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.