Phillip Marlowe Lives-The Television Series

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

Phillip Marlowe Private Eye, television series starring Powers Boothe, 1983

Sure I have been on a Phillip Marlowe run of late, mainly re-reading Raymond Chandler’s major crime novels from the 1930s and 1940s which feature the tough guy, seen-it-all private detective. Those novels ranging fromThe Big Sleep to Playback (seven in all) pretty much tell the story of Marlowe’s many bouts with the bad guys (and gals) of the world down in sunny Los Angeles before it exploded after World War II into a big time town where an avenging angel had tough times against the wave. Marlowe was  from a time long ago when a man (or woman) could know that city, that slumming city and its’ high and low life without a map. Those novels also developed Marlowe’s trademark approaches to things, to life things  his forever tilting after windmills for one thing or another, usually a dame in trouble but not always, always playing by his own rules, and not afraid to take a bump or two, or a slug or two, for a client.

Some of those traits, and Chandler’s early character development of Marlowe, were first written in some short stories in the 1930s collected in one volume called Trouble Is My Business (the original twelve story volume not the more recent four story volume or the Library of America volume). Those twelve short stories were presented in a British television series in 1983 under the title Phillip Marlowe Private Eye, the DVD under review, starring Powers Boothe as out intrepid P.I. And while, for my money, it is always better with Chandler, and fellow crime novel pioneer Dashiell Hammett, to read their works to get a real flavor of how he presented Marlowe over time this series is worth watching.

Of course there have been many Marlowes starting with the king hell king Marlowe, Humphrey Bogart, in The Big Sleep and working through such Hollywood stars as Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, Robert Mitchum, James Garner, and Elliot Gould. Powers Boothe fits somewhere in the middle of that tribe, maybe being just a little too handsome and a little too nonchalant to be a top shelf Marlowe. Still, like every Marlowe, he intrepidly works his way through the twelve story set tangling with bad guys, bad women, good women, competent and incompetent cops, guys on the take, lamos, loses , drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters. The normal bill of fare for any Marlowe worth his salt. Remember though read the twelve stories first and then watch this series which, except for additional tough guy and world-weary dialogue, is faithful to the plot line of those stories.