Hamburg Noir

HISTORY

The Big Sleep

Book
The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler, 1939)

Film
The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946)

Raymond Chandler hits the ground running in this hardboiled classic: “I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.”

From the get-go, it’s clear the narrator of this story has no illusions about himself. He’s a shabby shamus who’s reaching for the big money (over seventy million dollars today). Like Hammett’s Sam Spade, Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is a typical hardboiled anti-hero, a cynical tough guy with remnants of a conscience.

The Big Sleep is a sordid story of sex, drugs, gambling, betrayal, blackmail, revenge, and murder that centers on the two wayward daughters of General Sternwood, a millionaire in West Hollywood who is “old and obviously dying,” spending his days in an overheated greenhouse full of tropical orchids. Despite his physical frailty, the general doesn’t pull punches when he describes his daughters -- and himself: “Vivian is spoiled, exacting, smart and quite ruthless. Carmen is a child who like to pull wings off of flies. Neither of them has any more moral sense than a cat. Neither have I.”

Marlow, who was referred to the general by the D.A.’s chief investigator, responds in kind:

Marlowe: “I worked for Mr. Wilde, the District Attorney, as an investigator once.”

General: “You didn’t like working for Wilde?”

Marlowe: “I was fired. For insubordination. I test very high on insubordination, General.”

General: “I always did myself, sir. I’m glad to hear it.”

Having established themselves as hopeless cynics, the two get down to business. The general has received gambling debts signed by Carmen from one Arthur Gwynn Geiger, whose ostensibly sells “Rare Books and Deluxe Editions.” Marlowe pays a surprise visit to Geiger’s house in Laurel Canyon, where he discovers Carmen drugged up and naked in front of a camera and Geiger on the ground behind the camera with three bullet holes in him.

At this point, the story becomes ridiculously complex, ricocheting around Los Angeles County, with Geiger’s driver, actually his gay live-in lover, killing the general’s driver, who he mistakenly thinks is Geiger’s killer. Shortly afterwards, the general’s other daughter, Vivian, is robbed outside a casino belonging to Eddie Mars, a gangster who also owns the house in which Geiger was shot. Eddie’s wife is reputed to have run off with a big Irishman named Rusty Regan, who is close to the general. In fact, Eddie has his henchmen “hide” his wife outside of town, leading Marlowe to suspect that he had Regan killed. The truth is much more perverse. There are quite a few additional characters and subplots, but they all tell pretty much the same story of betrayal and murder.

At the end, it’s easy to see why Marlowe is so cynical as he ruminates about death and delivers the title line twice: “What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now.”

Chandler liked to “cannibalize” (his word) his own short stories, which were serialized in Black Mask magazine during the Great Depression. The Big Sleep is no exception. It’s loosely based on "Killer in the Rain" (1935) and "The Curtain" (1936) and contains fragments of “Finger Man” and “Mandarin’s Jade.” Fortunately for us all, these and other early stories are compiled in Killer in the Rain. For anyone who has not read Chandler before, this is an excellent place to start.

(Los Angeles is a major character in all of Chandler’s stories, although the names of particular locations are changed. For example, Santa Monica becomes “Bay City,” which is memorialized in the short story “Bay City Blues.” Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, which was reissued on the 50th anniversary of the filming of The Big Sleep, juxtaposes typical Chandler quotes with black-and-white photos of Los Angeles back in the day.)

The film adaptation of The Big Sleep was released in 1946 by Warner Brothers. Written by William Faulkner and directed by Howard Hawks, this prototypical film noir sticks close to the original plot. What makes the film stand out are the two lead actors, who were married in real life. Humphrey Bogart plays the world-weary Philip Marlow and Lauren Bacall the not-so-nice Vivian Sternwood. Faulkner heats up their dialogues.

For example, there’s a racy exchange about horses between the two that makes even contemporary audiences gasp:

Vivian: "Well, speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first, see if they're front-runners or come from behind, find out what their hole-card is. What makes them run."

Marlowe: "Find out mine?"

Vivian: "I think so."

Marlowe: "Go ahead."

Vivian: "I'd say you don't like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free."

Marlowe: "You don't like to be rated yourself."

Vivian: "I haven't met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?"

Marlowe: "Well, I can't tell till I've seen you over a distance of ground. You've got a touch of class, but, uh ... I don't know how, how far you can go."

Vivian: "A lot depends on who's in the saddle. Go ahead Marlowe, I like the way you work. In case you don't know it, you're doing all right."

Marlowe: "There's one thing I can't figure out."

Vivian: "What makes me run?"

Marlowe: "Uh-huh."

Vivian: "I'll give you a little hint. Sugar won't work. It's been tried."

The comment about “who’s in the saddle” stretches the Hayes Code (1934-1968) to the breaking point. And the bit about “sugar won’t work” indirectly points to its opposite, which would be a horse whip. This exchange shows how effectively language can spark the imagination of audiences and readers. Such suggestive dialogue crosses lines that the seemingly mandatory bump-and-grind scenes in post-Hays films can’t. Bacall is telling Bogart exactly what she wants from a man -- and how she thinks he stacks up. It’s an amazing moment in cinema history.

There’s a reason people are still talking about The Big Sleep more than half a century later. Two masters of the craft -- Chandler and Faulkner -- reworked the story until they got it right. There’s a lesson in there for us lesser mortals.