the mausoleum until the ashes were discovered. The next step was to hire a lawyer, Aissa Wayne (daughter of legendary actor John Wayne). Eventually the case was taken to court and thanks to the determination of the superfan, Chandler's grave was opened and Cissy's ashes were placed alongside the author. The service was held on Valentine's day in 2011, fifty years after Chandler's death and the two were finally reunited thanks to Loren Latker, a superfan indeed. The event was more a celebration than a funeral, with Cissy's ashes arriving in a procession of vintage cars, a band playing "As the Saints Go Marching In", and readings from Chandler's novels.
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Loren Latker runs the Chandler website, Shamus Town.

 

Once more down those mean streets

Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe is to return in a novel written by John Banville to be published in 2013.  Mr. Banville, 66, is a Booker Prize-winning author who has also written several mysteries under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. The new Marlowe novel, which was authorized by Chandler’s estate, will be billed as a work by Mr. Black. The novel will be set in the 1940s in Chandler’s fictional town of Bay City, Calif.

"I love the challenge of following in the very large footsteps of Raymond Chandler.I began reading Chandler as a teenager, and frequently return to the novels.

"This idea has been germinating for several years and I relish the prospect of setting a book in Marlowe's California, which I always think of in terms of Edward Hopper's paintings. Bay City will have a slightly surreal, or hyper-real, atmosphere that I look forward to creating." John Banville


Image by aisu-kaminari

Altman's The Long Goodbye

Neo noir, as Chandler's world is updated to a contemporary setting, but retains something of the feel of the golden age, the soundtrack especially harkens back to another time with its minimalist jazz influenced score composed by John Williams.

Elliot Gould's Marlowe is very much a man out of time and he finds himself in some bizarre situations in a LA populated by bizzare people. Marlowe for all his seediness seemed the less tarnished of all the characters as he walks the mean streets, chain smoking and despairing of the entire human race.

There's a great cameo early in the movie from David Carradine as a jailbird named Dave - he's only on screen for a few minutes, but his performance perfectly sets up the tone for the picture that is to follow.

The Long Goodbye was one of Chandler's most complicated novels with a large supporting cast. Altman slims the entire thing down for his movie and jettisons the less essential characters in order to streamline the film, and it's told in the director's rambling style. Hell not only are many characters chucked but on times Chandler is also thrown out of the window.

Gould is excellent as a world weary Marlowe and it is perhaps because of his performance that the film is so watchable - Gould really creates a unique persona with the way he walks, talks, wise-cracks and operates. He becomes a believable person - which is why the uncharacteristic ending is so impacting.

I've never liked Altman's almost art-house style of film but I do enjoy  this film and its clever updating of Chandler's world. The shock ending though seems totally anti-Chandler and I'm not sure exactly what the movie is trying to say here but it sure does take the viewer, especially if you know Chandler and Marlowe, by complete surprise. I guess this is a movie that will disappoint if the viewer is looking for a hard-boiled crime thriller but if you just sit back and let it wash over you as a piece of cinema then there is much to enjoy. The impression I got is that director, Altman was no big fan of Chandler's tarnished knight and set out to destroy the myth with this revision - maybe that's what that ending was all about!

An interesting bit of trivia - the role of the Hemingwayeque writer, played wonderfully by Sterling Hayden, was originally intended for Bonanza's Dan Blocker but the actor died before filming began.

Farewell my Lovely...again

BBC Radio 4, last night broadcast the third in their full cast radio plays based on Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe stories. Farewell my Lovely is available for the next seven days on the BBC iPlayer HERE

The continuing series (Saturday nights on Radio Four) will present all of the Marlowe stories. The three so far have been excellent and Toby Stephens makes a great Marlowe.

Toby Stephens

When Philip Marlowe sees a huge, loudly dressed man casually throwing a bouncer out onto the the pavement as he goes into a bar, he knows it's time to walk away, so he follows him inside. The big guy is Moose Molloy, recently released from an eight year prison sentence and now on the hunt for his old sweetheart, a red-haired nightclub singer named Velma Valento.
Marlowe follows a trail which includes a stick-up, blackmail, an irresistible blonde, a psychic, drugs and murder, and it leads him all the way to the top of a corrupt state of California.
Farewell My Lovely was the second of Chandler's novels featuring Marlowe. It was adapted for the big screen three times.

The Lady in the Lake

BBC Radio Four broadcast the second of their Ramond Chandler adaptations - eventually every one of Chandler's books will be broadcast as full cast plays. The Lady in the Lake is still available on the BBC iPlayer and will be for the next seven days.

HERE

The sound of Chandler

BBC Radio Four have started a series of Chandler plays with The Big Sleep having been broadcast this Saturday with The Lady in the Lake to Follow next week. Toby Stevens takes the part of Marlowe in the 90 minutes plays.

All plays will be available to listen again directly follow the broadcast and for seven days - HERE

Chandler, Marlowe and all that

The current episode of The Radio Detectives, still available to listen to on the BBC Radio 7 website, HERE 
concentrates on Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe. The program takes a look at most of the radio versions of Chandler's stories and is only available to listen to for one more day. Chadler fans may want to download the free Audacity software and record the show to your hard drive for enjoyment later.

THE BIG SLEEP - Raymond Chandler

THE BIG SLEEP
ORIGINAL UK PUBLISHER HAMISH HAMILTON
March 1939
This facsimile edition 2009

It was about ten thirty in the evening, Late July, with the night overcast and the rain obscuring the hills of the valleys. I was wearing my striped jim jam bottoms, with a black T-shirt, Simpsons slippers and pastel blue boxers with little puppy dogs on them. I was scruffy, tired and didn't care who knew it. I was everything the lazy reader ought to be. I was going to read The Big Sleep for the first time. And before I knew it half the book had gone and the night was pushing towards a damp miserable dawn.

Firstly this isn't a review as such - how could it be? How could I offer anything constructive apropos to this widely acknowledged masterpiece? But even though I knew the story backwards, had listened to it as both an audio play and a audio book and had seen the film many times, I had never read the original book. Indeed until now the only Chandler novels I had read were The Lady in the Lake and Poodle Springs. But these facsimile first UK editions from Hamish Hamilton/Pan were enough to provoke me into buying the entire set. There are five in this set, released to celebrate the seventy years that Hamish Hamilton have been publishing Chandler. That's The Big Sleep, Farewell my Lovely, The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister and The Long Goodbye. All of which are direct copies of the original UK editions.

They're lovely looking book and complete replicas of the original UK first edition - everything is as it was then. Even the back cover features a listing of other thrillers released that month in 1939, none of which have survived the test of time in the way The Big Sleep has. What can I say about reading the book as a new reader today? Well obviously the style reminded me of the Robert Parker books as well as most of the other private dick novels I have read but Chandler was there first, his was the blueprint was both the brevity of style and the lone PI character himself. It reminds me of listening to the radio in 1995 when The Beatles reworked an old Lennon demo into the all new Beatle song, Free as a Bird. Anyway this young kid was being interviewed as part of a radio road show and the Beatles song played to him. The kid said they sounded OK but were copying Oasis's style. Same thing with Chandler - reading him now the uninformed would say this guy is too much like other PI writers which is testament to the importance of Chandler and Marlowe and of how they set the benchmark for others to follow.

One thing I especially liked about these books is that the covers are printed with the odd blemish and scratch so that they actually look aged - though of the quality that would be defined as very fine or whatever the category they use for very very good condition.

And back to The Big Sleep - well I'm not qualified to give any major insight but I am perfectly enabled in saying - that it reads as well today as it would have ever done. It's pacey, not dated in the slightest and the character of Marlowe is as contemporary as tomorrow's headlines. I can't read Marlowe without seeing Bogart's mug in my mind and that's not a bad thing - that ugly, handsome face fits the pivotal private eye like a glove

Raymond Chandler UK celebrations

Long time UK publishers of Chandler have issued new hardcover editions of the author's five best regarded works, in editions that are perfect copies of the first UK editions. This is being done because this year sees the 50th anniversary of the writer's death.

Besides the books pictured above Farewell my Lovely is also part of this new set.

The books have a retail price of £12.99 and Borders are currently offering them with a £3 reduction. I picked up The Long Goodbye and they really are wonderful editions with the covers looking suitably aged.

RAYMOND CHANDLER QUIZ

Thanks to Dave Rosenthal of the Baltimore Sun for the following email informing Archive readers of a Raymond Chandler quiz run by the newspaper. It's good fun so have a go completing the Chandler-like phrases.

Gary, I saw your recent post on Chandler and wanted to note that The Baltimore Sun's Read Street book blog has a game to follow up on the recent anniversary of his death. Just fill in the blanks to show how he might complete phrases including "as --- as a Dick Cheney sneer," "as recession proof as ----" and "as ---- as an A.I.G. bonus". The link:

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/books/blog/2009/03/are_you_the_next_raymond_chand.html

Enjoy!

Dave