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."