Philip Marlowe Week: Blackmailers Don't Shoot

Alright mugs lissen up.  This booze swilling sleuth with a knockout right hook is hot on the case, see? What he don’t know is in this card game the deck was already stacked against him…Er sorry I really just enjoy that colorful chatter…ahem this time around in 1986 Home Box Office (HBO to youse chumps) began developing Raymond Chandler’s (Novelist of Farewell, My Lovely, Double Indemnity, Murder, My Sweet, The Big Sleep and Lady in the Lake) short stories into 45 minutes of hardboiled detective action!  What’s hard boiled mean?  Sheesh you been living under a rock?  Hard boiled is a term for Crime Fiction commonly police drama but more often enough a private investigator.   With that being said, This is Blackmailers Don’t Shoot.

Alright you ask for directions next time!

It was a spoiler. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.

In this town you can’t always pick and choose your clients; especially when rent is due.  Marlowe (Powers Boothe of The Emerald Forest, Extreme Prejudice, Nixon, Frailty, Deadwood, 24 and Justice League) is keeping his eyes on a dame who may be in trouble.  A new high society gal actress with a twinkle in her eye and name of Rhoda Farr (Melody Anderson of Flash Gordon, Dead &Buried, Firewalker and Jake and the Fatman).  Seems his client feels her life is in danger due to her lifestyle of champagne and wild nights on the gossip column. 

Dishy but comes off colder than a penguin on an iceberg.

No sooner is Marlowe on the case he is threatened by a big shot director to be tossed out on his ear to have a gunsel brandish a rod to put two in his liver.  Not afraid of a little roughing up, Marlowe feels it is best to check in with his client local racketeer mob boss Lucky Landrey (Allan Royal of Night Heat, Falcon Crest, They Came from Outer Space and Bloodknot) who can’t make the scene with her on the news pages but the couple are still bananas about each other in spite of Farr’s career.

Now I have just a few highlights about the episode itself.  While most of the locations are around Sunset Blvd and Paramount studios, the atmosphere is was truly captures this time piece.  The speakeasy belonging to Johnny Tango, the gorgeous cars of the era fully restored to factory look and appeal, bungalows of Piscane Blvd opted for scenes rather than the usual rental spots all encompassing this look into another time and place.  The posh threads to the slinky dresses, the glitz and glamour are but an understatement to the dark and dreary storyline complimenting one another so well.

How in the Sam Hill did I get caught up in this?

  

The screen treatment from Raymond Chandler’s short story was managed by collaboration of writers Jeremy Hole (Control, Diamonds, Night Heat, Emily of New Moon and Verdict in Blood), Jesse Lasky Jr. (Secret Agent, Reap the Wild Wind, Samson and Deliah and The Ten Commandments) and Pat Silver (Pirates of Tortuga, Crime and Passion, Land Raiders and Forbidden Sun).    They captured the very essence of Chandler’s grimy drab world and gave it life to the small screen.

  Powers Boothe is the pinnacle Philip Marlowe in that he is not overtly handsome and looks as though he could handle himself in a scrape.  Not down playing Humphrey Bogart’s portrayal in the Big Sleep at all, I simply found Boothe to be the right man for the gig.