NAME: Samuel Osagie COURSE: Film Noir TUTOR: Chris Hughes ASSIGNMENT TITLE: Raymond Chandler DATE: 6-3-2009 RAYMOND CHANDLER: THE MASTER OF MYSTERY FICTION Raymond Thornton Chandler was one of the precursors of hard-boiled crime writers, and also one of the foremost authors of mystery fiction of the twentieth century. “He took the raw, realistic intrigue style that Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and others had begun cooking up in Post-World War I America, and gave it an artistic bent, filling his fiction with evocative metaphors and sentences that refuse to shed their cleverness with age [‘It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stainless glass window’, ‘she sat in front of her Princess dresser trying to paint the suitcases out from under her eyes’]” (http: //www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/chandler.html – accessed 2/3/2009). He is renowned for his tough, wise-cracking, half-cynical, half-romantic, first-person narrator-detective, Philip Marlowe. The name, Philip Marlowe, originated from the 16th century English writer Christopher Marlowe, who had a violent temper. His most famous target in much quoted essay The Simple Art of Murder (1944) was A.A. Milne‘s The Red House Mystery. "In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man." (From The Simple Art of Murder) . Chandler was born on July 23rd, 1888 in Illinois, Chicago, but moved with his mother, Florence, to England in 1895, after she divorced Raymond’s father, who was a Civil Engineer obsessed with alcohol. Raymond Chandler studied international law in Paris and Munich after he finished from Dulwich College in London. He later returned to Britain where he started his literary career. He started by writing poetry, and he manage to publish 27 of his early poems, before he returned to the United States in 1912, where he attempted various jobs including working as a bookkeeper for a Cemetery in Los Angeles. But he was unsuccessful in all these. 1 NAME: Samuel Osagie COURSE: Film Noir TUTOR: Chris Hughes ASSIGNMENT TITLE: Raymond Chandler DATE: 6-3-2009 During the World War I, Chandler served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1917 and was sent to the French frontlines. He was transferred to England to undergo flight training in the Royal Air Force in 1918-19. Chandler returned to Los Angeles in 1924 to meet his mother, where he met Pearl Cecily Halburt, an 18 year old (twice married and divorced) woman, whom he got married to. While in America, Chandler worked in a bank in San Francisco, he also worked as a Journalist for the Daily Express, and after then he became a bookkeeper and auditor for Southern California Oil Syndicate from 1922 to 1932, before he was fired from the company as a result of his misdemeanour (drinking and absenteeism) in the office. After Chandler lost his job during the Great Depression, he began writing stories for Black Mask Magazine. “At the age of forty- five, with the support of his wife, Chandler devoted himself entirely to writing. He prepared himself for his first submission by carefully studying Erle Stanley Gardner and other representatives of pulp fiction, and spent five months writing his first story, 'Blackmailers Don't Shoot.' It appeared in December 1933 in Black Mask, the foremost among magazines publishing in the hard-boiled school” (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rchandle.htm). "The pebbled glass door pane is lettered in flaked black paint: 'Philip Marlowe... Investigations.' It is a reasonably shabby door at the end of a reasonably shabby corridor in the sort of building that was new about the year the all-tile bathroom became the basis of civilization. The door is locked, but next to it is another door with the same legend which is not locked. Come on in - there is nobody in here but me and a big bluebottle. But not if you're from Manhattan, Kansas." (From The Little Sister, 1949) Between 1933 and 1939, Chandler wrote a total of nineteen pulp stories, eleven of the stories were published in Black Mask Magazine; seven were published in Dime Detective, and one in Detective Fiction Weekly. In his debut novel, The Big Sleep (1939) was written out of his 2 NAME: Samuel Osagie COURSE: Film Noir TUTOR: Chris Hughes ASSIGNMENT TITLE: Raymond Chandler DATE: 6-3-2009 fourth published story, 'Killer in the Rain,’. The story introduced a 38-year-old Private Detective called Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is a hard-boiled private detective, a smart and tough lone wolf with a sense of honor. Gumshoe the mean streets of Los Angeles in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. He is on the trail of mobsters, hoods, femme fatales, killers, liars, drunks, crooked police and anyone else looking for a short cut to the American Dream. He solve mystery in his own terms. He is betrayed by his friends, women, and lying clients, but he is always quick with wisecracks. (MacShane, F., 1986) In 1940, Chandler wrote another novel- Farewell, My Lovely. It was the second series of Philip Marlowe’s story. In this story, Marlowe searches for an ex-convict, Moose Malloy, and a missing girl friend, Velma Valento. Velma is described by Moose as “cute as lace pants,” and during his investigation Marlowe deals with Los Angeles' gambling circuit, a murder, and three potentially deadly women. Manchester Guardian's critic found the writing "often picturesque and vivid, though often, too, incomprehensible to the mere Englishman". His third novel, The High Window (1942), Chandler considered his worst. It was written at the same time as The Lady In The Lake (1943), Chandler’s continuing exploration of America's seamy and secret life finds a subject in an ambitious and amoral social climber who assumes a variety of identities to ensnare others in her schemes. The novel shows Chandler transforming the detective story into a striking critique of moral and social values... For Double Indemnity (1944), based on James M. Cain's novel from 1936, Chandler and the director Billy Wilder worked together. Wilder had many problems with the author who had his own view how to write a screenplay. After reading Chandler's first draft, Wilder said: “This is shit, Mr. Chandler.” The author smoke his pipe, did not open windows, and did not hide that he hated Hollywood. But Cain loved the film, saying: “It's the only picture I ever saw made from my books that had things in it I wish I had thought of”. (MacShane, F., 1986) The Little Sister (1949), which included the author's opinions about Hollywood, received negative reviews. The story opens in the usual way: "'Is this Mr Marlowe, the detective?' It was a small, rather hurried, little-girlish voice. I said it was Mr Marlowe, the detective. 'How much you charge for your services, Mr Marlowe?'" The sixth novel in the series, THE LONG GOODBYE (1953), has been admired by many critics. Marlowe's long and complicated investigation begins when he helps Terry Lennox, sitting drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith. 3 NAME: Samuel Osagie COURSE: Film Noir TUTOR: Chris Hughes ASSIGNMENT TITLE: Raymond Chandler DATE: 6-3-2009 Marlowe's willingness to forgive in his own way his friends, who have betrayed him, differs completely from the attitude of Mike Hammer, who is ready to kill and never turns his other cheek. In the end Marlowe tells Terry: "You're a very sweet guy in a lot of ways. I'm not judging you. I never did. It is just that you're not here anymore. You're long gone. You’ve got nice clothes and perfume and you're as elegant as a fifty-dollar whore." Chandler lost his wife in 1954 and was devastated. He later sailed to England and met Jessica Tyndale, a banker, on board, and they became close. Chandler's last finished novel was Playback, appeared in 1958. It was originally written as a screenplay. In the story Marlowe renews his affair with Linda Loring, who made her first appearance in The Long Goodbye. Short Story by Raymond Chandler: “Blackmailers Don't Shoot" (December 1933, Black Mask; Mallory) “Smart-Aleck Kill" (July 1934, Black Mask; Mallory) “Finger Man" (October 1934, Black Mask; Carmady) “Killer in the Rain" (January 1935, Black Mask; Carmady) “Nevada Gas" (June 1935, Black Mask) “Spanish Blood" (November 1935, Black Mask) “Guns at Cyrano's" (January 1936, Black Mask; Ted Malvern) “The Man Who Liked Dogs" (March 1936, Black Mask; Carmady) “Noon Street Nemesis" (May 30, 1936, Detective Fiction Weekly; AKA Pick-up on Noon Street) “Goldfish" (June 1936, Black Mask; Carmady) “The Curtain" (September 1936, Black Mask; Carmady) “Try the Girl" (January 1937, Black Mask; Carmady) “Mandarin's Jade" (November 1937, Dime Detective Magazine; John Dalmas) “Red Wind" (January 1938, Dime Detective Magazine; John Dalmas) “The King in Yellow" (Dime Detective Magazine, March 1938) “Bay City Blues" (June 1938; Dime Detective Magazine; John Dalmas) “The Lady in the Lake" (January 1939, Dime Detective Magazine; John Dalmas) “Pearls Are a Nuisance" (April 1939, Dime Detective Magazine, ) 4 NAME: Samuel Osagie COURSE: Film Noir TUTOR: Chris Hughes ASSIGNMENT TITLE: Raymond Chandler DATE: 6-3-2009 “Trouble Is My Business" (August 1939, Dime Detective Magazine; John Dalmas) “I'll Be Waiting" (October 14, 1939, Saturday Evening Post; Tony Resick) “The Bronze Door" (November 1939, Unknown Worlds) “No Crime in the Mountains" (September 1941, Detective Story; John Evans) “Professor Bingo's Snuff" (June-August 1951, Park East Magazine) “English Summer" (1957; first printed in 1976, The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler) Some of Chandler Quotes: "It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing.