Seven Things to Know About Raymond Chandler (in his own words)

For this edition of Seven Things to Know, we selected some choice excerpts from Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, edited by Frank MacShane.

1. In a 1950 letter to his publisher, Raymond Chandler wrote: "I went to Hollywood in 1943 to work with Billy Wilder on  Double Indemnity. This was an agonizing experience and has probably shortened my life, but I learned from it as much about screen writing as I am capable of learning, which is not very much."

Martha Vickers.

2. On The Big Sleep: "(It has had) an unfortunate history. The girl who played the nymphy sister was so good she shattered Miss (Lauren) Bacall completely. So they cut the picture in such a way that all her best scenes were left out except one. The result made nonsense and Howard Hawks threatened to sue to restrain Warners from releasing the picture." (The actress who played the sister was Martha Vickers.)

3. On his Philip Marlowe novel The Lady in the Lake and the 1947 film adaptation: "This is the only published fiction of mine which I have tried to adapt for films. And it would take a lot of money to make me try again, and I don't think this kind of money would be paid me now from Hollywood. When a man has written a book and rewritten it and rewritten it, he has had enough of it."

4. On Strangers on a Train: "I'm still slaving away for Warners Brothers on this Hitchcock thing, which you may or may not have heard about. Some days I think it is fun and other days I think it damn foolishness....Suspense as an absolute quality has never seemed to me very important. At its best it is a secondary growth, and at its worst an attempt to make something out of nothing."

Farley Granger and Robert Walker in Strangers.

5. In a letter to Alfred Hitchcock about Strangers on a Train: "Regardless of whether or no my name appears on the screen among the credits, I'm not afraid that anybody will think I wrote this stuff. They'll know damn well I didn't. I shouldn't have minded in the least if you had produced a better script--believe me, I shouldn't. But if you wanted something written in skim milk, why on earth did you bother to come to me in the first place?"

6. On Agatha Christie's classic novel And Then There Were None: "As entertainment I liked the first half and the opening, in particular. The second half got pallid. But as an honest crime story, honest in the sense that the reader is given a square deal and the motivations and the mechanisms of the murders are sound--it is bunk."

7. After completing Playback, which turned out to be his seventh and final Marlowe novel, Chandler wrote about a potential eighth book: "My next book is to be laid in Palm Springs with Marlowe having a rather tough time getting along with his wife's ideas of how to live...Of course, I have to have a murder and some violence and some trouble with the cops. Marlowe wouldn't be Marlowe if he could get along with policemen." Chandler did, in fact, start on that novel, but died in 1959. Mystery writer Robert Parker completed it in 1989 and published it as Poodle Springs.

The Five Best Fred MacMurray Performances

A versatile performer in film and television for five decades, Fred MacMurray deserved more opportunities to display his acting talents. Still, when he got the chance to bite into a good role, he did so convincingly--whether it was in a Billy Wilder film noir or a Walt Disney family comedy. Below are our picks for his six best performances--yes, there's a tie for the fifth spot. Do you agree? Disagree? As always, all feedback is welcomed.

1. Double Indemnity - Fred gave a career-defining performance as the cynical protagonist of Billy Wilder's classic film noir. His insurance salesman is no fool; he realizes that Barbara Stanwyck's femme fatale is up to no good from their first meeting. However, he also knows that he can't resist her and thus is pulled into a web of deceit and murder. Amazingly, MacMurray keeps the audience from despising his character. His genuine friendship with nice guy Edward G. Robinson helps, as does the feeling that he knows he's doing wrong, but is powerless to do anything about it.

2. The Apartment - There is nothing redeeming about Jeff Sheldrake, a corporate executive that uses his position for personal gain, cheats on his wife, and lies to his mistress. MacMurray, reteaming with Billy Wilder, plays Sheldrake with a hard edge. The only time he displays what appears to be genuine emotion is when he tells his mistress that he's leaving his wife--and, of course, that turns out to be a ploy, too. Sheldrake is a jerk and Fred plays him beautifully.

3. Murder, He Says - I'm surprised this cult comedy hasn't gained a more mainstream reputation over the years. Fred plays a pollster trying to find a missing co-worker who was sent to interview the backwoods Fleagle clan (headed by matriarch Marjorie Main). MacMurray grounds the film as the bewildered hero plopped into a plot about hidden gold, murder, assumed identities, and a seemingly nonsensical song. He and Marjorie Main play off each other extremely well. They later appeared together in the more popular The Egg and I, which led to the Ma and Pa Kettle film series.

4. Remember the Night - Prior to Double Indemnity, Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck starred in this charming romance about a prosecutor and a shoplifter who fall in love over the Christmas holidays as she awaits trial. It's an unlikely premise, of course, but the two stars pull it off nicely and Preston Sturges' script carefully navigates through the film's more sentimental scenes. Though some people find the ending disappointing, I love it--primarily because it's true to MacMurray's character.

5. Quantez - The best of MacMurray's 1950s Westerns is a nifty character drama about an outlaw gang hiding out in a ghost town en route to Mexico. MacMurray's bandit, while the toughest and most rugged of the lot, is also the one least prone to condone violence. It's no surprise that he's harboring a secret past, but the way in which it's revealed is the highlight of this intriguing little picture.

5. The Absent-Minded Professor - Fred is perfectly cast as an (what else?) absent-minded college professor who gets so caught up with his experiments that he forgets his own wedding. Fortunately, his latest invention, Flubber, eventually saves the day. During the latter part of his career, Fred specialized in family films, often playing occasionally befuddled fathers in comedies like The Shaggy Dog and The Happiest Millionaire and on TV in My Three Sons. It's fascinating to watch him playing those parts with such ease after a recent viewing of Double Indemnity or The Apartment.

Honorable Mentions: The Caine Mutiny; Take a Letter, Darling; and Alice Adams.

3 on 3: Film Noir

Each week this month, the Cafe will present a "3 on 3 panel" in which three experts will answer three questions on a single classic film topic. This week, the Cafe poses three questions on film noir to: Gary Cahall from MovieFanFare!; Dorian from the blog Tales of the Easily Distracted; and Sheri Chinen Biesen, author of Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir.

1. What is your definition of a film noir and what film do you consider the prototype--the one that best exemplifies the genre?

Stanwyck and MacMurray in
Double Indemnity.

Gary: Film Noir is the accidental love child of German silent expressionist cinema and Warner Bros.’ 1930s crime dramas, raised in an atmosphere of World War II heroism and Cold War paranoia. Along with the requisite shadowy streets (big city or small town) and shadowy deeds (premeditated or accidental), a successful noir picture often has a protagonist who is walking the fine line between good and evil, and who--if it’s a male--is just as likely to kill or be killed by the female lead as he is to kiss her at the movie’s close. And no matter how many characters are in the film, the one constant presence is Fate.

I know it’s not the most daring of choices, but to me the picture that best captures these elements is director Billy Wilder’s 1944 thriller Double Indemnity, starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson. A seemingly smart guy in over his head, a seductive and amoral temptress, and a “fool-proof” murder plot that’s not as simple as it appears...all with whip-smart dialogue from Wilder and co-scripter Raymond Chandler, of Philip Marlowe fame.

Dorian: I’d define a film noir as a story in which the bleakest aspects of humanity keep trying to get the upper hand, and the protagonist(s) keep trying to thwart those aspects against all odds. Those “bleakest aspects” can range from one character’s problem to an overall tough situation affecting many characters.

Peter Lorre in Stranger on
the Third Floor.

Sheri: The antihero in Stranger on the Third Floor complains, “What a gloomy dump. Why don't they put in a bigger lamp?” Paul Schrader defines noir as “Hollywood films of the 1940s and early 1950s that portrayed the world of dark, slick city streets, crime and corruption.” Film noir is a series of atmospheric black-and-white wartime-postwar Hollywood crime films known for shadowy style, doomed antiheroes, lethal femme fatales and cynical hardboiled worldview. Literally, “black film” or “dark cinema,” film noir was coined in 1946 by French critics discovering dark wartime Hollywood films they were seeing for the first time. This dark film trend was recognized in the U.S. In my book Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir, I explain how wartime Hollywood blackouts and censorship influenced film noir. Double Indemnity is an exemplar of noir style.


2. If you had to single out one director that influenced film noir than any other, who would it be?

Gary: Austrian-born Fritz Lang, who presaged the noir style with such films as M and the Dr. Mabuse movies in Europe before fleeing to America when Hitler came to power. His first Hollywood project, the 1936 lynch mob drama Fury with Spencer Tracy, contained a number of noir sensibilities, as did his 1941 “let’s kill Hitler” thriller Man Hunt. Within the noir demimonde itself, Lang’s resume includes The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, The Big Heat, and a picture that’s my answer to question #3.

MacMurray and Robinson in
Wilder's classic film noir.

Dorian: Of all the talented directors who’ve influenced film noir, I’d single out Billy Wilder because of his gleefully jaundiced view of humanity. Even Wilder’s comedies have a strong undercurrent of cynicism, so it’s only natural that his dramas and suspense films would fit so well in the noir universe, including Sunset Boulevard (1950), Ace in the Hole (1951), and of course, my personal favorite, Double Indemnity (1944).

Sheri: So many fine noir directors. Tough choice. . . .While Fritz Lang is very important, as is Robert Siodmak, one of the most influential noir auteurs was émigré writer-director Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, Ace in the Hole).


3. What is your favorite underrated film noir, the one film that doesn't get the attention it should?

Gary: While the City Sleeps, a later (1956) genre entry that’s part “psycho killer” suspenser and part hard-boiled newspaper drama. A serial murderer dubbed “The Lipstick Killer” is preying on women in New York City, and Vincent Price, the ne’er-do-well son of a deceased media mogul, offers a promotion to whoever among his top newsmen can break the story and bring the maniac to justice. The suspense comes not so much from trying to guess the murderer’s identity (we see him “in action” before the opening credits), but from watching how far reporter Dana Andrews, photo editor James Craig, city editor Thomas Mitchell, and wire service head George Sanders will go—from office politicking and backstabbing to using their wives/girlfriends (Rhonda Fleming and Ida Lupino, among others) as “bait”—to win Price’s contest. Oh, and Lang clearly shows that one of the things driving the “mama’s boy” madman into his flights of homicidal rage is EC horror comics.

Dorian: I’ve always felt that Henry Hathaway’s The Dark Corner (1946) was an underrated noir. It covers so many classic tropes that it’s almost like “Film Noir’s Greatest Hits,” in a good way! One of the things I like most about it was Lucille Ball’s character Kathleen. She’s warm, loving, and practical, yet also strong and able to think on her feet and help save the day when hero Mark Stevens is up against it.

Elisha Cook, Jr. in Phantom Lady.

Sheri: Many underrated noir films. . . . Double Indemnity is more influential than many realize in spurring the film noir trend recognized in the U.S. film industry during the war. More modest early underrated noir include Stranger on the Third Floor and Phantom Lady (which needs to be released on DVD and Blu-Ray). Lang's Ministry of Fear is underrated with beautiful noir style shot during wartime blackouts just before Siodmak filmed Phantom Lady and Wilder shot Double Indemnity. Dead Reckoning, Out of the Past, Act of Violence and Tension are also great.

Double Indemnity: There Is No Insurance for Murder

When it comes to the ultimate femme fatale you need only think of one name: Phyllis Dietrichson. Many have tried to surpass her—many have failed. In her first unsympathetic villainess role, Barbara Stanwyck set the bar so high that you can’t even measure how short other actresses have fallen trying to be as good a femme fatale as she was in Double Indemnity (1944). One of the great travesties in Academy Award history is that Stanwyck, who was nominated four times for Best Actress, never won an Oscar. She was nominated for this film in 1944, but lost to Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. Many film critics believe this was a glaring oversight by the Academy, citing the outright nastiness and amoral nature of her character as the reason she was snubbed. Quite frankly, Hollywood wasn’t ready for Phyllis Dietrichson. And, when you think about it, who could ever be ready for such an evil force of nature?

Legendary auteur Billy Wilder directed this penultimate film noir, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography (black and white), Best Sound, and Best Score. It won none. Perhaps a film about an adulterous murder plot to collect insurance money was just too much for a country at war.

With the help of the great detective novelist Raymond Chandler, Wilder adapted the James M. Cain novella Three of a Kind into one of the greatest screenplays of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Chandler and Wilder’s dialogue is searing and sharp and the overall storyline is a taut, thrilling ride down a boulevard of betrayal. In a film noir staple, the film is told in the past tense, via voiceover. The story involves a very unsatisfied (I suspect mostly in the Biblical sense) housewife (Stanwyck) and an easily enticed insurance salesman. While carrying on a licentious affair, the couple kill the husband to claim a double indemnity clause in his accidental death policy. What follows the murder is suspicion, guilt, double-crosses and bullets.

Aided by the deft cinematography of John Seitz (whom Wilder worked with on several films), Wilder captured the unseemly nature of Hollywood, incorporating several locales into the film—most notably the Hollywood Bowl and the Glendale train station. Roger Ebert has said that Seitz’s photography in this film “helped develop the noir style of sharp-edged shadows and shots, strange angles and lonely settings." Countless “venetian blind” shots are used.

The film opens with injured, Pacific All-Risk Insurance Company salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray in a rare bad-guy role) staggering into the company’s building one early Los Angeles morning to record, via Dictaphone, how and why he committed the “perfect crime” for a woman wearing blonde bangs, honeysuckle perfume and an anklet. It all started innocently enough when he accidentally met bored housewife Phyllis Dietrichson at her faux-Spanish mansion while stopping by to get her husband to renew his car insurance. In one of the more memorable film entrances, Stanwyck enters the screen wearing only a towel and a flirtatious smile. When she emerges next to “properly” meet Neff she’s wearing a revealing dress and her signature anklet. For those of you who don’t know, the old theory was that women who wore anklets were loose women. Her use of her legs as a diversionary tactic in this scene is something that Sharon Stone would use in Basic Instinct—of course Stanwyck was wearing panties…I hope. A double-entendre conversation ensues between them about speeding cars, where Neff makes it clear he’s interested in insuring he sees her again. That is soon arranged, as Phyllis asks him to come back the next evening to speak to her husband about the policy.

Later that day Neff introduces us to by-the-book claims investigator Baton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), a man consumed with getting every detail right and uncovering shady insurance claims. (Keyes is the man for whom Neff is recording his crimes.) While in his office, Phyllis calls and changes their appointment for the next afternoon. Strangely enough when he arrives the next day, Mr. Dietrichson (Tom Powers) is not at home again and it’s the maid’s day off. In addition, Phyllis seems very concerned about the dangerous nature of her husband’s work (he spends a lot of time in his oil fields). So much so, that she asks about buying an accident policy without her husband knowing about it. Shocked by the suggestion and angry that she thought he was so stupid that he couldn’t see what she was planning, Walter huffily walks out on the blonde bombshell.

Yet, later that night when he finds Phyllis standing in his doorway (returning a hat she doesn’t seem to have) he doesn’t exactly slam the door in her face. Perhaps it was the clingy sweater she was wearing, or even the scent of wafting honeysuckle in the air. After explaining she doesn’t want him to get the wrong impression about her and that her life with Mr. Dietrichson is horrible, Walter grabs her and plants a “red-hot” kiss on her lips. Later, Phyllis explains that she often fantasizes about killing her husband with carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage. To Neff there are three bonuses to this plan: $1000,000, beating the insurance game, and having Phyllis all to himself. Presumably after they have consummated their newfound relationship (he smokes a cigarette and she reapplies her makeup), Neff agrees to help her kill her husband and make it look like an accident, but everything had to be “straight down the line” as he doesn’t want there to be any mistakes for Keyes to find.

A few days later Neff arrives at the Dietrichson house to have Mr. Dietrichson renew his auto insurance policy. Leading the unknowing husband to believe he must sign duplicate forms, Neff gets him to sign his own death warrant. The next part of the plan concerns having Mr. Dietrichson take the train instead of his car on his next trip to Stanford. The double indemnity clause pays twice as much for a death that occurs on a train. They use the local grocery store as their clandestine meeting place to plan their crime. A monkey wrench is thrown into their plan when Mr. Dietrichson breaks his leg, but only temporarily. When Mr. Dietrichson decides to take his trip after all, using crutches to get around, Neff and Phyllis hatch a plan where he takes the place of the injured husband on the train. Disguised as the soon- to-be dead husband, Neff hides in the back of the Dietrichson car while Phyllis drives Mr. Dietrichson to the Glendale train station. When she honks the horn three times he pops up from the back seat and breaks the husband’s neck. While the murder isn’t shown on screen, Wilder uses a close-up of the unflinching face of Phyllis staring straight ahead as her husband is being murdered on the seat beside her to convey the vileness of the murder. Taking the husband’s place on the train, Neff later jumps from the train when it slows down and he and Phyllis put Mr. Dietrichson’s body on the tracks. Now they just had to wait.

Although the police don’t suspect foul play, the insurance company wants to investigate to see if they can get out of paying the double indemnity clause. Keyes is assigned the case and told by the company president that they want him to find out if Mr. Dietrichson killed himself. In a meeting with Phyllis, the company president explains the situation and offers to make a smaller settlement to her. Pretending to be unaware of the policy, Phyllis feigns fury and storms out. Meanwhile, Keyes doesn’t think suicide by slow-moving train is very likely and tells Neff that the case seems like a legitimate one.

Later, with Phyllis on her way to his apartment, Neff opens the door and finds Keyes. Something just popped into his head about the case: why hadn’t Mr.Dietrichson filed an accident claim when he broke his leg? Perhaps, Keyes believes, because he didn’t know about the policy but that Phyllis did. Luckily for the dastardly duo Phyllis can overhear Keyes from the hallway and she hides behind the door until he leaves. Cracks begin to appear in their relationship as Phyllis is angry that Neff suggests they not see each other while the investigation is taking place. In addition, Mr. Dietrichson’s daughter, Lola (Jean Heather), suggests to Neff that Phyllis not only killed her father but her own mother as well when she was her nurse. Oh, and by the way, step-mommy is sleeping with her ex-boyfriend, Zachetti (Byron Barr), as well. Feeling sorry for the girl and wanting to keep her quiet, Neff begins spending time with her as a substitute for Phyllis.

After putting the pieces of his investigation together, Keyes reveals to Neff what really happened in the Dietrichson case: the husband was killed by his wife and her lover. He explains to Neff every step of the crime correctly, but he doesn’t suspect Neff. Nervous, Neff and Phyllis meet yet again at the supermarket. Phyllis is highly suspicious when Neff suggest she not sue for the insurance claim and is even more suspicious about the time he has been spending with Lola. She coldly reminds Neff that their in it “straight down the line.” Neff starts to think that things would be better if Phyllis were dead, especially after Keyes determines that Zachetti was Phyllis’ accomplice. And, so the fateful 11 'o’clock meeting is set at the mansion.

With Zachetti as his fall guy, Neff determines to rid himself of the one person who can connect him to the murder: Phyllis. Shadowed by venetian blind slats, a living room of death awaits the final showdown between Phyllis and Neff. Oh, but Phyllis has her own suspicions that the double-cross is on. So, after unlocking the door for her accomplice, she sits down in a chair with her pearl-handled gun hidden under the cushion. When Neff arrives he informs Phyllis of his plan to off-her and frame Zachetti for everything. Really? How stupid can you be? Phyllis informs him she has her own plans and they don’t involve her death but his own. In an excellent climatic scene, Neff closes the living room blinds and when the room goes black a shot rings out. The next thing we see is Neff staggered by a bullet and Phyllis standing over him hesitating to finish him off. In a strange twist, Phyllis surrenders to her love for Neff and allows him to take the gun from her. While vulnerably embracing him some form of intelligence returns to her brain when she feels the barrel of the gun pointing at her chest. Two point blank shots to the chest and it’s “goodbye baby”. Really? I don’t like this ending at all, but it was Hollywood 1944, so what can I expect?

The final scene of the film finds Neff in his office with Keyes, who is shocked by what his friend has done. When Neff asks him to give him four hours before calling the police, Robinson delivers the great line: “You’ll never make the border…you’ll never even make the elevator.” He was right.

The twists and turns of this thrilling film noir are enough to make your pulse race. You pair the stellar storyline to the raw sexuality that Stanwyck brought to her role as Phyllis and this is a wonderful film to just sit and absorb. While both Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson do great jobs with their respective characters, this film belongs to Stanwyck. This was, without a doubt, her greatest dramatic role. She was so good in this role that countless male fans who had loved her before seeing this film actually started to dislike her after seeing it. She and Double Indemnity are a “straight down the line” treat to watch.