Raymond Chandler's brainchild Philip Marlowe is a character of many faces. The Camel cigarette- puffing private-eye had a Hollywood Boulevard office and if you should need him, you could always reach him at Glenview 7537. The very first actor to fill the loafers of Mr Marlowe was Dick Powell who came to the rescue for RKO Radio Pictures at a time when the studios were close to going completely kaput, Farewell My Lovely would be released in 1944, the Chandler work was published in 1940. Future blacklistee, director Edward Dmytryk never thought much of Powell on a personal level, and when the film was initially released under the title Farewell My Lovely, it was all miss and no hit as many an audience was left disillusioned by Dick Powell's same old song and dance routines until RKO during a eureka moment, reworked the title in the eleventh hour as Murder My Sweet which made a killing at the box office. A most prescient move on the studio's behalf. to say the least.
And then along came Bogart in the Howard Hawks helmed The Big Sleep, a film that has since been added to The National Film Registry for it's artistic significance; based on the Chandler entry written in 1939 making it's way to a screen near you, or most likely near your grandparents, in the year 1946. Most of the Marlowe portrayers were a one-trick pony, the actor who had an unprecedented second helping of starring as the iconic character was Robert Mitchum who was a seasoned 58 year old in 1975 when he strutted his proverbials in Farewell My Lovely and social security recipient bound by the time the second coming of The Big Sleep made it to the screen.
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| Powell, right in the kisser. |
And that certain charismatic creature in the name of James Garner got to gussy himself up as the gumshoe in 1969, though his reception was considerably underwhelming, most likely down to the purists that weren't too keen seeing Philip go psychedelic, where some felt this was a welcome new wrinkle, though Garner had few thanks to biology working in his favor.
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| Elliot Gould, Marlowe the epicurean, |
Enter Robert Altman's Elliot Gould who gives Chandler's tried and true downtown knight errant a cerebral update even if his was a shambling, unavailing nebbish in The Long Goodbye, Gould never spared any such elan. Gould was ironically married to a Bogart at the time, not Humphrey, but Jennifer who had no relation whatsoever.
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| This fella was Marlowe too, honest! (The Brasher Doubloon 1947) |
Oh yeah, there was a matter of those two Montgomerys - Robert, the proud papa of the bewitching Elizabeth Montgomery, was tagged and 'it' in 1947's Lady In The Lake which also happened to be his big directorial debut. MGM had everyone on the promise that this was like no other of the genre and it did have its distinction, as it precluded an instrumental score. And George Montgomery, the first husband of eternal entertainer Dinah Shore, in The Brasher Doubloon which was based on novel The High Window in 1947. George was one mighty good sport about being cast, last resort with contenders like Dana Andrews, Victor Mature and Fred MacMurray, so he went and donned his Panama hat quick smart before the casting directors changed their mind.