Playback is a novel by American-British writer Raymond Chandler featuring the private detective Philip Marlowe. It was first published in Britain in July 1958; the US edition followed in October that year. Chandler died the following year; Playback is his last completed novel.
On 8 January 1947 Universal announced they had bought a story from Raymond Chandler called Playback. Joseph Sistrom was assigned to produce the film and it was intended Chandler would write the script.[1] The novel was reworked by Chandler from the screenplay. The script, thought by some to be superior to the novel (generally considered to be the weakest of the seven Marlowe novels, perhaps because of its less complex plot and pat resolution), was published posthumously.
Playback is the only Marlowe novel completed by Chandler that is set somewhere other than Los Angeles. The setting is the town of Esmeralda, a fictional name for La Jolla, where Chandler lived his last few years. Poodle Springs, which Chandler did not finish, is set in Palm Springs, California.
Plot summary
At the beginning of 1952 (some 18 months after the parting of Marlowe and Linda Loring in The Long Goodbye), Marlowe is faced with the choice of turning against his client and taking up the cause of the subject he was hired to investigate, an attractive woman on the run with whom he eventually becomes emotionally entangled.
Through intermediaries, an anonymous client hires Marlowe to find Betty Mayfield, who is traveling under the name Eleanor King. Marlowe trails Mayfield to the small coastal resort town of Esmeralda, California.
During her train ride west, Mayfield had been recognized by a man who then tried to blackmail her, for reasons disclosed at the end of the story. While Marlowe is poking around Esmeralda, the blackmailer is found dead on the balcony of Mayfield's hotel room. She panics and calls Marlowe for help.
Marlowe encounters numerous characters with dubious motivations, including a taciturn lawyer and his smart secretary (with whom Marlowe has a sexual encounter), a "retired" gangster, overconfident would-be tough guys of varying morals, a hired killer (whose wrists Marlowe smashes), decent police officers, and an affectingly desperate example of the immigrant underclass in the United States in the 1950s. Marlowe also has an encounter in a hotel lobby with a reflective elderly gentleman, Henry Clarendon IV, which gives rise to an extended philosophical conversation.
Marlowe learns that Betty Mayfield had been married to Lee Cumberland, the son of Henry Cumberland, a big shot in a small North Carolina town. Lee's neck had been broken during the war, and though he was mobile and not paralyzed, for safety he regularly wore a neck brace. One day there was a quarrel between Lee and Betty, and later Lee was found dead, with Betty trying to place the neck brace back on the body. The case drew widespread publicity in the newspapers (which is why the blackmailer recognized Mayfield on the train), and with Cumberland's influence on the jury, Mayfield was found guilty of murder. But the judge in the case, who saw more than a reasonable doubt, in keeping with North Carolina law granted a standard defense motion for a directed acquittal after the verdict of the tainted jury was returned.
Cumberland vowed to hound Mayfield wherever she went, and so she fled to Esmeralda; Cumberland was presumably behind the hiring of Marlowe in the first place. Cumberland arrives in Esmeralda to confront Mayfield, but Marlowe, with the help of the local police captain, scares him off. (In the British edition of the novel and the screenplay version by Chandler [see below], Cumberland's name is Kinsolving.)
Mayfield marries a local criminal turned respectable citizen, who has taken a romantic interest in her. Marlowe lets her go ahead but has a frank talk with the ex-criminal, who has not entirely mended his ways, as he was behind the killing of the blackmailer.
At the book's conclusion, Marlowe is rewarded by providence when his old flame, Linda Loring, gets back in touch.
Reception
The New York Times called it "smooth, competent, enjoyable and undistinguished... after a wait of four and a half years it's a mousy labor from such a mountain."[2]
Adaptations
Of all Chandler's novels, Playback is the only one never to have been adapted into a film.
Radio
In 2011, Playback was adapted for radio by BBC Radio Four as part of a season of Chandler adaptations. Marlowe was played by Toby Stephens.
The opening lines of the second chapter served as inspiration for Jonathan Lethem's science fiction–detective novelGun, with Occasional Music: "There was nothing to it. The Super Chief was on time, as it almost always is, and the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket."
Sources
↑ "Universal to Film Story by Chandler": ' Playback,' Melodrama Done for Screen, to Be Produced By Thomas F. Brady. New York Times 9 Jan 1947: 20.
↑ Criminals at Large By ANTHONY BOUCHER. New York Times 16 Nov 1958: BR53.
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime. All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.
The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by American-British writer Raymond Chandler, the first to feature the detective Philip Marlowe. It has been adapted for film twice, in 1946 and again in 1978. The story is set in Los Angeles.
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler, who was characteristic of the hardboiled crime fiction genre. The hardboiled crime fiction genre originated in the 1920s, notably in Black Mask magazine, in which Dashiell Hammett's The Continental Op and Sam Spade first appeared. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep, published in 1939. Chandler's early short stories, published in pulp magazines such as Black Mask and Dime Detective, featured similar characters with names like "Carmady" and "John Dalmas", starting in 1933.
The Blue Dahlia is a 1946 American crime film and film noir with an original screenplay by Raymond Chandler directed by George Marshall and starring Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and William Bendix. It was Chandler's first original screenplay.
Farewell, My Lovely is a novel by Raymond Chandler, published in 1940, the second novel he wrote featuring the Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe. It was adapted for the screen three times and was also adapted for the stage and radio.
The Long Good-bye is a novel by Raymond Chandler, published in 1953, his sixth novel featuring the private investigator Philip Marlowe. Some critics consider it inferior to The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, but others rank it as the best of his work. Chandler, in a letter to a friend, called the novel "my best book".
A mystery film is a genre of film that revolves around the solution of a problem or a crime. It focuses on the efforts of the detective, private investigator or amateur sleuth to solve the mysterious circumstances of an issue by means of clues, investigation, and clever deduction.
Lady in the Lake is a 1947 American film noir starring Robert Montgomery, Audrey Totter, Lloyd Nolan, Tom Tully, Leon Ames and Jayne Meadows. An adaptation of the 1943 Raymond Chandler murder mystery The Lady in the Lake, the picture was also Montgomery's directorial debut, and last in either capacity for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) after eighteen years with the studio.
Murder, My Sweet is a 1944 American film noir, directed by Edward Dmytryk and starring Dick Powell, Claire Trevor and Anne Shirley. The film is based on Raymond Chandler's 1940 novel Farewell, My Lovely. It was the first film to feature Chandler's primary character, the hard-boiled private detective Philip Marlowe.
The Lady in the Lake is a 1943 detective novel by Raymond Chandler featuring the Los Angeles private investigator Philip Marlowe. Notable for its removal of Marlowe from his usual Los Angeles environs for much of the book, the novel's complicated plot initially deals with the case of a missing woman in a small mountain town some 80 miles (130 km) from the city. The book was written shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor and makes several references to America's recent involvement in World War II.
The Big Sleep is a 1946 American film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of the 1939 novel of the same name by Raymond Chandler. The film stars Humphrey Bogart as private detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as Vivian Rutledge in a story about the "process of a criminal investigation, not its results". William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman co-wrote the screenplay.
The Little Sister is a 1949 novel by Raymond Chandler, his fifth featuring the private investigator Philip Marlowe. The story is set in Los Angeles in the late 1940s and follows Marlowe's investigation of a missing persons case and blackmail scheme centered around a Hollywood starlet. With several scenes involving the film industry, the novel was partly inspired by Chandler's experience working as a screenwriter in Hollywood and his low opinion of the industry and most of the people in it. The book was first published in the UK in June 1949 and was released in the United States three months later.
The Brasher Doubloon is a 1947 American crime film noir directed by John Brahm and starring George Montgomery and Nancy Guild. It is based on the 1942 novel The High Window by Raymond Chandler.
The Long Goodbye is a 1973 American neo-noir satirical mystery crime thriller film directed by Robert Altman and based on Raymond Chandler's 1953 novel. The screenplay was written by Leigh Brackett, who co-wrote the screenplay for Chandler's The Big Sleep in 1946. The film stars Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe and features Sterling Hayden, Nina Van Pallandt, Jim Bouton, Mark Rydell and an early uncredited appearance by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The High Window is a 1942 novel written by Raymond Chandler. It is his third novel featuring the Los Angeles private detective Philip Marlowe.
Poodle Springs is the eighth Philip Marlowe novel. It was started in 1958 by Raymond Chandler, who left it unfinished at his death in 1959. The four chapters he had completed, which bore the working title The Poodle Springs Story, were subsequently published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962), a collection of excerpts from letters and unpublished writings. In 1988, on the occasion of the centenary of Chandler's birth, the crime writer Robert B. Parker was asked by the estate of Raymond Chandler to complete the novel.
Marlowe is a 1969 American neo-noir film starring James Garner as Raymond Chandler's private detective Philip Marlowe. Directed by Paul Bogart, the film was written by Stirling Silliphant based on Chandler's 1949 novel The Little Sister.
Farewell, My Lovely is a 1975 American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by Dick Richards and featuring Robert Mitchum as private detective Philip Marlowe. The picture is based on Raymond Chandler's novel Farewell, My Lovely (1940), which had previously been adapted for film as Murder, My Sweet in 1944. The supporting cast features Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland, Jack O'Halloran, Sylvia Miles and Harry Dean Stanton, with an early screen appearance by Sylvester Stallone, and hardcore crime novelist Jim Thompson, in his only acting role, as Charlotte Rampling's character's elderly husband Judge Grayle. Mitchum returned to the role of Marlowe three years later in the 1978 film The Big Sleep, making him the only actor to portray Philip Marlowe more than once in a feature film.
Poodle Springs is a 1998 neo-noir HBO film directed by Bob Rafelson, starring James Caan as private detective Philip Marlowe.
Criminal Lawyer is a 1937 American drama film directed by Christy Cabanne from a screenplay by G. V. Atwater and Thomas Lennon, based on a story by Louis Stevens. The film stars Lee Tracy, Margot Grahame and Eduardo Ciannelli. RKO produced the film and premiered it on January 26, 1937 in New York City, with a national release a few days later on January 29. It was the second time Stevens' story had been used for a film, the first being 1932's State's Attorney, starring John Barrymore and Helen Twelvetrees, directed by George Archainbaud, and also produced and released by RKO.
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