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.