Blow Wind, Blow

Philip Marlowe, Private Eye. Season 2, Episode 6, "Red Wind" (1986)
Directed by Martin Lavut, Written by Jaron Summers

"Red Wind" is a seriously moody last episode for a seriously moody series. Something about the way the Santa Ana wind is blowing through feels oddly like an epic end for a routine detective story. It's rare for a detective story to get all philosophical about forces of nature, but here it is.

It was the kind of wind that makes things happen...crazy things...It was a night when you didn't know your friends and strangers look familiar. A night like this, the smartest thing to do is nothing...stay home...

And that's when Marlowe heads out on the street because trouble is his business, after all. Marlowe witnesses a shooting in a nearly empty bar and that brings out the cops--the familiar Lt. Yberra (Frank Pellegrino) who is junior partner to a dirty cop straight out of L.A. Confidential named Lt. Copernik (Maury Chaykin). Chaykin is brilliant as the clearly bad cop. He looks at a newspaper headline (Lindy Claims Luftwaffe Best) and says that Lindbergh has got things right. Nothing worse than a California Nazi sympathizer cop.
As you can imagine, he has a lot to say about Yberra and tacos.
The crux of the mystery involves the lovely Lola Barsley (Linda Griffiths) and a necklace.

Lola Barsley was up to her beautiful eyes in something.

Marlowe plays a game of chess with her as interrogation foreplay. Lola Barsley had class...maybe too much class?

Lola was the kind who would think twice before giving you the time of day--then she'd probably lie about it.

He sure knows a lot about Lola having just met her, and yet he's so right. And this is yet another political story with a big talking politician Frank Barsley (R.H. Thomson) whose idea of history is grand, very grand.

Barsley: A mistress is simply a...possession, like this house or my car or my wife. Anyone interferes with my rights of ownership...things happen.
Marlowe: You're even more charming in person than you are on radio.

He's a real charmer, alright. He ends up plugging his own wife in a shootout with Marlowe that lands him in his own grave, too. Poor Lola, she was in love with an aviator who gave her a string of pearls once.

And Lola just wanted her pearls back. She never knew they were fake. At least she died believing her fantasy, not knowing that her brave handsome flyer was just another cheap two-timer.

And that's the way the series ends...with Marlowe on the pier at Malibu tossing fake pearls into the ocean. Some folks get to believe in fantasies, and some get to know the seedy truth beneath it all. Pretty damn cynical way to look at the world, but then, that's the way it goes sometimes.
I can't say that this series lifts up my spirits, but it sure is some good storytelling. And sometimes it's a good idea to get a glimpse into the darkness that's underneath the surface. Sometimes it's a good idea to know the pearls are fake and that the aviator was just a bum, that the cop is a little dirty and that even the good cop can't do much more than blackmail the bad cop--which is an imperfect solution as far as these things go, and the politicians--well, we know they're up to no good no matter how the wind blows.

Trouble Is My Trouble

Philip Marlowe, Private Eye. Season 2, Episode 4. "Trouble Is My Business" (1986)
Directed by Robert Iscove, Written by Jeremy Hole

Sometimes all you need to make a classic detective story is a good title. With a title like "Trouble Is My Business" you've already won the day. It doesn't matter if your story ends up being about a carpet shampoo scam and a poodle named Mr. Humpylumps as long as you have a private detective worth his salt and you let the fists and lead fly at the right moments. And you need a woman who means to misbehave...you always need a woman like that. Harriet Huntress is a woman like that.

The very rich aren't the same as you and me--they're more scared.

Marlowe explores class in this episode. The very rich have every reason to be scared, because they know where their money came from and they know that there's often little more than inertia keeping the torches and pitchforks from them.
Marlowe may be getting his bread buttered by the very rich, but he has no illusions about them and he doesn't care to be any more involved with them than he has to be to make his way. Just look at how he describes the mansion he's been called to:

The dump was smaller than the White House, but not by much.

That mixture of awe and disdain--that's Karl Marlowe, Red P.I.
In this story Marlowe is called in by Anna Jeeter (Kate Reid) to keep Harriet Huntress (Jennifer Dale) away from her brother Henry's son Gerald. Henry (Ed McNamara) is an old dying man who is disappointed that Marlowe isn't a gentleman but he has to settle for what he can get because he and his sister are more worried that Gerald will just end up handing over his very large fortune to Harriet who they believe is not of the proper quality for them. Henry and Anna think Harriet is a tramp and that she's a shill for a mobster named Marty Estel who is owed 50K by Gerald. Gerald is a gambler, a very bad gambler. It seems to me already that Gerald is a twit who doesn't deserve a fortune and that Henry and Anna are grumpy old rich kids who probably made a fortune selling tins of rotten meat to General Pershing's Expeditionary Force. The very rich are different from you and me...they spend all their time calling people tramps and wearing dickies.

This episode features a chase scene, and I use that phrase guardedly because it's something else to see a couple of very old cars ambling about at speeds approaching 60 mph. It's just so quaint.
Harriet Huntress, meanwhile, lives at this swank place called the Milano and I can't decide which I'd want more, the apartment or Harriet.
Also featured in this episode is an obese investigator named Arbogast (Donald Moore) who knows a lot for a detective who looks like he's never left the dinner table he's set up as his office. The man manages to solve mysteries while just sitting and eating--brilliant.

I think my favorite thing about this story is how it's all about revenge (Harriet's father was a businessman who was ruined in 1929 and committed suicide and Henry Jeeter was practically responsible for it.) and I am especially fond of Harriet Huntress who is the strongest woman in any of these stories. This may be the best episode of the series, though you might try taking a sip of something every time Marlowe says "trouble is my business."
But the real meat of the story is the hatred that Anna Jeeter had for her brother Henry. It was serious enough that she had her own nephew killed and set up an elaborate plot that ends badly for her. Harriet, though, ends up a wealthy widow giving Marlowe a kiss to remember her by. That's the kind of trouble I could stand to do business with.

Marlowe: Not me, sweetheart. I don't have the clothes.
Harriet: I can buy you clothes.
Marlowe: Or the right manners.
Harriet: Oh, I like you better without 'em.
Marlowe: Or maybe I...just don't have the time.
Harriet: I'll drop you a check in the mail to pay you for your trouble.
Marlowe: Don't bother. Trouble is my...[She drives off.]

Oh, man, you didn't even get your signature line in. That's cold, Marlowe.
There's a beautiful sunset shot at the end here that's some of the finest cinematography in this series and it's a fittingly gloomy end for an episode where Marlowe lets the woman drive away leaving him poor and alone.

Maybe it would have lasted a few weeks, maybe a bit longer, but sooner or later I would have said the same goodbye. The lady had turned into one of the very rich and like the man said, they're very different from you and me.

Marlowe in Love

Philip Marlowe, Private Eye. Season 2, Episode 4. "Guns at Cyrano's" (1986)
Directed by Robert Iscove, Written by Jeremy Hole

You can't have a hard-boiled detective without a boxing story and here's the one we get. At the center of this story is a boxing champ named Duke Targo (Mark Humphrey) and where there's a boxer there's gotta be a dame.

Then I saw the girl and she made a difference. She just stood there cool as silk while the mugs around her beat each other's brains out.

The dame is Jean Adrian (played by the awesome Roxanne Hart) and she's so cool that she's hot. Even Marlowe falls for this one...hard. The mastermind behind this story is Benny Cyrano (Cec Linder) the man with the boxer in his pocket who's worried that his boxer will take a dive on the eve of a big win. (Or is he?) He's got a dumb bodyguard on the case and an albino assistant, but he still feels the need to hire Marlowe to help out. And that's enough to get Marlowe suspicious.

Why is it always boxing or horses in these stories? Why doesn't anyone ever fix a bowling match or a lacrosse game?

Cyrano: Ringside...take a girl.
Marlowe: She left town.
Cyrano: Take someone else's girl.

I like how you think, Benny Cyrano. Duke wins his match and escapes a shot from a gunman so he can enjoy a rendition of Sweet and Lowdown sung by Jean and her partner at Cyrano's club where some bullets go flying and Duke is accused of murder. (He's arrested by Lt. Angus and his eyebrows.)

I didn't want to let her go, but she had some plans that didn't include me. In this business you get to know when you're standing in your own way.

The plot for this story is a classic plan within a plan of double-blackmail and a dirty senator with a long lost daughter who turned out to be long since dead, but the senator didn't know that until his action had already been messed up. (There's a great moment of symbolism where Marlowe is holding up a gun and a stage light illuminating Cyrano and the Senator, quite literally exposing them to the light.)

Jean: It wasn't the money, you know. I just wanted to mess up his action. Guys like that think they own the world. They think they can get away with anything.

Marlowe likes this woman so much (she is so like him in her own way) that he asks her to stay in town. This is the first time I've ever seen Marlowe in love--and, of course she doesn't stick around. But if this is how she kisses goodbye she may be back to take another farewell or two.

Why not just stick around? It's not much worse than any other town.

And that's why Marlowe isn't working for the Chamber of Commerce or the Tourist B ureau. But lest you think that love has softened Marlowe, he throws one last cynical comment about the next boxing commissioner (4th in a year) and his promise to clean up the sport. And the everyman hero of this episode? Tony the bellhop (Angelo Rizacos) who was a good kid (maybe too good?) who just died because he was a fan of Duke Targo lucky (or unlucky) enough to get Marlowe's extra ticket to the fight. Another poor shmuck who only Marlowe will remember.

High Noon Street

Philip Marlowe, Private Eye. Season 2, Episode 3. "Pickup on Noon Street" (1986)
Directed by Robert Iscove, Written by Jeremy Hole & Murray Smith

Now I'm just really in the swing of this series and as I approach the midway point of this set I'm already getting nostalgic for this series, which is itself an exercise in nostalgia.

Noon Street...where strangers walk close together under the streetlights and you can feel the cold eyes that watch from shadowed doorways. Young hopefuls landed here from all over...stars in their eyes and empty pockets, heading for Hollywood, the American Dream. Most of them didn't get far before they found out the dream had a big sign on it that said "RESERVED"....

And that's why I don't live in Los Angeles...because there's only so much desperate desire that you can stand to watch before it wears down on you and turns you into a cold cynic, or a bitter crusty mook who doesn't care about dreams because you've seen the roach infested reality that most of those dreams end up in. Yeah, I guess there's just something about this Philip Marlowe series that really resonates with me.

Molly Jackson wasn't so lucky. She had ended up face down in the L.A. River. Nobody cared except a pal of mine named Jed Mason who ran the bus terminal diner.

Molly Jackson didn't have class like Lucky Landrey, but ended up the same kind of dead.

He'd given Molly a job when she hit town and he wanted to know why she died. That was easy...because she was pretty and alone and young enough to believe what anyone told her, even here in Hollywood.

Ah, another great story about the dark side of the California dream, what we might call the "un-American dream," the dream of easy money and stardom.
This episode features Robin Givens as Token Ware (yeah, her name's Token...how not okay is that?) a girl who thinks she's working her way to stardom by hawking cigarettes at the Juggernaut Club whose owner Trimmer Waltz (Al Waxman) (Trimmer? Seriously?) will make her a star because he knows the right people and says the right things.

Jed: You came all the way from Mississippi to sell matches.

I like Jed.

Marlowe: She's too young for Noon Street.
Jed: They grow up quick or not at all.

I really like Jed. He's a decent man working a decent job trying his best to help out folks along the way. He's the kind of guy who deserves that medal and the statue that the heroes get.
Anyhow, the story quickly develops into an investigation of a party girl prostitution racket that leads back to dirty washed up big time Hollywood stars who get their kicks the rough way and who keep their secrets even more roughly. I like the supporting performances by Ken Pogue (whose eyebrows deserve their own IMDB listing) as the cop Lt. Angus, a good cop and Kate Trotter as Irma Dean the press agent for Rupert Eaton (Christopher Newton), a fading if somewhat courtly star.

Marlowe: Thumb down, Eaton. In real life you could break your hand hittin' a guy that way.

There's a great brawling scene in a cathouse when Marlowe goes to rescue Token. And Marlowe nobly declines to take advantage of Token when he saves her and she offers herself up in gratitude, though Marlowe does monologue about his conflicted thoughts. Meanwhile, turns out the washed up star has at least a moment of nobility and shoots Trimmer. Token Ware gets on a bus out of Los Angeles and Jed's sister will give her a job in San Francisco. Happily ever after.

Who were we kidding? Token Ware would be back. The Big Dream doesn't die that easy.

And that's the sucker punch at the end. Yeah, you don't get easy victories in Chandlerland, and even the ones you win you can't win permanently. She'll be back. You can see it in her eyes when she's holding the wounded Rupert Eaton. It's depressing to think about too much, and yet so damned unsurprising.

Spanish Belle

Philip Marlowe, Private Eye. Season 2, Episode 2. "Spanish Blood" (1986)
Directed by Robert Iscove, Written by Jeremy Hole & George Markstein

People like their heroes squeaky clean. This was not always so. Homer knew the score. Odysseus was a real SOB when you think of it and his comrades were a bunch of first class assholes too. Trouble is, that thin layer of shiny gold leaf we put on those heroes doesn't often stand up when you scratch the surface, and that sepia tint of our memory doesn't like to be lit too brightly. Maybe the problem is that we look for heroes in the wrong places. For all our rhetorical love of decent working folk we never put up a statue of an ordinary mook. No, we have to have heroes and heroes have flaws, deadly flaws.

I'm not big on surprise parties as a rule...

In this episode Marlowe is on his way to a ten year anniversary party for his best friend (who happens to be married to his "best girl" Belle (Helen Shaver) which is a nicer way of saying that the girl of his dreams picked the other guy) but the party goes sour when Miguel Delaguerra, aka "Spanish" never shows up and then shows up dead in his office. It says a lot about Marlowe that his best friend is Spanish. (The Chandler short story this episode is based on wasn't a Marlowe story and the detective in that story is Delaguerra.) It may also say a lot about Marlowe that his Spanish friend was named Spanish. I wonder if they had a buddy named Frenchy.

At any rate, Marlowe doesn't hold it against Spanish and Belle that they got together, especially given that we've already seen the crummy one room cubbyhole he lives in and that Spanish and Belle's house is a lovely mansion. Belle chose well, it would seem.

Spanish said that he'd clean up City Hall and the voters were starting to like that idea. He was the only guy I knew with the guts and honesty to pull it off.

So right away we know where this story is going. Politics. Dirty politics. Spanish is a crusader looking to clean up the city. That's enough to get people killed most of the time. Throw in the fact that Spanish is Spanish taking on the Big White Man in City Hall and it's a wonder he got as far as he did, right?
But heroes are humans too and things can't be all that simple. So, what starts as a story about politics becomes (surprise, surprise) a story about sex. Power and wealth bring temptations and Spanish gave in to his temptations. You can guess how this went down with Belle when she found out, and thus Marlowe can't even get much in the way of widow rebound sex. Which is especially a shame since she looks especially great in that Spanish widow outfit. (It's weird to hear Belle call Marlowe "Philip." It's an effective indication of intimacy. Everybody else calls him "Marlowe.") Evidence of just how much people like their heroes is Lt. Yberra (Frank Pellegrino) the good cop who sees solving Delaguerra's murder as a crusade of his own for a fallen hero and a means of getting something back for his community's loss. You can see why Yberra would want to avenge Spanish when you get the pleasure of meeting the first class jerkwads who are running Los Angeles. Commissioner Drew (Mavor Moore) is an old jerk and his dirty cop police chief just looks like someone you wouldn't trust to look after your till while you went around the corner to unload a crate of bananas.

Commissioner Drew: That's the city attorney you're talking about, not some hoodlum.
Marlowe: There's a difference?

Marlowe's cynicism is well placed. And the big political boss? Big John Masters is played by John Vernon. You know things are bad when Dean Vernon Wormer is running your city. And that's why it's even more disappointing when you find out how Spanish actually died and why. Sure, there's a corrupt machine that was out to get Spanish, but he might have made it despite all that if he hadn't betrayed his wife. That's a good lesson for anyone shooting for the golden part of being a hero. Speaking of which, Marlowe does get the widow rebound sex after all when Belle shows up at his apartment and that's how we know he's still human and not some gold painted statue.

Big John Masters: Don't you see? It's personal to him, and that's dangerous.

This is one of my favorite episodes. It's got a little bit of everything, including a pool shark with the improbable name of Max Chill (David Bolt). Max Chill sounds like a failed name for a beverage company mascot. The key to the story seems to be Stella LaMotte (Michele Scarabelli) who is a perfect slightly dumb floozy in danger.

Stella: You look like a cop.
Marlowe: That's not nice.

Stella even gets to bum a smoke while she's dying. Now that's classy. Maybe too classy.
Marlowe puts together the pieces and even burns some incriminating pictures to save Spanish's reputation. Yeah, we need our heroes.

Nice and neat, ring around the rosie. I wanted it to be that way...wanted it bad. But that's not how the pieces fit together.

Sure, Marlowe does his part in putting together the legend, but Marlowe is Marlowe and he can't just leave it at that.

Here's to Stella for dying before she could say she didn't kill Spanish. She was used all her life, a murder rap won't mean much to her now.

Ouch. And see, this is what makes Marlowe a kind of hero. He's someone who has to have answers. And even when he's helped seal the deal on a myth, he still has his lines and his limits. He may watch as poor dead Stella takes the rap so that Spanish can be a hero for everyone and so that the living can make do with what the world they've got, but he doesn't have to like it. And that doesn't mean that he thinks Stella's life was worthless. There'll be one person out there, at least, who'll remember that poor dame, and that ain't much, but it's something.

Spanish, it turns out, was a little bit of a hero in the end, too. It turns out he used his dying moments to cover up the fact that Belle killed him. He saved his wife's life, even though she had just killed him. Not the kind heroic moment that gets a medal, but still, it's something.

Some men give their wives flowers or jewelry. Spanish gave his wife her freedom. I couldn't take it away from her, but I couldn't share it with her either.
All I could see when I looked at her was a woman I'd loved...who'd killed a good man.

So maybe Marlowe isn't the kind of hero whose statue gets put up in a park. No, Marlowe's the kind of everyday hero who cleans up after those heroes, who has to make a world that real people can keep living in after the heroes have done their bit. Do we need more of Marlowe or more of Spanish? Maybe a little of both. And maybe we don't need heroes, so much as people who can be occasionally heroic. You see, in the end, it shouldn't be about making a whole hero, but on looking for moments of heroism--those "dare to be great" situations that Lloyd Dobler talks about. But then, you can't put up a statue of a million moments of heroism, can you?

At any rate, I like this dark story.

Too Much Class

Philip Marlowe, Private Eye. Season 2, Episode 1. "Blackmailers Don’t Shoot" (1986)
Directed by Allan King, Written by Jesse Lasky Jr., Pat Silver & Jeremy Hole

Lucky Landrey may have been a crook, but he had class. Maybe too much.

"Blackmailers Don't Shoot" was Raymond Chandler's first original short story and was printed in Black Mask in December 1933.
The setup is that Marlowe has been hired by a gangster named Lucky Landry (Allan Royal) to keep an eye on an actress named Rhonda Farr (Melody Anderson, who was on Manimal) who is inconveniently engaged to producer David Bourne (Peter Dvorsky). Lucky and Rhonda had been together before she changed her name and made it big. Now she's a big star marrying for bigger money. But her husband to be is a tool and she's still got Lucky sending her flowers every day and now there's someone blackmailing her.

The first scene is on a film set for what looks like a terrible movie (China Gold), but there's a great false opening where you think you're in an Asian shack for a moment. Great theatricality. Anderson looks like a 1980s approximation of 1940. She's attractive, sure, but I think if Lucky Landrey had stopped by the film studio he might have switched his allegiances to Rhonda's personal assistant, Monique (Isabelle Mejias), even though she has the most ridiculously over the top French accent. I hope it's not her real accent, but it would be hilarious if it was. Then again, Lucky is a true romantic, a classic sentimental gangster. Rhonda is his true love, even if she marries that tool Bourne. Lucky wouldn't change his mind no matter what.
Marlowe poses as a blackmailer to see what's going on and meets Rhonda at Johnny Tango's place. You've got to love the names here: Lucky Landrey, Slippy Morgan, Johnny Tango...

Rhonda: Errol Flynn chases sixteen year olds and he's a Romeo. I date two guys in a row and I'm no good.

Johnny Tango (August Schellenberg) used to be partners with Lucky Landrey. Now all he's got is a club. Still not a bad deal.
Johnny: How low can you sink?
Marlowe: You tell me. You live there.

Slippy Morgan (Robert Morelli) is Rhonda's bodyguard, but he takes her hostage because there's something else is going on and he's at the center of it.

Slippy: Blackmailers don't shoot. Shootin's too straight for 'em.

Someone sends a slightly dirty cop named Macdonald (J. Winston Carroll) to shoot Marlowe. I call him slightly dirty, because he obviously doesn't shoot Marlowe, so he's not a terribly bad cop. For his trouble he gets killed later. Slippy Morgan turns out to be a creepy little stalker, a regular Norman Bates. And Lucky Landrey gets a massage from the hairiest bald man in the world. Maybe Lucky Landrey needed a little more class. I know this is a bit of nonsequitur, but it's the first time we see him in this thing and seriously, with all that money and he gets a rubdown from a bald gorilla? What is the man thinking? If there is such a thing as an "unhappy ending" in a massage, then it will be found here.

The exterior shots are gorgeous and the classic cars are a really nice touch and the shots set in the studio are really awesome. (There are extras in costume running around and having coffee and smoking. I think the Three Musketeers walked by at one point.) I have to say that it's easy to get sucked into this series. The music is sultry and, as expected, Powers Boothe delivers some excellent narration.

Lucky: You figured out where she was, you found her and then you let him take her away from you?
Marlowe: That's about the size of it.
Lucky: You call yourself a detective?
Marlowe: I've been calling myself a lot of things.

At any rate, it turns out the whole thing had been Johnny Tango's scheme to get even with Lucky Landrey for cutting him out of the business just when things got good. (It's not terribly well set up, but these things are sometimes better at atmosphere than plot.)
But Bourne sends Marlowe to the rendezvous with play money for the blackmailer and the whole thing goes sour. (SOB didn't even care enough to send real money to rescue her.) Lucky, though takes a real bullet trying to rescue Rhonda and dies. It's a romantic tragedy. She can't even muster a real emotion over that because Rhonda doesn't even care that Lucky died for her. Maybe she loved him once, or maybe she never loved anybody. We'll never know. She just keeps on with her loveless poser marriage because it means money and power and besides she can keep doing whatever and whoever she wants. Except Marlowe. Sure, Marlowe kissed her earlier (as they always do), but when it's all over and he sees how heartless Rhonda really is, he won't even indulge himself in a little pointless intercourse. Maybe Lucky wasn't the only romantic out there. Maybe even Marlowe needs the illusion of caring, a veneer of human warmth, to keep going. I can appreciate that. Marlowe is a realist living in a cutthroat cynical world. His goal may be looking out for number one as much as anyone else, but after that he's got some standards and a sense of honor. Maybe even a sense of romance. He's not fool enough to make the mistake Landrey made, but in a way he admires Lucky, the man who had real class and a real heart that could be broken.
Love...it'll get you laid out on a slab while the world moves merrily on.

See, all kinds of bitter life lessons are hidden in these neo-noir gems.
Next time...Episode 2, "Spanish Blood."

Hello, My Lovely

Philip Marlowe, Private Eye 1
Episodes Season 2 (1986)

If you think that HBO suddenly started creating good television with The Sopranos then you need to go back and see some of their early series like Philip Marlowe, because it turns out they were doing some good stuff all along. The first season of this show ran in 1983 and then the second season ran in 1986. I wish I had seen this way back in the day, but hey, better late than never. I don't know how this series slipped through the distribution cracks, but this set has popped up everywhere of late. The only problem is, it's labeled as Season 1, but is in fact the second season. (The real season 1 has become very difficult to track down.)

So, why the big deal about Philip Marlowe? Well, maybe because Raymond Chandler's character is quintessential to American identity. Frankly, I think that if you've never imagined walking around narrating your life in the past tense then you should be deported or at least stripped of your citizenship until you appreciate that favorite of detective story tropes. At any rate, there's nothing like a good hard-boiled mystery with a tough detective with an internal code who navigates the sleazy underbelly of a city. And in this case, the city is Los Angeles, which is itself something of a sleazy underbelly of the country.
Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Mike Hammer...Fletch. What can be more emblematic of Americana than a good old fashioned detective story?

I'm anxious to dive into this series because the character of Philip Marlowe is as iconic as Hamlet and I can't wait to see how these stories turn out. I realize I'm heading into it with abnormally high expectations, but I love the noir, even in color as it is here. And I have a good feeling about Powers Boothe's ability to narrate.