The Adventures of Philip Marlowe

Detective Drama (1947 - 51)

Get this and get it straight. Crime is a sucker's road and those who travel it wind up in the gutter, the prison or the grave.

Philip Marlowe was the brainchild of writer Raymond Chandler, who's own life sounds like the work of fiction. He was born in Chicago to an Irish-immigrant mother and an alcoholic father, who left the family when Chandler was an infant. The single mom moved to Britain under the support of her brother, a successful lawyer. As a young boy, Raymond Chandler was classically educated, but never went to college.

Wanting to return to the States, Raymond Chandler borrowed money from his uncle and moved to LA with hopes of making it big. Instead he bummed around, writing Romantic poetry, picking fruit, and looking for odd jobs. He courted Cissy Pascal who was both married and almost two decades older than Chandler; however, they were deeply in love and were married in 1923.

In the 1930s,Raymond Chandler began to write pulp fiction detective fiction "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in Black Mask magazine in 1933. Though his only original screenplay was The Blue Dahlia, Chandler helped co-write screenplays such Billy Wilder Double Indemnity and Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train. Raymond Chandler introduced his character Philip Marlowe in his first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939.

Philip Marlowe was like many hardboiled detectives at the time, he could take a punch to the face and still have a stinging comeback. He was also morally upright, liked classical music and played chess. In all, there were seven Philip Marlowe novels published all of which have been adapted to film or radio.

Philip Marlowe made a natural transition to film and old time radio. The character was taken and adapted with writers other than Chandler. Numerous leading men filled the role of the rough but complicated Marlowe, Dick Powell, Robert Mitchum, and Humphrey Bogart played Philip Marlowe on the big screen. The first portrayal of Phillip Marlowe on the radio was with Dick Powell, when he played Raymond Chandler's detective on the Lux Radio Theatre in "1945 Murder my Sweet." (which is included in this collection). Two years later, Van Heflin starred as Marlowe in a summer replacement series for the Bob Hope Show. Though the radio show was Chandleresque, it didn't quite have the flow of Chandler's well know similes and metaphors.

In September 1948, Gerald Mohr became the third radio Marlowe and is best know for the role with his deep baritone voice and nonchalant delivery. In the April 1950 show, "The Anniversary Gift", William Conrad (who later starred in Gunsmoke) substituted for Mr. Mohr, becoming the fourth person to play the detective. Chandler had little interaction with the radio version of The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, but he did approve of Gerald Mohr portrayal of his hardboiled detective.