Classic Chandler on Radio 4

Today Radio 4 begins its Classic Chandler season. Consequently, we have a new Philip Marlowe in Toby Stephens. I must admit that my first reaction to this bit of casting was not that positive. In the trailers, Stephens’ American accent sounds a little strained. Why not just cast an American, I thought? Then a friend very reasonably reminded me that Equity rules might rule out this option. Then I considered the logistics of casting a season of eight plays with ex-pats. And then I wised up.

Stephens is a very good actor, after all (and the son of a great Sherlock Holmes!) and the clip below shows that he is passionate and knowledgeable about Chandler’s world. I shall try to be less grumpy in the future.

The rumpus kicks off today at 11.30 AM with A Coat, A Hat and a Gun, a half-hour feature on the life of Raymond Thornton Chandler (Chris’ blog has a nice piece on this subject here).

Tomorrow, the afternoon play at 2.15 PM is Double Jeopardy by Stephen Wyatt. I think I’m even more excited about this than by the new Marlowe adaptations. It’s a play about Chandler and Billy Wilder going ten rounds over the writing of Double Indemnity. It’s got Patrick Stewart playing Chandler. Yes, that’s right. Patrick Stewart. And Adrian Scarborough as Wilder! Oh, and it’s written by the man who wrote this. Yum, I can’t wait…

The season continues with the Toby Stephens plays every Saturday this February. So, we’ll be treated to The Big Sleep on the 5th, The Lady in the Lake on the 12th, Farewell My Lovely on the 19th and Playback on the 26th, all being broadcast 2.30-4.00 PM. Later in the year the season will conclude with The Long Goodbye, The High Window, The Little Sister and Poodle Springs (presumably following the Robert B. Parker version?).

In other words, we’re being spoiled silly. I, for one, plan to listen to these little beauties with a fedora perched on the back of my bonce and the venetian blinds down…

Dick Lochte’s Top 20 Private Eye Movies

Over at Ed Gorman’s blog, there’s a fantastic set of detective-related lists. Dick Lochte, the President of the Private Eye Writers of America, has compiled three lists of “Essentials”: Top 20 Private Eye Novels, Top 20 Private Eye Movies and Top 20 Tv Private Eyes! Naturally, my eyes immediately went to the list of movies. Here are Dick’s choices (and I’ve linked each title to its imdb page so you can follow up on those that intrigue you!):

1. The Maltese Falcon (Huston/Bogart version)

2. Chinatown

3. Murder, My Sweet

4. Out of the Past

5. The Big Sleep (the original, not the Mitchum-Winner remake)

6. Twilight (Lochte notes “with Paul Newman, not the vampire crap”!)

7. The Big Lebowski

8. Vertigo

9. Hickey and Boggs

10. Zero Effect

11. Kiss Me Deadly

12. Devil in a Blue Dress

13. Gumshoe

14. Farewell My Lovely

15. The Thin Man

16. Harper

17. My Favourite Brunette

18. Night Moves

19. Tony Rome

20. PJ

He also gives honourable mentions to The Big Fix, Michael Shayne Private Detective, Fast Company, The Runaround, Face Down, Nick Carter Master Detective, Hammett and Shamus.

I’m especially pleased to see the underrated Twilight, Gumshoe and Night Moves get mentions. Personally, I’d put The Thin Man a bit higher, but then I’m biased! And does anyone know where I can get a copy of Hickey and Boggs?

I can’t see any serious omissions, though I am fond of It’s a Wonderful World (1939, W.S. Van Dyke), which has James Stewart as a PI taking Claudette Colbert on a Capra-like adventure…

How about you, dear reader? Is your favourite Private Eye movie on the list?

Gumshoe trails #1

Raymond Chandler, creator of Philip Marlowe, was born on this day in 1888. In his honour, here’s the trailer to Howard Hawks’ 1946 adaptation of Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Chandler enjoyed the movie, writing to a friend, “You will realize what can be done with this sort of story by a director with the gift of atmosphere and the requisite touch of hidden sadism… As we say here, Bogart can be tough without a gun.”

I wish movie trailers were still like this. The conceit of having Bogart (famous for his role as ‘tec Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, 1941) discover the book of The Big Sleep in a public library is marvellous, and very funny. And what a tagline: ‘That Man Bogart! And That Woman Bacall! Are That Way Again!’ Expect another fun trailer next Friday…

Moving targets.

Paul Newman started me reading Ross Macdonald. In 1966 Newman starred in a movie called Harper, based on Macdonald’s detective novel The Moving Target. Newman played private investigator Lew Harper as hip and cynical, in his words a cross between Humphrey Bogart and John F Kennedy. He made short sleeved shirts under jackets seem the epitome of cool.

Paul Newman as Lew Harper

When I began to read the Macdonald novels I started noticing differences. Here, the PI’s name was Lew Archer. And far from being cool and cynical, Archer was a compassionate thinker. He could swing a fist with the best of them, but a great deal of the books focus on Archer listening. Listening to people’s stories, listening to the way they talk about each other.

For me, this is why Macdonald is the most affecting of the great crime writers, the one whose writing reaches out from its period and continues to resonate.

Go to Dashiell Hammett for ice-pick ruthlessness. Not a spot of ruth in his prose. Go to Raymond Chandler for the romance of the city and the well-turned quip about the well-turned ankle. But go to Macdonald and you find violent emotions and secret cruelties. The family melodrama told by a man tired of hearing lies.

Lew Archer private investigator

I suppose Archer’s defining quality is his involvement with the people who come to him for help. It’s rarely romantic involvement; he often acts like an older brother or a father to his clients, steering them away from the tragedies in their lives, trying to save them. Lew cares.

‘I have a secret passion for mercy,’ Archer admits in The Chill (1963). ‘But justice is what keeps happening to people.’

Macdonald wrote eighteen Archer novels and nine short stories between 1949 and 1976. Over the course of the series Archer ages and matures as Macdonald’s literary style develops. It’s with the seventh novel, The Doomsters (1958) that Macdonald really finds his theme: the broken family, torn apart by the sins of previous generations. The author’s obsessive return to this narrative led Donald Westlake to quip, ‘He must have terrific carbon paper.’

But it’s this familiarity that keeps me coming back. I want to spend time with Lew, learn from his kindnesses and (I admit it) savour his melancholy at a disappointing world.

Ross Macdonald

Over the years, I’d collected all of the Archer novels, mainly in the easy to find but ugly 70s Fontana paperbacks. Recently I threw most of them out. I decided that I wanted to collect Macdonald all over again, this time in older editions that are easier on the eye. I’m looking forward to the hunt!

There’s a fascinating account of Macdonald’s life here, an overview of Lew Archer’s career here, and January Magazine’s marvellous and comprehensive Ross Macdonald tribute here. Enjoy!