Raymond Chandler

Birthday: 23 July 1888, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Birth Name: Raymond Thornton Chandler

An American novelist, writer of crime fiction featuring the private detective Philip Marlowe, Raymond (Thornton) Chandler was born in Chicago of an American father and an Anglo-Irish mother. He moved to England when his parents divorced. He attended Dulwich College and studied languages in France and Germany before returning to England in 1907 and becoming a naturalized British subject. He took a civil service job in the Admiralty, which he left in 1912 to return to America, settling in California. After the US entered World War I he enlisted in the Canadian Army, then transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. After the armistice he returned to California and got a series of bookkeeping jobs, finally becoming a vice-president with the Dabney Oil syndicate.All along, however, he had been submitting stories, poems, sketches and essays to a number of periodicals, but when the Depression hit and the bottom fell out of the oil business, he lost his job and turned to writing full-time. He found a niche with stories of the "hard-boiled" school popularized by Dashiell Hammett, and had many of his early stories accepted by Black Mask, the same mystery magazine that had first published Hammett. His first four novels--"The Big Sleep" (1939, filmed 1946 [The Big Sleep (1946)] and 1978 [The Big Sleep (1978)]); "Farewell My Lovely" (1940, filmed 1944 [Murder, My Sweet (1944)] and 1975 [Farewell, My Lovely (1975)]); "The High Window" (1942, filmed 1947 [The Brasher Doubloon (1947)]); and "The Lady in the Lake (1943, filmed 1946 [Lady in the Lake (1947)])--which reworked plots from some of his short stories, were his most successful.He spent some time in Hollywood as a screenwriter, contributing to Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944), the film noir classic The Blue Dahlia (1946) and Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951). He wrote realistically, in stark contrast to the English style of drawing-room puzzle mysteries where an amateur detective always knows more than the police and clues turn up at just the right moment. Chandler dismissed these plots as "having God sit in your lap." Hide

[on Ernest Hemingway] He never wrote but one story. All the rest is the same thing in different pant Show more [on Ernest Hemingway] He never wrote but one story. All the rest is the same thing in different pants - or without different pants. And his eternal preoccupation with what goes on between the sheets becomes rather nauseating in the end. One reaches a time of life when limericks written on the walls of comfort stations are not just obscene, they are horribly dull. This man has only one subject and he makes that ridiculous. Hide

[on Hollywood] Wonderful what Hollywood will do to a nobody. It will make a radiant glamor queen out Show more [on Hollywood] Wonderful what Hollywood will do to a nobody. It will make a radiant glamor queen out of a drab little wench who ought to be ironing a truck driver's shirts, a he-man hero with shining eyes and a brilliant smile reeking of sexual charm out of some overgrown kid who was meant to go to work with a lunch-box. Hide

A good title is the title of a successful book. A good title is the title of a successful book.

[on writing] Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take any Show more [on writing] Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know. Hide

If my books had been any worse I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any Show more If my books had been any worse I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I should not have come. Hide

The Blue Dahlia (1946) wasn't a top-notch film by any means, largely because Veronica Lake couldn't Show more The Blue Dahlia (1946) wasn't a top-notch film by any means, largely because Veronica Lake couldn't play the love scenes and too much had to be discarded. Hide

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid . Show more Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid . . . He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. Hide

[letter to Howard Hunt on self-plagiarism allegation] I am the copyright owner. I can use my materia Show more [letter to Howard Hunt on self-plagiarism allegation] I am the copyright owner. I can use my material in any way I see fit ... There is no moral or ethical issue involved. Hide

Hollywood has all the personality of a paper cup. Hollywood has all the personality of a paper cup.

The making of a motion picture is an endless contention of tawdry egos, almost none of them capable Show more The making of a motion picture is an endless contention of tawdry egos, almost none of them capable of anything more creative than credit stealing and self-promotion. Hide

[on writers] They live over-strained lives in which far too much humanity is sacrificed to far too l Show more [on writers] They live over-strained lives in which far too much humanity is sacrificed to far too little art. Hide

The motion picture is like a picture of a lady in a half-piece bathing suit. If she wore a few more Show more The motion picture is like a picture of a lady in a half-piece bathing suit. If she wore a few more clothes, you might be intrigued. If she wore no clothes at all, you might be shocked. But the way it is, you are occupied with noticing that her knees are too bony and that her toenails are too large. The modern film tries too hard to be real. Its techniques of illusion are so perfect that it requires no contribution from the audience but a mouthful of popcorn. Hide

Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the highe Show more Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man's nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a television set. Hide

[on attending the Academy Awards for the first (and last) time, 1941] If you can get past those awfu Show more [on attending the Academy Awards for the first (and last) time, 1941] If you can get past those awful idiot faces on the bleachers outside the theater without a sense of the collapse of human intelligence, and if you can go out into the night and see half the police force of Los Angeles gathered to protect the golden ones from the mob in the free seats, but not from the awful moaning sound they give out, like destiny whistling through a hollow shell; if you can do these things and still feel the next morning that the picture business is worth the attention of one single, intelligent, artistic mind, then in the picture business you certainly belong because this sort of vulgarity, the very vulgarity from which the Oscars are made, is the inevitable price that Hollywood exacts from each of its serfs. Hide

I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself ge Show more I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself get snotty about it. Hide

I see [Marlowe] always in a lonely street, in lonely rooms, puzzled but never quite defeated. I see [Marlowe] always in a lonely street, in lonely rooms, puzzled but never quite defeated.

[on author James M. Cain] Faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billy goat. He is every kind of Show more [on author James M. Cain] Faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billy goat. He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naif, a [Marcel Proust] in greasy overalls, a dirty boy with a piece of chalk. Hide

[line assigned to private eye, Philip Marlowe] I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I Show more [line assigned to private eye, Philip Marlowe] I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat, and a gun. Hide

[writing tip] When in doubt have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand. [writing tip] When in doubt have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

[on Hollywood] They don't want you until you have made a name, and by the time you have made a name, Show more [on Hollywood] They don't want you until you have made a name, and by the time you have made a name, you have developed some kind of talent they can't use. All they will do is spoil it, if you let them. Hide

Raymond Chandler's FILMOGRAPHY

All as Actor (1) as Director (1) as Creator (7)

Farewell, My Lovely

The Long Goodbye

The Unseen

Lady in the Lake

Murder My Sweet

Double Indemnity

Time to Kill (1942)

Strangers on a Train