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DOUBLE INDEMNITY

THE BLUE DAHLIA

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

In one sense, Raymond Chandler did well by Hollywood. His novels were made into several good films, such as Murder, My Sweet and The Big Sleep (adapted for the screen by William Faulkner); even latter-day adaptations like 1969’s Marlowe and Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye succeed on their own merits. Chandler’s situations, stories, and his tarnished knight Phillip Marlowe lent themselves very readily to screen adaptations. Chandler, however, found himself to be quite out of his element when trying to work in Hollywood. It’s almost as though the novelist regarded the movies as being vulgar and crass as compared to the printed word.

1944’s Double Indemnity is a quintessential film noir, with a femme fatale, a straight arrow gone bad, double-crosses, and a strong sexual subtext. MacMurray plays Walter Neff, an insurance agent seduced by Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck). Together, they devise a scheme to kill off her husband and collect on his life insurance policy. After the murder, though, Neff has second thoughts about his illicit lover, and there are even some questions about whether the policy will pay off. Neff struggles for a way to extricate himself from the mess as it caves in on him. Wilder established some of the ground rules for the noir genre with Double Indemnity, telling the story in flashback form (with MacMurray’s narration), filling the screen with high-contrast shots and lighting splintered by venetian blinds and window panes, and above all infusing a dark, cynical humor into a relentlessly fatalistic story. Interestingly, MacMurray nearly refused the role, worrying that it would tarnish his movie image as an honest, upstanding, somewhat bland “good guy” (MacMurray would have the same concerns over his role in Wilder’s The Apartment). Instead, Double Indemnity turned into one of the biggest successes of MacMurray’s career.

Chandler and Wilder co-wrote the screenplay, a process fraught with trouble from the very start. The story was based on a James M. Cain novel, and the somewhat prissy Chandler viewed Cain as little more than a sweaty smut peddler. The steamy eroticism of Cain’s work — including Double Indemnity, Love’s Lovely Counterfeit, and The Postman Always Rings Twice — is the exact opposite of the somewhat stilted sexuality in Chandler’s writing. If anything, Chandler was a sort of 19th-century romantic at heart, with his Marlowe character given a reluctant update to a 1940s milieu. Wilder and Chandler butted heads from the very start over the direction of the story, the tone of the dialogue, and the writing process itself. Double Indemnity turned out to be more Wilder’s film than anyone else’s, of course, though Chandler’s crackling, hard-boiled dialogue comes through from time to time.

1946’s The Blue Dahlia was Chandler’s story through and through. Johnny (Ladd) comes home from WWII to find that his wife Helen has cheated on him in his absence. Rootless and disgusted, he leaves her, but Helen is murdered soon afterward. As the police’s No.1 suspect, Johnny flees, making the acquaintance of Joyce (Lake). Joyce is the wife of Eddie Harwood (DaSilva), who knows quite a bit more about Helen and her infidelities. Meanwhile, Johnny’s war buddies Buzz (Bendix) and George (Beaumont) try to clear his name. With a great cast, taut direction, double-crosses, and plot twists, The Blue Dahlia was a huge hit and a first-rate thriller. More conventional than daring, director Marshall doesn’t inject as much of the noir visual style as in many other pictures of the period. Chandler’s story of betrayal and corruption at nearly every level is more in keeping with his literary work. Chandler was himself not entirely happy with the film, though. He referred to Ladd (a limited actor at best) as “a very young boy’s idea of a tough guy” and was no more enamored of Lake. His original story would have made Buzz, the disturbed war buddy of Johnny, the killer. The navy raised strong objections, and the studio forced Chandler to write in another character as the murderer. It probably made for a better film; had the trail stopped at Buzz, it would have been a bit obvious. Playing on the returning-veteran theme (a popular one at the time), The Blue Dahlia is vintage Chandler — smart, cynical, and tense.

Chandler’s last go-around in Hollywood was with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 classic, Strangers on a Train. Tennis pro Guy Haines (Granger) bumps into Bruno (Walker) while on a train trip. The sociable Bruno chats with Guy and suggests that Guy kill his domineering father, while Bruno murders Guy’s wife, who refuses to divorce him. Guy dismisses the idea, but Bruno gets his own ideas, tracks down Guy’s wife, and strangles her at an amusement park (Hitchcock shows the murder in a reflection in the woman’s glasses). When Guy can’t come up with an airtight alibi, the police begin to suspect him. Meanwhile, Bruno demands that Guy fulfill his end of the bargain or else he’ll plant evidence implicating him. Clever, devious, and affable, Bruno stalks Guy at every turn, drawing attention to himself but also pointing the finger of suspicion toward Guy. This is classic Hitchcock, in which there are no innocents. Guy’s character is not entirely without blame; the murder of his wife did indeed free him up to go through with a socially advantageous marriage. His guilty feelings (a pervasive element in so many Hitchcock films) only serve to make him more of a suspect in the eyes of the police. Bruno, on the other hand, is sociable, charming, and handsome (along with being entirely deranged), a villain with whom the audience can’t help but sympathize. Bruno’s fey manner and obsessive behavior toward Guy only hint at the film’s rich gay subtext. Strangers on a Train was adapted from a Patricia Highsmith novel, and it would seem that it would have been the perfect project for Chandler. Chandler always longed to have his work seen as legitimate, to elevate it above the level of pulp trash. Yet it wasn’t until many years later that his writing was critically reassessed. The upper-crust settings of Strangers on a Train, a bare update of drawing-room mysteries, would seem to fit with his goals perfectly. The film’s success seemed to promise even better projects ahead, but by the early Fifties Chandler was having serious problems and would never write for Hollywood again.

This article appears in June 23 • 2000.