Movies - Farewell, My Lovely

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	Movies - Farewell, My Lovely

Farewell, My Lovely is a 1940 novel by Raymond Chandler, the second novel he wrote featuring Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe. Three movie adaptations have been made, see below.

Outline of the plot

A chance encounter with hulking ex-con Moose Malloy in a sleazy part of Los Angeles that is "not yet all negro" gets Marlowe into all kinds of trouble. Just released from prison, Malloy is looking for his one-time girlfriend, red-haired Velma, whom he last saw eight years ago. The nightclub where she used to sing, Florian's, is now a black "dine and dice emporium", and no one there has ever heard of her. Malloy flees after inadvertently killing the black boss of the club and Marlowe, the only white witness to Malloy's mayhem, decides to look for Velma. He learns the address of Florian's widow and visits her, a drunken middle-aged floozy. The widow tells him, unconvincingly, that Velma Valento is dead.

Later that afternoon, Marlowe is hired by Lindsay Marriott to assist in handing over an $8,000 ransom for a rare jade necklace owned by a woman friend of Marriott's. However, at the isolated meeting point—a lonely country road in the middle of the night—Marlowe is knocked out. When Marlowe comes to, he chances upon a passersby, Anne Riordan, who has found Marriott murdered. Marlowe takes some marijuana cigarettes off Marriott before calling the police. With Anne's help Marlowe learns that the owner of the necklace is a Mrs Grayle. Marlowe visits Mrs. Grayle, a beautiful blonde married to an elderly millionaire, who backs up Marriott's story that she was robbed of the necklace.

Cutting open one of Marriott's joints, Marlowe finds the business card of one "Jules Amthor" "Psychic Consultant". Marlowe also learns that the title to the house of Florian's widow was in Marriott's name. Marlowe meets Amthor at the latter's "modernistic" hilltop home. There, Marlowe is beat up and drugged with the help of crooked policemen. Later removed to a "sanitorium", Marlowe is shot full of dope but manages to escape. With a policeman, Marlowe finds Florian's widow murdered in her house. Marlowe makes it to a gambling ship off the coast where he attempts to get word to Malloy that he has information for him.

Marlowe lands back at his Hollywood apartment, takes a nap and awakes to find the Moose there. Mrs. Grayle then arrives while Malloy hides. Mrs. Grayle and Marlowe talk and it becomes clear that Velma and Mrs Grayle are the same person. It is revealed that after realizing her new identity was in jeopardy from Marlowe's inquiries she was anxious to stop his investigation. It is implied that she killed Marriott because he wouldn't go through with Marlowe's murder at the isolated rendezvous. When she comes face to face with Malloy, she kills him. At the end of the novel, Marlowe relates that she commits suicide in Baltimore after her true identity is found out by police there.

Quote

This rather humorous passage shows how Philip Marlowe, the first person narrator of the novel, is summoned by one of his prospective clients. One day, quite unexpectedly, he is faced in his downtown office by a strange-looking man in unusual attire:

:'Huh,' he said. 'Come quick. Come now.' :'Come where?' I said. :'Huh. Me Second Planting. Me Hollywood Indian.' :'Have a chair, Mr Planting.' :He snorted and his nostrils got very wide. They had been wide enough for mouseholes to start with. :'Name Second Planting. Name no Mister Planting.' :'What can I do for you?' :He lifted his voice and began to intone in a deep-chested sonorous boom. 'He say come quick. Great white father say come quick. He say me bring you in fiery chariot. He say—' :'Yeah. Cut out the pig Latin.' I said. 'I'm no schoolmarm at the snake dances.' : :'Gottum car,' he said. 'Big car.' :'I don't like big cars any more,' I said. 'I gottum own car.' :'You come my car,' the Indian said threateningly. :'I come your car,' I said. :I locked the desk and office up, switched the buzzer off and went out, leaving the reception room door unlocked as usual. :We went along the hall and down in the elevator. The Indian smelled. Even the elevator operator noticed it. (Ch.20)

The movie versions: A survey

Although written after The Big Sleep (1939), Farewell, My Lovely was the first Marlowe story to be filmed: In 1942 The Falcon Takes Over, a 65 minute film, was released which was based on Farewell, My Lovely. However, as this first movie version of the novel was at the same time the third in the Falcon series of films revolving around Michael Arlen's gentleman sleuth Gay Lawrence (played by George Sanders), Marlowe was actually called Gay Lawrence aka "The Falcon" rather than Philip Marlowe. In other words, the producers of the Falcon series had been looking for a new story and had chosen to adapt hack writer Chandler's latest novel. Purists agree that fitting the two rather different characters of Marlowe and Lawrence into one seems absurd from today's point of view; however, in 1942 Marlowe was not yet a household word, not yet a fictional character people would immediately recognize, and so at the time many of his habits would not have been known to cinemagoers.

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