How The Mighty Had Fallen On
Hard Times-The Decline And Fall Of The Late Famous Late Private Detective Lew
Archer-With The Chalmers Case In Mind-A Book Review-Sort Of
By Sam Lowell
The Good-bye Look, Ross MacDonald,
1969
[To be honest I had originally
no intention of writing this bracketed introduction but am doing so now as the request,
damn, make that order of site manager Greg Green. That little command despite the
fact that I am chair of the Editorial Board of this publication and am in
theory at least his boss, or one of his bosses. However Greg has pulled rank on
me since there was great deal of blowback from readers and reviewers from other
publications on my previous efforts to understand the demise of a man who would
have been the greatest of all the private eye detectives Lew Archer. I had
assumed that as a hard-hitting publication seeking the truth no matter I was on
solid ground. I had freely posited that Lew’s trouble began (and ended) with his
hushed-up sexual impotence sending him to the minor leagues where chasing skirts
as well as criminals didn’t matter that much to a P.I.s reputation since that
was mainly repo work or security stuff. The blowback mostly was why was I “defaming”
a long-gone dead guy who had had some great successes. But they fail to mention in the end a guy who through the breakthrough
Hardman case and a few others looked like he was a shoo in for the P.I. Hall of
Fame wound up peeking through keyholes in seedy U.S. 101 motels before “no-fault
divorce” put and big crimp in that P.I. money-maker and then after he go this
license yanked wound up shagging golf
balls at the Bel Air Country Club for an ex-client who felt sorry for him.
I would have let the whole thing
fade to oblivion, easily fade to oblivion except I ran into Lew’s lawyer, his last
lawyer who was sitting in a San Francisco gin mill when he spotted me and after
the obligatory exchange of a few drinks which will always loosen up tongues he posed
the question of questions about Lew’s demise. And like all lawyers thought he had
the answer to before he asked the question. See I knew Lew in the old days, in
his old age just before the hammer came down from the State of California that
maybe for the good of the profession he “retire” meaning they were not going to
renew his license after he got caught planting so-called evidence in the Miller
case, a missing child case which never did get solved. Knew Lew from the time that
I interviewed him for the East Bay Other as a young free-lance reporter interested
in the wild crops of private eyes who populated the Left Coast (not called that
then but later). Had an intense interest on film private eyes too as I was beginning
to start my first steps as a film reviewer and wanted to compare Lew with some earlier
immortals like Phil Larkin, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe, all three easily inducted
into that hall of fame.
Look, in the old days the
cops, the DA, the police reporters and everybody else would cover for somebody like
Lew who had started out as a public copper but those hero-worshipping days are
long gone, long gone for guys whose feet were made of clay. Although those days
are long gone and now every reporter, young or old, has to have a “hook” to
stay in place even on the food chain of this cutthroat business I was prepared before
I got this inside information to move on to other pursuits. Since I am “outing”
Lew who was exceptional in that he tanked early I might as well mention that a
guy like Phil Larkin was actually arrested as a “peeping Tom” on his last case
and had to register as a sex offender in Pennsylvania where his graduate
student girlfriend met on-line was doing her doctoral dissertation at Penn State.
Sam Spade passed on in a mental hospital, that is what they called them then screaming
out the name “Brigid” over and over again. Phillip Marlowe after he married Vivian
Sternwood of the oil money billions and moved to Poodle Springs lost his edge.
Took only high-end clients and cases until Vivian tossed him out after she caught
him fooling around with younger sister Carmen in Las Vegas (that before he ran
into Dotty Malone, the famous screen-writer who he would later marry). Not a
word below has been changed as a result of the “boss’ command so read on. Sam
Lowell]
***********
Lew Archer had been impotent,
sexually impotent, which explains a lot about why he never entered the
pantheon, the P.I. pantheon. The famous, or rather almost famous, Hollywood
private detective who was expected to light up the 1950s professional firmament
after guys like Philo Vance, Same Spade, Phillip Marlowe. Phil Larkin, even
Nick Charles, stopped peeking through keyholes or cashed their checks whichever
came first. Except poor Lew could not cut the mustard as we used to say in the
old North Adamsville neighborhood when we had time on our hands and tried to
figure who was homo, a fag, you know “light on their feet, ” a mama’s boy, a
Nancy and some stuff I refuse to say in my old age after having learned a thing
or two -including it ain’t my business,
or yours, who somebody loves. Except nobody, and I don’t here, is trying to
“out” Lew at this late date nor do I think he was into same-sex relationships.
I think he just lost steam, lost some sexual desire after maybe taking one, or
twenty, too many hits on the noggin, a few off-hand slugs and maybe had some
other physical problems like erectile dysfunction in those Viagra-less days as
he grew older.
Hollywood though as I just
learned recently from Seth Garth, a fellow writer at this publication and one
of the guys who gay-baited with me in the old Acre working poor days when we
had nothing but time on our hands for such foolishness was very protective of
its own back in those same 1950s days. The recent comments he made in this
publication in doing a quick review of a new biography about male icon and AIDS
victim Rock Hudson and other well-known male hunk figures like Tab Hunter and
Rory Calhoun show how well all that stuff was kept from the public in the
interest of illusions and profits. At who knows at what cost to the actors and
others involved. Hollywood, as is less well known, was as protective of its
private investigators as its movie stars so it is understandable that Lew’s
reputation as a “lady’s man” lasted so long. (Ironically, no, sadly Hollywood
was not so protective of its personnel who were being tarred with the “commie,
red” brush in the heart of the Cold War purges orchestrated by the U.S.
government. They fed the grist mill with all hands in those days.)
Naturally anybody would want
proof or at least informed speculation to go with the “accusation” against Lew at
this far remove and I would suggest that beginning with the Galton case, the
case that made him very famous, Hollywood famous and thus fleeting he lost his
way. And I will provide proof in due course but first it is necessary to set
Lew and his manly failure up against what the public, hell, what the profession
expected of its own practitioners. Guys like Phil Larkin, Sam Spade, Phillip
Marlowe, hell, even married to Nora Nick Charles when Nora wasn’t looking, set
a high bar for grabbing some serious femmes in their time. Hell a guy like Phil
Larkin was still pushing himself forward, and succeeding, with young lovelies,
with as the term went, or one of the terms for desirable women went, the
frills, grabbing a foxy twenty-something graduate student, a Glennon daughter,
when he was almost seventy after the Glennon murder case wrapped up. And Phil
was a lesser light in the profession then.
The two big guys in the
profession though who I want to highlight here to set up Lew’s problem were one
Samuel Spade whose mother raised no fool and the ubiquitous Phillip Marlowe. First
to Sam who, with or without his partner Miles Archer, no relation to Lew,
solved many cases including that got him in the P.I. Hall of Fame the Astor
case, the case where by the skin of his nose he avoided the noose, the big step
off and sent a femme, his femme, Brigid who the hell knows her last name she
used a million aliases to face the music. Beautiful and every private detective
program from those established by the Pinkertons to those you used to see
advertised on match book covers about learning the profession in ten easy
lessons without leaving the comfort of your armchair (but leaving a few bucks
behind as usual).
That Astor case is informative
for it is the first time in public that a P.I. slept with a client, a lying
bitch of a client but still a client under most state licensing rules and then
turned her over the coppers after she nearly blew his brains out, and few other
guys too. The point here being that with a wild one like the Astor dame you had
better have, what did we call it up above, plenty of mustard if you are going
to go the distance and not fall down in the cracks. I won’t even mention that
Chinese beauty over in Chinatown that cleans his whistle in the Tong Wars case
or what in the profession was called the “flute-player case,” although in
public called the Bergman case, when this Scandinavian femme tried to leave him
flat to take yet another fall after doing her thing with him. Great almost
heroic mode stuff.
If Sam set the standard, set
the bar high, Phillip Marlowe, another P.I. Hall of Famer, went wild with the
women once it didn’t matter, nobody gave a fuck as one wag had it whether you
played it straight with the client or jumped immediately under the satin sheets
with the femme. Had two sisters going at one point, the younger wilder one,
Carmen, Carmen Sternwood, dropping in his lap even before he took his hat off.
It is not clear whether he went under the silkies with both her and the older
sister, Vivian whom he married for a while mostly for the sex and dough then
blew their Poodle Springs mansion for the next best thing. Bopped swell Velma
against all odds and against the mammoth client who would have put him six feet
under if he got a whiff of that scent she gave off when Phillip came a-calling.
Grabbed Honey in the big Hollywood star murder case no problem. I could go on
and on but you get the message. Cut the mustard or get the hell out of town.
Now to the case against Lew,
why he didn’t measure up, why he was never even close to being voted into the
P.I. Hall of Fame despite a fistful of nominations. There was a lot of
speculation around over the years that Lew was never the same after the, what
did they call it, oh yeah, the Ivory Grin case where he got egg all over his
face when he was unable to figure out what happened to the guy his client was
looking for. The client a fox if there ever was one but Lew never got to first
base with her, never tried to get to first base which is worse from the story I
heard from a very reliable source who knew the client and knew the guy she was
looking for and couldn’t find through Lew. The public coppers wrapped it up in
a week once there was another murder committed by the same warped doctor who
couldn’t keep his hands off the women, some other guys’ women.
Personally, and bear me out on this I think the turning point was
when he balled up the Galton case, couldn’t connect the dots, couldn’t navigate
the bevy of dames who passed his way and if that was the case then no way could
he solve the case. As mentioned before, and if not then now, the public coppers
had to come and save his bacon, Jesus, against a guy who hung himself rather
than go back in stir, rather than face the inevitable California big step-off.
Funny how you will get information on the subject you are
reporting on, the back channels connections that never get made public, by you
or any reporter made public, not if you want to move up the tough racket food
chain that is journalism the toughest racket of all except maybe film critics,
reviewers whatever they call themselves these days. The operative word is you
“dug” the nuggets out by the sweat of your brow like some coalminer rather than
having it handed to you by some poor drunk like happened in the Johnny Cielo
case down in Key West back in those same 1950s. But at this far remove I am not
telling any tales out of school by saying that impotence theory was the
opinion of a well-known lawyer who should know and whom I met when I was just
starting out as a journalist at the East
Bay Other, a place where a few other writers here did some free-lance
work. Hell, it was all free-lance or free then since you never knew if you
would get paid or not, paid enough at least to keep the wolves from your door.
I had been sitting with that lawyer having drinks at the notorious KitKat Club
in San Francisco in the days when “drag queen” culture was very much underground,
and I was on assignment to write about it for the Eye. He was defending the establishment and the exotic entertainers
against the city and against various violations of the health moral codes then
existing. This in the days before Timmy Riley was the owner, when he was just
working out his act, doing a lame impersonation of Miss Bette Davis and hardly
keeping the wolves from his door. Somehow the subject of great private
detectives came up, probably I brought it up since I knew that he had defended
a number of famous private eyes, famous California ones anyway when they got
into legal trouble.
Got Phillip Marlowe, yes that Phillip Marlowe from the Sternwood
case P.I.s still talk about, still do case studies on in those matchbox cover
ads touting how to be a detective in ten or so easy lessons-for hard cash and
no refunds, buddy- out from under the big step off when they tried to wrap
old-time gangster Eddie Mars’ murder, murder by his own bodyguards on Marlowe
when he, Marlowe, was allegedly doing a burglary of one of
Eddie’s properties. Got Phil off in a million other cases too like the time he
wasted some doctor, some pill-pusher who filled him up with junk to get him to
spill where a guy named Moose Malone, no relation to Dorothy below, was to stop
him from finding some femme who did not want to be found-by giant Moose anyway.
From a million other cases and who I had found out later at that time had been
married to Dorothy Malone, the famous screenwriter who just died this year at
98 and was the last living link to the great Marlowe legacy.
Got Nick Charles into a 12- Step program after he had attempted to
“fly,” Nick’s drunken sot term on the QT after a million DUIs without his wife
Nora, his mistress Jenny, or any Frisco cops who had an interest knowing about
it. Got one Samuel Spade out from under about six felonies and the loss of his
license when some twist named Brigit, Mary, who knew in the end what her real
name was pointed the finger at him. That was the one where that Brigit femme
walked to the big house and took some gaff for stuff, a fistful of murders, that
she had attempted to tie to our boy Sam. So that lawyer and if you don’t know
who he is by now then you just don’t lawyers who make their kale off the
troubles of private detectives and giving the name would mean nothing to you knew
from whence he spoke.
What would mean something, name or no name, was that lawyer’s
theory about private detectives, and here he zeroed in specifically on Lew
Archer and how he blew the Galton case, a few others too but the Galton case was
pure fuck-up and made his point. What that big-time lawyer said was that any
P.I. who wasn’t half crazy trying to get under the silky sheets with some femme
is strictly impotent, can’t get it up. Not gay, asexual, intersexual, bi-sexual
or anything like that that stuff is okay, was okay for him back then since he
was hanging around such people in the KitKat Club before Timmy Riley, aka Miss
Judy Garland, broke out of the pack with the Garland gag, took over and made
the place a Mecca for tourists who wanted to take a quick walk on the wild side.
The funny thing as our lawyer described it was that Lew had about
five opportunities to bed some dame starting when he first got on the case with
Mrs. gallons of oil money Galton’s home companion, Ava, who was a knockout from
the photos of her in a swimsuit when the case went to court (the case of
officially adopting Granny Galton’s lost grandson as her sole heir not the
murder case of her son which some lawyer had forced her to look into and which
was a cold case, a frozen solid cold case when Lew put his grimy paws on the
thing and screwed almost everything up before he was done and the public
coppers had to come in and solve the damn thing, a rare occasion indeed then
but the start of the downward spiral, the road to repo and keyhole peeking work).
Then there was the guy who fingered Mrs. gallons of oil money son back in the
1930s whose wife, since remarried, practically threw herself at Lew to avoid
her second husband, a good man according to all parties including Lew, finding
out she was married to a shiftless bum, a con artist and accessory to murder of
that Galton son. Passed her by.
We won’t even speak of the easy pickings he would have had, could
have had if he had paid the least bit of attention to the wife, the second wife
of the lawyer who hired Lew to find Mrs. Galton’s son (I won’t continue with
that “gallons of oil money” gag you know who I mean now). Not only was she
drugged to the gills, half naked at least half of the time in his presence at
the nursing home she was placed in after she had a nervous breakdown over her
role in the murder of that guy who fingered Galton’s son for the executioner’s
ax back in the 1930s but she believed, when her lawyerly husband brainwashed
her to perdition, she had killed that ex-lover. A piece of cake. Blown to
perdition.
It doesn’t end there, and maybe I will miss a few other
opportunities today when I think about the long-ago case but I will give you
enough examples that my lawyer friend gave me to condemn Lew to strictly
third-rate private detective-dom. There was the grandson’s college time, Ann
Arbor, University of Michigan girlfriend who had enough dough to sink a ship,
was ready to give the kid cars, and whatever else he wanted. The kid walked
away, went to greener pastures. When Lew interviewed the twist, trying to find
out what she knew about the kid’s whereabouts, what made him tick, and why he
was the pawn in some nefarious scheme to dupe Mrs. Galton into believing that
he was really her grandson, she was as ready to have a soft shoulder to cry on
as anybody in the world. Lew walked. Wouldn’t give her the time of day, made
some excuse up about his time of the month, male version. Hell even ancient
Phil Larkin, he of the famed Simmons case which made his name, grabbed some
twenty-something graduate student from Penn State, led her a merry chase, and
he was almost seventy. Poor Lew.
(My lawyer checking into that Big Blue dame’s fate just because he
was interested, maybe grab her on the rebound told me she already had a new
boyfriend about five days after Lew talked to her although he still was able to
get a date with her since she and the new lover were not “exclusive,” whatever
that meant.)
Now I think that the next women Lew passed on maybe he wasn’t
wrong to not take a run at although my lawyer was infuriated that I would say
such a stupid journalist kind of thing. This was a dame, an older dame but not
that old who frankly didn’t keep up her appearances as they used to say in the
days before body-shaming became taboo, very taboo whether for good or evil. She
would have been easy pickings too, maybe a one-night stand but here is what she
was about. She had actually been married to Mrs. Galton’s son, has seen him
killed out on the coast south of Frisco where they were staying, had had an
affair or two with the finger man and her husband’s murderer before under
threat of murder to her son, that Galton heir grandson, she had married the guy
and fled to Canada with him. Stayed with him trying to protect her son she
said-likely story. No go for Lew though even though she had locked the door
behind them when he was “interviewing” her. No, not poor Lew, sad sack Lew.
Here is the one I don’t figure, the one he should have taken a run
at with all hands. Once Mrs. Galton found out that her son had been murdered
but that she had a grandson who had been missing for years and who turned up
during Lew’s tenure as her private investigator that case was over. Still there
were plenty of people who for their own reasons believed the kid, John was the
name he used but as usual any name will do since they are all aliases, was an
impostor, was in it for the big payoff when Granny croaked. One was Mrs.
Galton’s doctor who had a young daughter whose was at just that age when she
was as flirtatious to older guys as young guys. The doctor wasn’t happy when he
found out that said daughter was having an affair with John after Lew basically
frosted up on her. Jesus how many chances can a guy have and flub everyone.
My lawyer friend also had a theory about the cause of Lew’s
impotency which led to his royally screwing up the case so badly. It is tough
being third or fourth fiddle in the private detective game (and that was only
in California we won’t even discuss the whole country). Lew tried I think,
maybe to be a lady’s man but it didn’t work, so he tried a different route, the
no sex with clients or persons of interest. It didn’t work but that is that. It
now makes perfect sense that he didn’t believe John was the real deal, that the
lawyer who hired him played him like a yo-yo. That everybody lied through their
teeth to him and he bought it, or at least followed more false flag leads than
you could shake a stick at. The funny thing was that all the loose ends got
collected up without him. The Galton son's murderer hung himself rather than
going back to jail. The finger-man’s ex-wife got redemption from her second
husband. John got his girl and his mother’s forgiveness. Mrs. Galton got her
real heir, despite the murderous machinations of her scoundrel lawyer and his
bedazzled wife got a clear conscience. Lew, well, Lew got egg on his face, lots
of egg and a lonely roll-away bed in his low-rent rooming
house.
It never really got better for
Lew as the cases got fewer, as the femme world got the cold shoulder fast even
before they could coo a few words. Take the odd-ball Shafer case, an odd-ball
case because he took the thing on “spec” from his lawyer who was trying to help
a long time neighbor and his wife, The Chambers, whose son had been off the
rails, had been as they said in those day, looney, cuckoo ever since he had
been abducted as a child had killed the abductor the minute he got a chance.
This neighbor, Jim, the man had bags of money either inherited from his late
mother or gathered from some unknown sources, and had been too boot a war hero,
World War II version, as a pilot out in the briny Pacific death traps. Jim had
a wife, a beauty named Oona, nice right who once Lew got on the case could tell
was not in love with her husband, was going through the motions. She had looked
Lew up and down the minute he came into view but despite being in her presence
for a goody part of the case, passed.
Jim and Oona’s kid really was
in a bad way after two events one the so-called robbery of a bunch of his
father’s letters to his mother and the stacking up of bodies like cordwood
anytime Nick was within fifty miles on any murder. He blamed himself and found
his way into the nearest mental hospital which just so happened to be run by a
psychiatrist, and his wife Moira, more on her in a minute, trained as a social
worker whose benefactor, whose “angel” in funding the clinic had been Jim after
Nick got away from that bad ass abductor. Of course anytime the Nick name came
up in Lew’s lawyer’s presence he went apoplectic since he did not want his young
daughter, young at twenty-five several years younger than Lew but very
appealing. She was looking for a shoulder to cry on, another unhappy California
woman who seemed to have populated Lew’s life. She could not have been more
obvious about her needs but again Lew turned his face away.
We need not go into the stack
of dead bodies that Lew always wound up having to figure out who the murderer was,
in the early days he would have had this thing nailed down before sunset by he
was clueless for a long while, just like that horrible end to the Galton case
when started him down the road to cheap street. What was important though is
that he ran through about three other women who would not have turned him down
with slightest encouragement. By now you know the drill though.
I mentioned that Moira, that
buxom, curvy woman, Lew’s description not mine I never saw her, married to the
shrink who was treating young Nick, the natural fall guy for any bad stuff in
the neighborhood. No question she was brighter and kinder than her husband whom
she hated with a passion since he went off the deep end running the clinic
factory. She was ripe for Lew’s arms, ready to “do the do” as we used to say in
the old neighborhood. Why I bring this up with what we know about Lew’s state
of mine at the time one story that was circulating at the time was that they,
Moira and Lew let’s be clear, went off to some vacant clinic bed and did the
“deed.” That was the story then then went around and people were relieved that
at least Lew was back on track to be a real private detective.
Baloney, the real story that
my lawyer friend who gave me the skinny on the Galton screwups ran into Moira one
night in some gin mill in Brentwood. Since he knew her slightly from sending
some of his clients to her husband’s in attempts to make a mental incapacity
case for them when all else failed he bought her a drink and the subject of Lew
Archer and the Shafer case came up. She turned seven shades of red and probably
knew right there where the discussion would lead. My guy brought up the subject
by way of thanking her for saving Lew’s reputation, for bringing back his
“ladies’ man reputation which every serious P.I. needed or got knocked down to
repo work or worse. She told him the real story, the story Lew made her tell
certain persons who would make sure it got around. Despite about six different
attempts arouse him usually every trick she knew from the Kama Sutra nothing.
Being a kind if sexually frustrated by the encounter she went along with his
wishes. That night hubby got a joy ride she blurted out.
As for the fate of poor Nick,
well, things got better for him once he figured out he was no stone-cold killer.
The solution as Lew’s lawyer figured out and passed on to the coppers was
simplicity itself, P.I. 101. Nick was set up by somebody who knew he was
vulnerable and knew he knew “what was what” about the stolen letters. His
“father” Jim had set the poor kid up having committed a burglary of his
mother’s house for dough and those damn letters. Jim was a fake, was not Nick’s
father, was a worse fake in general because he was one of those “stolen valor”
guys, had washed out of pilot school because he got airsick or something. Wound
up doing KP, shining officers’ shoes, and policing the grounds around the naval
station in San Diego being laughed at by real pilots who had flown serious
missions in the Pacific. The only good thing he did when exposed, or about to
be, was to slit his worthless throat. As for Lew he got a reprieve from his
fading reputation and that was it. Tough slide for a guy who could have been a
hall of famer.
