Jack,
Re your comment below:
> Jim has made some good points on this
subject,
> but I read the book long before I saw the
> movie--as a matter of fact, I just saw the
movie
> for the first time about a month or six
weeks
> ago-- but I had the sense of an aging Marlowe
and
> if not aging, at least world weary. I
don't
> remember anyone saying his age in the book,
but
> even if Parker had--
Marlowe was world weary as early as THE BIG SLEEP, in which
he says he is 33 (which became 37 in the movie, in which he
was played by 46-year-old Humphrey Bogart). Recall that long
philosophical meditation on death at the end of the book. His
world weariness is a function of his career, and all the
death and heartbreak it makes him witness to, not his age per
se.
He states his age as being in his early '40s (I think it was
42) in THE LONG GOODBYE. I think Linda describes herself as
being 36. PLAYBACK, though it appears five years later, takes
place just a few months later (I believe Marlowe give his age
again and it's the same as it was in GOODBYE), and ends with
a lead-in for POODLE SPRINGS which takes place immediately
after the events in PLAYBACK.
> Forty something was a hell of a lot older
than
> today, as was fifty something. They were
much
> older ages than now.
A year after PLAYBACK came out, and a year after Chandler
started the uncompleted POODLE SPRINGS, JFK at 43 and Richard
Nixon at 46 were both regarded as
"young men" to be competing for the White House.
There's a scene in SOUTH PACIFIC, the film version of which
came out at roughly the same time as PLAYBACK, in which a 50
year old Navy captain berates a 20-year-old officer for
describing a man in his 40s as being middle-aged.
People in the 40s probably weren't considered as
"young" as they are now (and that's largely a function of
baby boomers suddenly starting to reach their 40s), but they
weren't considered over-the-hill.
And while we're on the subject of actors who can play an
"aging Marlowe," I've heard it said (and have said it myself
on occasion) that Robert Mitchum in his prime would've been
great. And he was damned good as an aging Marlowe in the
remake of FAREWELL, MY LOVELY.
JIM DOHERTY
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