In all the talk about the actor who best embodied Marlowe,
there's one thing that seems to have been overlooked. Odd,
since the title of the string is "the voice" of hardboiled.
Maybe Cary Grant looked like Marlowe. And those who thought
he wasn't tough enough should take a gander at "Mr. Lucky."
But Grant spoke with a modified (exaggerated?) Cockney
accent. Even the Anglophile Chandler may have found that
off-putting. It would be as out of place as Marlowe opening
up an office in London (see the silly Michael Winner "Big
Sleep"). The radio Marlowe
(Gerald Mohr, not Van Heflin) did a pretty good vocal
version, though the humorless stories with their "dirty city
that I love" overripe monologues, not to mention product
plugs, weren't even close approximations of Chandler's
novelettes.
As far as physical appearance, I'd have to say that Mitchum
and James Garner came closest to the Chandler description,
though Powell isn't far off. And all three "sounded" like
Marlowe, which Bogart, with his lisp and cackle laugh,
didn't.
About Powers Boothe being the best Marlowe, gee whiz. If some
of you think Mitchum was too slow, Boothe looks to me like
he's got a permanent
"Duh" balloon over his head as he drags himself from scene to
scene, talking in late night fm dj monotone. Give this man a
shot of coffee and quick.
Dick Lochte
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 15 Aug 2001 EDT