The Rise And Fall Of A Top-Rated Private Investigator- The Almost Legendary 1950s California Shamus Lew Archer-With The Doomed Hallman Case In Mind

By Sam Lowell

[There have been plenty of crime novels based on the exploits of very real private investigators like poor Lew Archer (some of public coppers too but they are usually s strictly by-the-book procedurals making it seem like there was no need for private investigation although the stacks of “cold cases” sitting in the police file freezer belie that fake news). Phil Larkin out of Albany maybe the best of the lot, of course Sam Spade and his partner Miles out of Frisco town and Phil Marlowe working the southern slumming streets of the same state come to mind. Guys who when their careers were over, when they hung up their guns and closed down the third desk drawer liquor cabinet, or who fell down and make a slight misjudgment about some bad ass’s intentions made the coveted entry into the Hall of Fame.     

It only takes a few pages of those lightly altered stories to figure these guys were built for the heavy lifting that goes with chasing after windmills, chasing after some rough justice in what the writer Seth Garth at American Left History has called “this wicked old world.” It has bothered me for a long time that Lew Archer, an ex-cop who got out of line one too many times for some lifer superior to give him the boot, and a guy who started out like a house on fire wrapping up the Galton case, the big Bay City kidnapping and extortion case in about a week after the public coppers had put the thing is deep cold storage after about two days fell down too early in his gumshoe career (by the way most P.I.s hate that “gumshoe” designation but I am trying to vary up the names for those in the profession). That concern got me on the trail of what happened, why Lew wound up, if I recall, peeping through keyholes, no, that is not right, doing leg work for Sally Langley who is now set to be inducted into the Hall in her own right. A lot of the decline is, no, was shrouded in mystery especially when a guy named Kenny Miller, I believe that is his name although some crime novel writers use aliases so as not to be bothered by holy goofs who want to know “the scoop” on some silly case, started to write about Lew when he had the goods. Wrote a very good one about Lew’s breakthrough case, that Galton one which really was great work even if he solved it faster than most P.I.s working on a per diem would have liked.                

Miller then wrote a few books where you could see he was pulling his punches, was letting Lew take a bow for stuff the public coppers finally had a handle on, could see Lew had some kind of trouble getting the last lap finished. Then Miller wrote about the doomed Hallman case, a case where everybody, or almost everybody, saw as the start of Lew’s downfall. The start of making way too many mistakes, of letting the bad guys get way ahead of him.

When I started my research, started to delve into what brought Lew low I did not know about the Hallman case, the Bay City coppers and whatever was left of the Hallman family when the killings were over had hushed the thing up so tight that it was like it did not happen. Apparently Miller went after the facts, after the record not to chart Lew’s decline but just to see where the decline had begun. The only way that I found out about the case was when Miller saw a piece I wrote in Nightshade, the P.I.-friendly magazine wondering about Lew and what happened to him at the end and he sent me an e-mail referring me to his lightly altered story about the Hallman case. We corresponded a bit to compare notes until we had a parting of the ways over my sound and well thought out analysis of Lew’s big problem-that sexual impotence in an age when that was fatal to big story P.I.s. Automatically froze you out of any consideration for the Hall. Miller’s take, his what he called sound and well-thought out analysis of Lew’s problem was that he never got over his wife divorcing him, and it gnawed at him worse when he was around women. Sure, Kenny every guy who has been chain-whipped by some woman falls down for the rest of his life because he screwed up a good thing. Get real. Get some facts and then come back with that lame idea. Compare that with what I have to say below. Sam Lowell]               

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I have a bombshell to report in the festering case of the late California private detective Lew Archer who I have been doing research on to try to figure out why he never made the P.I. Hall of Fame after starting out with such promise on the Galton case which made him a star-for a minute. Sadly, he wound up as a gofer for Sally Langley, yes, that Sally Langley who is about to be inducted into the Hall, after the divorce laws changed to “no fault” and keyhole peepers like taxi drivers today became passé. And after some punk beat him up and stole his car when he was doing “repo” work. Yeah, sad no way around it. But before I lay out my new information let me ask the gentle reader a question. I don’t need an answer but think about it.

Who was the greatest home run hitter of all times? The “Babe,” Henry Aaron, Bobby Bond (setting aside whatever enhancements he may have used)? What about the greatest quarterback? Sammy Baugh, Bart Starr, Joe Montana, Tom Brady? To pose the question is to give the answer. It is very hard to compare athletes from different generations working under very different condition and come up with a sensible comparison. The reason for this \normally silly sports stuff is that I have been pelted, no, inundated with all kinds of lame gibberish about my “unmanly” carping on Lew Archer’s sexual impotence as the reason he slipped down the shamus food chain, why he never made the Hall.

Somehow these deadbeats with apparently plenty of time on their hands and plenty of “cyber ink” can hardly wait to pounce on me for being unkind, or worse to Lew’s memory. What they don’t get at all, don’t understand especially those who see Sally Langley or maybe the “outed” gay private eye Lance Devine as the beeswax of the profession is that in Lew’s time being able to get under the silky sheets with some femme, some frail was part of the job, was part of the resume, was what got you clients and publicity in those circles who could afford to pay to get stuff investigated that the public coppers were either clueless about or would not touch with a ten-foot pole.

I hate to keep having to make a “teachable” moment for this clot of “trolls” who don’t think sex should have entered into the equation but in Lew’s time, as Lew was coming up he had models, good models, just like Sally had Meg Diamond and her post-feminist pushing women forward in the profession giving it a different twist, making taking slugs of either kind sort of old-fashioned and certainly ending that third drawer whisky bottle obsolete against the power of so-called women’s intuition (better stick-to-it-ness) and Lance had Carl Dover pushing gays forward for the same reason when having to bed women as part of the assignment sort of violated the new Code established by the American Association of Private Investigators (AAPI) after great pressure was put on after the heyday of the 1960s. Thus, we are clueless about who either of them slept with, if anybody, because that is not the question today in the private detection field but one’s ability to manipulate the explosive new technologies to put the bad guys to rest, to do what the public coppers can’t do or don’t want to do when all they want to do is have their coffee and crullers. (Some things never change having observed a fleet of them chowing down recently at a Dunkin’ Donut or is it just Dunkin’ not even leaving coin tips in the sacred tip jar) But back in Lew’s day the late 1940s and early 1950s you might as well have become a librarian, maybe a lab technician if you couldn’t rustle and tussle up some sheets while you were solving that heinous crime you were hired to find the perp who did the nasty deed.

Okay, for the millionth time here was the scorecard a guy like Lew had to follow. An old-timer named Sam, Sam Spade set the early standard in a couple of high-end cases also out in California which made that much more glaring about Lew’s downfall. Back East or maybe in Toledo he could have gotten away with the problem, could have faked it and made the Hall if he ever ran across a case that was worthy of his steel. Sam was beautiful in one case to give you an example. While solving about six murders by this femme, Mary, Mary something, Mary Astor, that’s it but don’t get too sentimental about names since everybody had about twelve, one for any occasion,     who was crazy for dough and used guys like washcloths to get this rare jewel he not only bedded her a few times including about five minutes before he tossed her over to the coppers (to save his own skin which is okay in this case because she had him set up as a patsy if things went awry as they did) he was bedding a few others just to keep things interesting. Knocked over his partner’s wife, Ivy something, his secretary, a female cab driver who was willing to take a warm bed in exchange for forgoing cab fare plus tip, maybe more.           

              

   So there was a standard, a California standard which is what a guy named Phil, Phil Marlowe, had to outdo. And did. Phil was a beautiful guy, nature’s nobleman. He worked the Sternwood case, yes, the Sternwood case an old man paid him good money for to find some old Irish revolutionary who befriended him, like a violin. I swear I don’t know how he did it. Bedded this old general who hired him to find some guy two daughters, one at a time or together was never mentioned, some frill in a bookstore, the female clerk working for some scumbag pornographer, a couple of hat check gals at a swank nightclub, another footloose female cab driver bartering the cab fare plus tip away, and the mobster behind lots of dirty stuff who ran that protected night club’s wife. All for a case that took maybe a week to solve. Gold standard.

And Lew? Poor suck-face Lew. The last anybody ever heard of him tussling with a woman, a woman involved in a case he was working was some frustrated wife of a doctor who ran a high-end clinic for the weak and unsure for big dough. Problem in Lew’s case was she was at that point any man’s woman if it is okay in the #MeToo age to say such a thing even if that was the call she made on herself once hubby saw dollar signs in them there hills and studiously avoided her in bed. Bigger problem when Miller interviewed her for background on what ailed Lew (remember that bogus pining over divorcing wife theory he had, sound and well thought out, Jesus) she mentioned that whatever he told anybody else he “couldn’t get it up” to be polite. So Lew was firing blanks, okay. Don’t shoot the messenger just because the message is not to your liking.               

What makes that social worker more important is that the case was the one immediately before the Hallman case, the doomed Hallman family who got picked off like rabbits before the whole thing was done, before the public coppers finished up what Lew had left like scrambled eggs. Here’s a rough outline of the play, really a scorecard of opportunities Lew blew. (I am willing to cut the guy some slack in those pre-Viagra times for his medical condition but remember I am only trying to figure out why he never made the Hall not what he couldn’t help himself with in those dark nights.)

I don’t know, Miller never gave a clue, about Lew’s mental condition upon taking the Hallman case, or really having it thrush upon him after some junkie he had helped when he was a kid referred young heir Hallman, Carl, to Lew to solve a few pressing problems. Like who killed his mother and father. A good- looking brunette was taking care of her aunt and batted her eyes as Lew as he was looking for leads to where this young Hallman might have gone after stealing Lew’s car for a getaway. No go, not even when she practically knocked him over in the foyer retrieving his hat. (That’s, by the way, two stolen joy ride cars in less than a year which should tell even the most devoted Lew adherent that something was wrong, something more than some inherent unmanliness). Next up a psychiatric social worker who was working with young Hallman and was ready to do anything, and from the reports, that meant anything to keep her man, her young Hallman from being killed by the so-called posse, really lynch mob, that was looking all over from Southern California to Nevada for him. Lew said  he would “take a rain check” like the offer would last forever.           

Things get juicier once Lew hits the huge ranch young Hallman is heir to and he runs into young Hallman’s older brother’s wife who can see that if Carl takes a tumble, falls in a rain of bullets as a fugitive and crazy murderer her man will grab everything. She showed up at Lew’s motel room with a proposition and you don’t have to be a genius to know what the terms included to have Lew lay off. Again, zero. Interlude: a couple of crazy townie girls looking for kicks and that was that approached Lew as he walked down the street. They had nothing to do with the case although they had gone to school with Carl and were just feeling their womanly oats but no go even if anybody would bother to argue that Lew was maintaining some kind of professional ethics by laying off women connected with the case. Bullshit. This is the closer, case closer against the defendant one Lew Archer, Carl’s wife who turned out to be an enraged serial killer piling up the bodies-father, mother, older brother, that slatternly wife of his all so she could be on easy street after a life on the wrong side of the tracks practically tore open her shirt showing a firm bosom to try to throw Lew off the scent. Strike four.       

I already have mentioned that this case marked the steady downhill trajectory in Lew’s once promising career. Worse, the coppers had to come in and rescue Lew when that deranged wife was holding him, rightly by her lights since Lew held her future in his hands, hostage and had him pinned down facing a big old-time Colt 45 which even a brave man had to respect, respect a lot. After this bad karma trip Lew just couldn’t get work, nobody wanted to hire a guy who couldn’t face down some looney dame without peeing all over himself. Eventually he went to work for Larry Larsen the big Hollywood divorce lawyer which started Lew’s peeping in keyholes career which as mentioned died out when the divorce laws got more liberal most places. Then down the scale to Manny’s, the main repo operation in town and that infamous stolen car by a guy he was supposed to repossess on. Then Gypsy Sally’s and taking deli sandwich orders from real private eyes in her employ.         

I have saved the bombshell for last although looking over the evidence against poor Lew I am not sure I need to bring in the heavy guns. Since I have it and since the “trolls” will not believe anything any way that has to do with real facts here goes. Seth Garth recently did an article in American Left History about the passing in 2017 of Dotty Malone at 97. Many readers may not know who she is, was, but she was a very famous screenwriter in Hollywood when such things counted with credits Dark Passage, A Lonely Place, Fit To Be Tied and a fistful of others, some which carried awards with them. Before Dotty made it in Hollywood she worked a high-end bookstore on Sunset in Hollywood. That is where she met Phil Marlowe, yes, that Phil Marlowe I have been touting forever as the king of the hill with femmes. This was during the early part of the Sternwood case, before he got seriously tangled up with the two wild child daughters. The afternoon he came in looking for information and looking him over she wound up shutting up shop for the afternoon to entertain Phil and his bottle of whiskey. They would thereafter meet off and on even when Phil married the older Sternwood daughter, Vivian, to take a trip on easy street. Once Phil got tired of playing house and  Vivian divorced him he and Dotty took up again seriously, got married. After Phil passed away in the 1970s Dotty ran into Lew, hadn’t seen him for a while (this P.I. fraternity was pretty inbred in those days when it was all guys and hell-raisers too). Despite their age differences, Dotty some years older but still a looker, a mature looker, they started an affair. Or what should have been an affair. That is when Lew told Dotty that he was having trouble, sexual trouble and while she was sympathetic she thought he had maybe gone queer, or something like that. That is what she told Seth in any case. While the trolls will deny reality, call her story a hoax or the blathering of an old woman the rational world can judge why Lew Archer never made the Hall. End of story.