When the legend becomes fact, print the legend…
The above line is from the John Ford directed film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
The point of the quote is that sometimes a legend, or myth, becomes repeated so often that it essentially becomes fact… even if it isn’t true.
My feeling is that often these stories are just so good to the teller/audience that they have no problem accepting them because of that fact, even if a little investigation would result in upending the “legend”.
One of my favorite authors is Raymond Chandler. During his career, he wrote a number of short stories and some seven novels. The novels all featured detective Phillip Marlowe and many of them were subsequently made into films. Perhaps the most famous are the Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall film The Big Sleep…
Also well known is the Robert Altman directed The Long Goodbye…
The Big Sleep was Chandler’s first novel, released in 1939, and it took elements of various short stories he had written before and its a freaking spectacular novel in my opinion. The Long Goodbye was pretty much Chandler’s last Marlowe novel, released in 1953 and is also a spectacular book which shows how the author matured and faced death. Supposedly, the novel was written as his wife was dying and his grief informs much of what happens in the book. Chandler would release one more novel, Playback, in 1958 but it was an odd work, an adaptation of a script and… it doesn’t feel like a full throttled Chandler book. He would start one more book, Poodle Springs, but passed away in 1959 with only four chapters written. Years later Robert B. Parker would finish the novel and… it’s only ok IMHO.
As Chandler’s novels became big successes, audiences and critics noted the stories he presented were often very complex. In fact, that became something of a source of ribbing by some people and, I strongly suspect, some of the ribbing had an edge to it. See, Chandler was also something of a gruff person. He was a very heavy drinker and rubbed some people the wrong way. There were also rumors he was repressed, perhaps closeted. Certainly The Big Sleep did at times present a rather moralistic view of sexuality… and possible deviancies.
One story that has circulated for many, many years now involves The Big Sleep and that story, it seems to me, is the proverbial legend that supplants what are somewhat easily verified facts (you knew I was going to get back to that eventually, no?!).
So it has been noted by many The Big Sleep’s story is so complicated that even Raymond Chandler himself didn’t know who murdered one of the characters, the Sternwood’s chauffeur.
Lauren Bacall, the wife of Humphrey Bogart and co-star in the famous film version of The Big Sleep, stated at one point that while she and Bogart were going over the movie’s screenplay, Bogie supposedly stated “Hey, who killed the chauffeur?” and that this was when the studios -and people in general- realized the chauffeur’s murder was unsolved.
Actor Robert Mitchum has a curious story, too. He stated that one day he was in a bookstore and Raymond Chandler was there. The store’s phone rang and it turned out the studio was calling for Chandler and Mitchum overheard the phone call. They were, according to Mitchum, calling to figure out who killed the chauffeur and Chandler supposedly said: “I have no idea”.
Cute stories, both of them, and there have been many, many occasions where people have pointed out the chauffeur’s death and that it was unsolved and… jeeze… what a bozo Raymond Chandler was, amiright? He writes so well but he has such a labyrinthian story to tell that he doesn’t even realize he’s left a murder unsolved…!
…only… that’s not right.
And it takes only a little bit of research, looking at The Big Sleep novel, to realize this legend is just that.
The following comes from The Big Sleep. For those who don’t know, the Sternwood chauffeur was found dead in his car, which had run through a pier, smashed it, and landed in the water at some point that night. When detective Phillip Marlowe shows up, the car has been found and been brought to the surface and the chauffeur is found dead inside it. There are several people/police around, including Bernie Ohls, the D.A.’s chief investigator and a friend of Marlowe’s.
From the book:
The plainclothesman scuffed at the deck with the one of his shoe. Ohls looked sideways along his eyes at me, and twitched his cigar like a cigarette.
”Drunk?” he asked, of nobody in particular.
The man who had been toweling his head went over to the rail and cleared his throat in a loud hawk that made everybody look at him. “Got some sand,” he said, and spat. “Not as much as the boy friend got— but some.”
The uniformed man said: “Could have been drunk. Showing off all alone in the rain. Drunks will do anything.”
”Drunk, hell,” the plainclothesman said. “The hand throttle’s set halfway down and the guy’s been sapped on the side of the head. Ask me and I’ll call it murder.”
Ohls looked at the man with the towel. “What do you think, Buddy?”
The man with the towel looked flattered. He grinned. “I say suicide, Mac. None of my business, but you ask me, I say suicide. First off the guy plowed an awful straight furrow down that pier. You can read his tread marks all the way nearly. That puts it after the rain like the Sheriff said. Then he hit the pier hard and clean or he don’t go through and land right side up. More likely turned over a couple of times. So he had plenty of speed and hit the rail square. That’s more than half-throttle. He could have done that with his hand falling and he could have hurt his head falling, too.”
So, in a few paragraphs, Chandler offers three theories as to what happened to the chauffeur: 1) He was drunk and ran off the pier. 2) He was murdered, hit on the side of his head and the car run off the pier with him in it to make it look like an accident. Finally, 3) He committed suicide.
Note that Chandler goes into the greatest details with the suicide and further, it makes the most logical sense.
See, cars back in the 1930’s were not like cars today. The killer, based on these explanations offered, have to drive the car very fast down the pier, which seemed to be the case, smash through the pier at high speed, crash down into the water, then swim out and leave the body behind.
A very dangerous thing to do, no? The killer could have just as easily gotten him/herself injured and, after falling in the water, drowned.
So, yeah, while there is no absolute answer to what happened to the chauffeur, far from being befuddled and not knowing what happened to the chauffeur, it would appear Chandler very much offered a logical explanation for how he died… and it likely wasn’t a murder after all.
Is it out of the realm of possibility he committed suicide? No. He was infatuated with Carmen Sternwood, one of the two “wild” daughters (Vivian Sternwood was the other daughter and she was played by Lauren Bacall in the movie). Carmen, we find, was being blackmailed and because he couldn’t help her with this, he might have been distraught enough to commit suicide.
So, yeah, it is certainly possible.
Again, though, the legend turns out to be just that. At the very least, its clear Chandler thought very hard about what happened to the Sternwood chauffeur, rather than being befuddled and having “no idea” who did him in.
