***Will The Real Philip Marlowe Stand Up

 

I will tell you true I like my detectives tough, tough as nails but also ready to chase a windmill or two like some latter day Don Quixote if need be. Need be being determined by some frill (woman, okay I am trying to roughen up my language here to fit the theme) and her wanting habits, her outrageous wanting habits usually. I am talking about private detectives, guys who get paid by the hour or day (plus expenses) and don’t mind taking a few hits on the chin, getting sapped by an errant blackjack, or a non-life threatening slug in the shoulder for the good of the cause (or in pursuit of some frail’s fancy, that damn wanting habit thing). And I am not talking, let’s get this straight right about some clown, some gumshoe peeping through hotel/motel keyholes looking for evidence of love in all the wrong places or trying to find some errant husband who fed up blows town for a while and the wife is looking for her meal ticket, or low-life on the food chain repossessing some skipjack’s car. That is the stuff of everyday life, boring stuff that is not worth the time it takes to write about it. And of course I am not talking about those overblown salaried public detectives who spent more time cadging coffee and crullers, making bookie bets, or shaking down some poor Mom and Pop variety store owner for protection than doing the public good, keeping the bad guys at bay. If they could tell the difference and in my old neighborhood wasn’t easy when in many families one brother was a copper and the other was a corner boy, a wise guy, a guy you better watch out for, and the copper would Dixie any problems for said brother. Nobody said life was on the level, not down in the quicksand base of society.

Yeah, I like my private detectives tough, tough like that guy Philip Marlowe you keep reading about every time you turn around, a guy who had his own rough-hewn code of honor and there was no mistaking that if you got on the wrong side of him, copper or crook, you better watch your back because trouble, trouble with a big T was coming your way. Sure, sure I know before you start thinking that I forgot to take my medication, or I have gone off the deep-end, or something like that a guy, a British guy, a guy who spent most of his life writing insurance policies brought Marlowe to life, brought him to life in seven novels and a few short stories too but Marlowe’s my guy, my kind of private eye.          

Yeah, like the time Marlowe took down the big-time Bay City mobster king of the casinos, liquor and whores (sex workers, remember I am just trying to toughen up my language), Eddie Mars, took him and his baggy brown suit hit man, Mr. C, down hard, no mercy, just because he liked an old guy ,a rich old guy, a general who must have been a general in the Civil War to hear Marlowe tell how he went up the big house in Santa Rosa out in the slumming streets of California to meet the old cuss and he looked that ancient. But liked him (and his liquor and cigars), didn’t like the idea of Eddie Mars turning the general’s wild-eyed, dope-filled younger daughter into a whore turning tricks for the casino clientele to pay off her gambling losses, or that is the story the equally wild-eyed (in his day) general told Marlowe. Didn’t like either the older daughter, a femme if there ever was one, long and leggy too, long and leggy and had Marlowe smacking his lips, paying sweet boy Eddie hush money so the general would not find out his youngest was whoring around town. (To no avail since the general had no illusions about his daughters including the older one who had a dope problem to go along with the hush money and long legs. Furthermore had his own intelligence about what was going on in the world, his world anyway. How do you think he got that hilltop ocean view place in Santa Rosa in the first place). 

Yeah, Marlowe didn’t like Mars and his rough brown suit boy with the snarl who for kicks smacked a little guy, a straight up little guy, trying to earn a living, trying to take care of his girl, dead when he clammed up and Eddie didn’t like guys who clammed up when he wanted answers. Marlowe put that one front and center when he had his set up working. Mr. C. bought his out in the valley with a couple right between the eyes, just like a .38 ought to. They found Eddie nailed to a door after a hail of bullets found their way to him when Marlowe played “chicken” with him. Justice, rough-hewn justice, but justice in this wicked old world. Damn though I never did find out whether Marlowe made that older leggy daughter or he was just left to hang and dry after that family used him up, used him up like dishcloth.                 

Or what about that time he went to bat for a guy, a writer, a writer who had writer’s block but worse, the DTs, had to dry out or get pickled. The writer, a big burly guy who reminded me of Sterling Hayden the old good-looking tough guy weight-thrower from the 1950s B-films, had women problems. Or rather a woman problem, his wife, his young wife so he should have expected trouble, running around with a gambler, a gambler who owed everybody in town, meaning every bookie, and who had him tied up in knots. Marlowe like that writer too, wanted to see him get out from under, see him get out from under even though that gambler was an old drinking buddy of his when he worked Hollywood almost exclusively. But as happens more than you think that buddy got waylaid by that wayward writer’s wife and turned mean on Marlowe, tried to do an end-around, tried to get out from under that pile of debts on Marlowe’s dime. No a good idea brother, not a good bet (no wonder he was desperately in hock) and you might have read, read a while back now where one well-known Los Angeles sportsman was found face down in Sonora in Mexico with two .38s in him. Marlowe always carried a .38.   

So no question Marlowe was a rough and ready guy, no holds barred, but also no holes in his code of honor, at least in his younger days. But like a lot of guys, a lot of guys who take on other people’s troubles for cheap dough (and expenses) our boy, although still tough, got tired, no, maybe got weary and wary is better and so some corners got cut by him over time. 

[Reality check-one: Although there is a fairly straight line that joins the seven Philip Marlowe crime novels written by Raymond Chandler over a span of about twenty years from his grisly windmill-chaser youth to his tired out world weary and wary private detective in the 1950s that is not true of the various Marlowes in the film adaptations of Chandler’s works. Of course when one thinks of the classic Philip Marlowe then the name of the tough as nails, no nonsense, grabbing rough justice wherever he can no matter the price Humphrey Bogart in the film The Big Sleep automatically comes to mind. Like I said old Eddie Mars paid the price for not knowing that bit of wisdom. Other have been suave like Robert Young in the 1940s The Lady in the Lake, gritty like James Garner in 1960s Little Sister and Eliot Gould as ultra-cool and cynical in the 1970s The Long Goodbye. So there are many Marlowes to choose from.]

The one that takes the cake though, the case, the one when Marlowe was still kind of young but wasn’t chasing as many windmills so much as trying like hell to find some dame with some dough to help him get out from under, keep the damn bill-collectors away and stop chasing other people’s dreams. Let him walk on easy street like that lucky stiff Nick Charles, another private dick whose bacon he saved many times up in Frisco town when Nick would jammed up on a case, maybe a missing person’s case that had him scratching his head but which was a walk in the park for Marlowe, who latched on to some lumber king’s daughter from Portland (Oregon, okay) because he helped her out of a jam one time, some stolen jewelry she wanted recovered without dear old dad knowing, and she though he was cute. Jesus. 

[Reality check-two: Sometimes Hollywood, and Marlowe did plenty of work there keeping tramp starlets, wayward mistresses, errant sons and daughters, hysterical wives, blackmailers, drifters, grifters and midnight shifters under wraps, under wraps tight and out of the glare of headlines which is all the studio bosses cared about especially when some high-budget picture was ready to go public, got Raymond Chandler, hell, got one Philip Marlowe all balled up with a too complex story line or changing stuff so it would be cute to the teenage girls who populated the theaters during the war (World War II, for those asking). Take the film, Murder, My Sweet, that beauty was based a little loosely, maybe too loosely on the dialogue and plot, on Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely with old song and dance man Dick Powell playing the role of Marlowe somewhere between the pretty boy next door and the stand- up guy ready to take the fall for the client, if only the client, or clients, would level with him just once.] 

Yeah so a little washed out Marlowe was looking for easy street and thought he had, thought that Velma was his ticket home. Thought that Mrs. Marlowe had not raised any fool. Well some things go awry in this wicked old world even for tough guy private dicks. See this Velma was private property to some old Mayfair swell by the time he got to her. The swell (no names, okay because a studio boss told Marlowe to keep a lid on the thing after everything exploded) liked pretty young women and Velma was that and, well, having been a dime a dance girl, or worse, it wasn’t always clear when she told her story or who she told it to was nothing but a gold-digger. Still the swell didn’t get flustered as long as she stayed his trophy wife. Problem was that Velma was spoiled goods, had a big lug, a big mountain of a man Moose, Moose Malone, looking for her after she hadn’t written in six years. Yeah, Moose had bad, had that prison white pallor that Marlowe recognized every time a guy came around who had done a serious stretch in stir. So Moose hired Marlowe to find his Velma.       

There was not enough money in hell for what Marlowe went through for his client once he latched onto the idea he was a right gee. Somebody was trying hard to keep the lid on Velma, her past, and her whereabouts and so before it was over Marlowe got kicked around, got beaten a few times with a blackjack, got drugged, got dragged, got trampled, maybe even got stapled before he got to Velma. So he was in just the right mood to listen to her proposition, to listen to the easy streets singing in his head. Scratch one Moose Malone, scratch one Mayfair swell, maybe scratch a few other guys who knew too much about her, about her past and she was all his. Yeah, Velma was a piece of work.  She, as usual for what Marlowe figures out later, sealed that deal with a little tussle under the silk sheets and Marlowe bought in, bought in like some puppy dog. But see Velma wasn’t on the level. She was the finger who turned Moose in for that eight year stretch, she is the one who so enraged that Mayfair swell that he was ready to go up against the Moose one on one, she was the one who wanted all the swell’s dough for herself and left Marlowe to take the fall, take the big step off up at Q. And he would have too if Moose hadn’t done her in. Jesus all for coffee and cruller money (and expenses). Double Jesus.      

[Reality check-four: But see that is where all Marlowes are equal-they don’t give up the ghost until there is a little rough justice in this wicked old world. Even if as here the bullets fly fast and furious at the end with no obvious winners.]