Philip Marlowe

Philip Marlowe is a character from Raymond Chandler . He first appears in a few short stories and later in Chandler's seven novels. In the film adaptations of the novels he was u. a. Played by Robert Mitchum , Elliott Gould , James Garner and James Caan . Best known is the embodiment by Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (English title: Dead sleep tight ).

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With Philip Marlowe, Chandler created the prototype of the private detective , which many later writers took as a model for their characters. Marlowe is a private detective who tries to live by his own moral code in a world devoid of morals and principles. He lives in Los Angeles . In the midst of a corrupt environment, Marlowe tries - with a few "allies" - to preserve his moral integrity and not court the ruling power. His interpretation of right and wrong does not always follow the law; so he lets run a little crook who has aroused his pity. Financial successes in his work do not mean much to him, so he is often quite short of money himself.

In the first novel in which Philip Marlowe appears ( The Big Sleep , English title: " The Big Sleep "), he is 33 years old. He keeps that age in all novels without making it a theme. Marlowe attended college and worked as an investigator for the district attorney but was fired for failing to order . It is relatively sturdy and is roughly described as follows: No visible scars. Hair dark brown, a little gray. Eyes brown. Height 184 cm, weight about 190 “pounds” (about 86 kg; the long farewell ). Philip Marlowe smokes a pipe and cigarettes and prefers to drink bourbon whiskey . He likes to play old chess games and solve chess problems.

Marlowe is the prototype of the tough, incorruptible and yet sentimental loner. Serious relationships with women are limited to the last two novels. In the unfinished novel Poodle Springs , he marries the daughter of a multi-millionaire and yet remains true to his style: “I'm a romantic ... I sometimes hear screams at night and then I go see what's going on. You don't earn a penny doing this. When you still have your five senses together, you close the window and turn the television up. "( The long farewell )

Novels

Raymond Chandler has assembled many of his Philip Marlowe novels from previously published short stories, for example Farewell, my Lovely emerged from the three short stories Mandarin's Jade , The Man Who Liked Dogs and Try the Girl , published in 1936/37 . The complex, often confusing plot of the novels also results from this working technique.

• 1939: The Big Sleep
• 1940: Farewell, My Lovely
• 1942: The High Window
• 1943: The Lady In The Lake
• 1949: The Little Sister
• 1953: The Long Good-bye
• 1958: Spiel im Dunkel (Playback)
• 1989: Lonely Class (fragment completed by Robert B. Parker ; Poodle Springs )
• 1991: The Dead Don't Dream (Authorized novel by Robert B. Parker ; Perchance to Dream )
• 2014: The blonde with black eyes. (Authorized novel by Benjamin Black ; The Black-Eyed Blonde )

Film adaptations

Almost all Philip Marlowe novels have been adapted for cinema and television :

Novel	Movie title	Original title	year	Philip Marlowe played by	German voice actor
Farewell my darling	Murder, my sweet	Murder, my sweet	1944	Dick Powell	Klaus Kindler
The great sleep	Dead are fast asleep	The Big Sleep	1946	Humphrey Bogart	Arnold Marquis
The dead in the lake	The lady in the lake	Lady in the Lake	1947	Robert Montgomery	Gert Günther Hoffmann
The high window	(no German version)	The Brasher Doubloon	1947	George Montgomery
The little sister	The third in ambush	Marlowe	1969	James Garner	Michael Chevalier
The long farewell	There is no return for death	The Long Goodbye	1973	Elliott Gould	Klaus Kindler
Farewell my darling	Go to hell darling	Farewell, My Lovely	1975	Robert Mitchum	Alexander Kerst
The great sleep	The dead sleep better	The Big Sleep	1978	Robert Mitchum	Alexander Kerst
Lonely class	Philip Marlowe - Poodle Springs	Poodle Springs	1998	James Caan	Reinhard Brock

In the first episode of the TV series Climax! was Dick Powell to see again as Marlowe. This time in The Long Goodbye , a live production made famous by a faux pas when actor Tristram Coffin, who portrayed a corpse covered with a cloth, left the stage, although he was still in the picture as he thought his scene is already over.

Between 1959 and 1960 another television series was broadcast in the USA, in which Philip Carey played the detective and consisted of a total of 26 adventures based on Raymond Chandler's model. There was a short-lived second attempt to implement Philip Marlowe in a TV series only in the early 80s: the series Philip Marlowe. Private Eye, with Powers Boothe in the title role, was canceled after only five episodes broadcast in 1983. In 1986, six remaining episodes were broadcast.

There are also two movies that at first glance have nothing to do with Philip Marlowe:

• On the one Time to Kill I. Herbert Leeds (1942), which on the novel The High Window (The high window) is based, in which the main character but from that time popular cinema detective character Michael Shayne (played by Lloyd Nolan ) in place of Philip Marlowe. This was the last of seven Shayne films with Lloyd Nolan that appeared between 1940 and 1942. In 1946 and 1947 the series was continued with Hugh Beaumont in the lead role and five other films before a TV adaptation with Richard Denning came in 1960/1961 , which was also shown in Germany under the title Ein Fall für Michael Shayne .
• The other is The Falcon Takes Over by Irving Reis , based on the book Farewell, My Lovely , which was released in theaters that same year and is the third of a total of four films in the Gay Lawrence series with George Sanders .

These films are particularly important in the Marlowe context because they were the first two film adaptations after the Marlowe books, even if the detective operated under a different name for reasons of series-related continuity. Apart from these examples, one also used the name Philip Marlowe in an episode of the series Fallen Angels , where Danny Glover, a black actor, slipped into the role of the detective.

The last two films in which Philip Marlowe stars as the main character are a Czech crime comedy from 2003 ( Mazaný Filip with Tomáš Hanák ) and an American television film from 2007 ( Marlowe with Jason O'Mara). Playback is thus the only Marlowe novel that was never officially filmed, whereby Lady in the Lake only exists in the feature film version that takes getting used to, filmed from Marlowe's point of view, in which the actor, apart from the harmonious final frame of the entire film, only exists can then see when it is reflected (see point-of-view shot ).

radio

The first exclusive radio Marlowe was Hollywood star Van Heflin , who set the character to music from June 17 to September 9, 1947 in the NBC series The New Adventures of Philip Marlowe . On January 10, 1948, Marlowe also had his first appearance for CBS , where he was voiced by Robert Montgomery when he met Dashiell Hammett's similar character Sam Spade (the most classic film embodiment of both characters is Humphrey Bogart ) . Montgomery was the only actor who played Marlowe in both an exclusively produced radio show and in a film (the films Murder My Sweet with Dick Powell and Lady in the Lake with Montgomery were, however, also played in audio versions on the radio) .

The longest-running US Marlowe series on the radio started on September 26, 1948. For almost three years, until September 15, 1951, Gerald Mohr was the private detective in The Adventures of Philip Marlowe . Studio was again CBS. The last and longest Marlowe radio version to date took its course 29 years after the start of this CBS production: From September 26, 1977 to September 23, 1988, Ed Bishop played the role for the British broadcaster BBC .

In 2011 the novels were again produced as radio plays by the BBC. Toby Stephens played Marlowe.

Between 1969 and 1999 , Hermann Naber edited short stories and Chandler's novels as a radio play for German radio . Arnold Marquis ( "The Pencil" , 1973), Hilmar Thate ( "Controlled Game" , 1991) and Matthias Habich ( "The Long Farewell" , 1997) played as Philip Marlowe .

Adaptations and homages

The radio play series The Hair-raising Cases of Philip Maloney by Roger Graf is designed as a parody and homage to the character of Philip Marlowe. The series has been broadcast every Sunday since 1989 on the Swiss radio station DRS 3 and is available on CDs. By November 2011, 353 regular episodes had appeared.

In his song Find You Mabel , Heinz Rudolf Kunze alludes to a job that Marlowe does on the side in The Long Farewell . Marlowe is assigned by a man to find a woman who is with him only because of the money. The song says: "Marlowe, I beg you, Marlowe, you will find Mabel."

Individual evidence

1. ↑ BBC Radio 4: Classic Chandler
2. ↑ Hördat
3. ↑ The long farewell . Diogenes-Verlag, 1975, pp. 159-163