Among Hollywood`s Philip Marlowes, Humphrey Bogart may be the best remembered for ”The Big Sleep” (1946). But in Robert Parker`s book, Bogart was far from the best.
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As Parker points out, Raymond Chandler`s shamus was about 6 feet tall and weighed 190 pounds-a ”big dark handsome brute,” in the words of one female character. For Parker, Bogart hardly fits that description.
”I loved him in movies like `The Caine Mutiny` and `The African Queen,`
” he says. ”But as a romantic lead and a heroic figure, he seemed frail and graceless, totally uncompelling.”
Physically, the actor who came closest, Parker says, was James Garner, who played him in ”Marlowe” (1969), as Chandler`s ”The Little Sister” was called. Not only was Garner a ringer for Marlowe, Parker adds, but ”he got the sardonic humor and the irony just right. But he lacked the inner hardness. He`s too nice. Marlowe was a very tough customer.”
Closer to the mark was Dick Powell, better known as a crooner until he turned ”rough, tough and terrific” (as the ads put it) for ”Murder, My Sweet” (1944), based on ”Farewell, My Lovely.” ”Powell somehow managed the toughness that Garner lacked,” Parker says. ”He was Chandler`s favorite.”
Parker`s favorite is Robert Montgomery, who directed himself as Marlowe in ”The Lady in the Lake” (1946). Although the movie itself was an experimental failure, the camera assuming Marlowe`s point of view, Montgomery ”got the attitude and everything just right.”
As for George Montgomery, who was Marlowe in ”The Brasher Doubloon”
(1946), a version of ”The High Window,” Parker says: ”His range was quite limited. He made George Raft look like Laurence Olivier.”
Had Robert Mitchum attempted Marlowe while in his 30s or 40s, he might have been ideal. Instead, he was pushing 60 when he appeared in two subpar remakes, ”Farewell, My Lovely” (1975) and ”The Big Sleep” (a 1977 debacle, set in London). By then, Parker says, ”Mitchum was into his sleepwalking-through-the-part mode.”
On the advice of friends who share his affection for Chandler, Parker skipped Robert Altman`s ”The Long Goodbye” (1973), another travesty in which Elliott Gould played Marlowe as a contemporary hipster sleuth.
And Parker suggests that Raymond Chandler might have acquitted himself no better than most of Hollywood`s casting directors. His choice for Marlowe was Cary Grant, who, as Parker says, may have been dark and handsome, but he was no brute.