Novelist Born 100 Years Ago

Raymond Chandler’s L.A. Joins in Celebrating Him

October 10, 1988

By PAUL FELDMAN, Times Staff Writer

Los
Angeles was founded by Spanish missionaries in the late 1700s. But some
believe that the idea of Los Angeles was not crystallized until 150
years later, by a Chicago-born, English-bred detective writer–Raymond
Chandler.

This year, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, the
literary world is paying tribute to Chandler, who so adeptly captured
the fading physical splendor of his adopted home’s canyons and
flatlands while slicing through its social underbelly with sword-like
similes.

In bookstores, a uniform soft-cover series of
Chandler’s seven novels, all featuring his sardonic but noble private
eye, Philip Marlowe, is newly available. So is a hard-cover collection
of 23 fresh Marlowe stories penned by leading contemporary writers.

Also
on the market is a lavishly illustrated $425 limited edition of "The
Big Sleep," a photographic volume of "Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles"
and a colorful $5 Chandler mystery map of the city, highlighting the
dozens of still-standing structures in which Marlowe stumbled upon
corpses, conferred with clients or was struck with saps.

Later
this week, an exhibit of Chandler’s personal correspondence will open
at the UCLA University Research Library, which along with Oxford
University houses one of two major collections of Chandler’s papers.

And
on Sunday, the UCLA Friends of English sponsored a centennial birthday
commemoration in Pacific Palisades, featuring some of the leading
lights of Los Angeles literature, including Roger L. Simon, Robert
Campbell, Kate Braverman, Eve Babitz and Carolyn See. More than 200
guests, many garbed in ’30s attire, listened to actor Walter Matthau
read a passage from "The Big Sleep," and author Wanda Coleman read a
poem she wrote in memory of Chandler titled "The Big Bleep."

All
of this for a shy, cranky, alcoholic former oil executive, who did not
complete his first novel until he was 51 and whose 1959 funeral in La
Jolla drew a mere 17 mourners.

"Raymond Chandler has lived
beyond his grave much better than most authors of his time," declared
detective novelist Simon, who heads the North America chapter of the
International Assn. of Crime Writers. "I think it’s pretty clear that
Chandler’s descriptions have become the official descriptions of Los
Angeles for the world, and his impact on writers inside and outside the
crime genre has been tremendous."

Said UCLA English Department
Chairman Daniel G. Calder: "Chandler created the idea of Los
Angeles–what it’s like, how it feels to be here. . . . Sort of a
paradox of great comfort and ease but corruption at the same time. A
spoiled paradise."

Love-Hate Relationship

Chandler’s
writings revealed an intense love-hate relationship with Los Angeles,
where he lived from 1912 to 1946, excluding a stint in the Canadian
Army during World War I.

At times, he displayed a wistful, affectionate attitude through Marlowe, one of America’s first great anti-heroes.

"I
used to like this town . . . a long time ago," Marlowe reflects in "The
Little Sister," published in 1949. "There were trees along Wilshire
Boulevard. Beverly Hills was a country town. Westwood was bare hills
and lots offering at eleven hundred dollars and no takers. Hollywood
was a bunch of frame houses on the inter-urban line. Los Angeles was
just a big, dry sunny place with ugly homes and no style, but
good-hearted and peaceful. It had the climate they just yap about now.
People used to sleep out on porches. Little groups who thought they
were intellectual used to call it the Athens of America. It wasn’t
that, but it wasn’t a neon-lighted slum, either."

Chandler’s ever-pithy dialogue was not always so romantic.

The
City of Angels, he once wrote, was in some senses "a mail-order city.
Everything in the catalogue you could get better somewhere else."

Hollywood
fared no better. "The making of a picture ought surely to be a rather
fascinating adventure," Chandler, who wrote five screenplays, stated in
a 1945 essay. "It is not; it is an endless contention of tawdry egos,
some of them powerful, almost all of them vociferous, and almost none
of them capable of anything much more creative than credit-stealing and
self-promotion."

Chandler would never have received a commission
from the local Chamber of Commerce. Yet with little question his work
cast a curious sense of glory on even the most seedy aspects of urban
life in Los Angeles and the human condition in general.

Appeal Described

"He made corruption and vice extremely
attractive," contends novelist/ critic See. "He made it so
glamorous–his hideous little boarding houses, those gambling boats.
You never think, ‘Oh, how disgusting!’ You think, ‘Gee, I wish I could
get on one of those gambling boats. I’d like to meet an ice-pick
murderer.’ "

Moreover, there were his terse, evocative
descriptions–of "wide shallow house(s) with rose color walls," of
"jacaranda trees beginning to bloom," and of "the violet light at the
top of Bullock’s green-tinged tower"–which have forever seared the Los
Angeles of the 1930s and ’40s into the nation’s consciousness.

"There’s
one street I call the Raymond Chandler Memorial Parkway-Colorado
Boulevard in Pasadena," notes novelist Babitz. "You get that strange
feeling of Raymond Chandler. It’s just sort of like decadent East Coast
gentility smashed up against the orange groves."

Chandler was an unlikely candidate to become the bard of Los Angeles.

Born
in Chicago on July, 23, 1888, he moved to London with his Irish-English
mother at age 7 after his father deserted the family. Upon his
graduation from college, Chandler sporadically sold poems and essays
before moving here in 1912. He labored briefly on an apricot ranch and
in a sporting goods shop before entering the oil business.

Chandler,
who changed addresses almost as often as a criminal on the lam,
eventually rose to the position of director for eight small,
independent oil firms. But he was fired during the Depression, at age
44.

Another Try at Writing

At that point, he made
a final stab at writing, seeking to emulate such contemporary
hard-boiled mystery novelists as Dashiell Hammett and Horace McCoy.
Chandler, who was married to a woman 17 years his senior, quickly sold
several short stories to the pulp magazines Black Mask and Dime
Detective. His first novel, "The Big Sleep," was published by Alfred A.
Knopf in 1939.

Throughout Chandler’s life, the detective genre was sneered at by the literary establishment.

"You
make Mr. Chandler sound like a very interesting detective story writer
indeed," New York Times chief book critic Orville Prescott wrote to a
Chandler devotee in 1943. "Unfortunately, I never have time to read
them, preoccupied as I am with books of more general interest."

Such
attitudes embittered Chandler, who believed, as the world eventually
would, that his work was far more than simple-minded entertainment.

In
a 1944 letter to the same fan, now stored in the UCLA collection,
Chandler railed, "Once in a while a detective story writer is treated
as a writer, but very seldom. . . . However well and expertly he writes
a mystery story, it will be treated in one paragraph (reviews) while a
column and a half of respectful attention will be given to any
fourth-rate, ill-constructed, mock-serious account of the life of a
bunch of cotton pickers in the deep south. The French are the only
people I know of who think about writing as writing. The Anglo-Saxons
think first of the subject matter, and second, if at all, of the
quality."

Plots Called Convoluted

Not that
Chandler’s writing was above criticism. Some have complained that his
range was limited or that his plots were far too convoluted.

For
example, during the filming of "The Big Sleep," which starred Humphrey
Bogart, director Howard Hawks sent a telegram to Chandler asking who
killed a certain character in the script. Chandler wired back, "I don’t
know."

"What that shows is that it doesn’t matter," contends
Hollywood author David Freeman. "The issue isn’t clarity of plot but
depth of character, the range of emotion and the sense of place. That’s
why we go back to Chandler over and over again."

During his
20-year career, Chandler completed seven Marlowe novels, including "The
Long Goodbye," "The Lady in the Lake" and "Farewell, My Lovely." Six
have been turned into movies, with Marlowe played by Bogart, Robert
Mitchum, James Garner and Elliott Gould.

With his acerbic wit,
the real-life Chandler was to some degree similar to his hero, Marlowe.
But in other ways, Chandler was far different from his intrepid
investigator: A retiring man, at times a near recluse, the
pipe-smoking, owlish Chandler exuded the air of a slightly batty
English professor.

Contemplated Suicide

After the
death of his wife, Cissy, in 1954, Chandler nearly disintegrated,
turning increasingly to alcohol, and frequently contemplating suicide.

When
he died on March 26, 1959, Chandler left a friend and literary agent,
Helga Greene, his entire estate, which amounted to $60,000 and any
future earnings from copyrights.

The rights, as it turned out, have proven extremely lucrative.

Although
no public figures are available, Chandler’s novels have remained steady
sellers, and four movies and a Marlowe TV series have been produced
since his death.

Plans are currently in the works, says film
agent Robert Bookman, for yet another Philip Marlowe film, this one
based on "Poodle Springs," a novel that Chandler failed to complete
before he died.

Note: To mark the 50th anniversary of Raymond Chandler’s death, the
Daily Mirror is revisiting some of The Times’ stories about his life and
influence. We invite the Daily Mirror’s readers to share their thoughts.