POWELL vs BOGIE — who’s the best Philip Marlowe, the Raymond Chandler tough guy PI in Murder My Sweet (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946)? The Bogie-Bacall chemistry would favor BS but I like Powell’s off camera narration and interaction with Esther Howard and Mike Mazursky in MMS. I watched both consecutively.
Bogie has the best line in BS: “She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up” in reference to the sexually aggressive Martha Vickers’ character. Powell shows his disdain for conspicuous consumption in MMS when he strikes a match on the butt of a cupid statue. Memorable in MMS is the drunken Ms. Florian character played by Howard when she advises Powell: “Hold on to your chair and don’t step on no snakes.” (Howard also appears in Detour as a diner waitress dismissive of the Tom Neal character.)
The Big Sleep is convoluted while MMS features Claire Trevor, a world class femfatale. Yet Dorothy Malone is diverting with Bogie in BS. Film noir moved into the mainstream with these two blockbusters from RKO Radio and Warner Brothers during the war. Hold onto your chair!
LEAVE IT TO HUGH. Before he was an icon of suburban domesticity as the daddy in “Leave it to Beaver,” actor Hugh Beaumont cut a rakish figure in the underbelly of film making as the leading man in low budget film noir. Most memorable in PRC’s “Apology for Murder” is Hugh as a homicidal reporter conspiring with femme fatale Ann Savage to dispose of her husband played by Pierre Watkins. You’ve seen this before in the iconic film noir “Double Indemnity.” Versatile Beaumont in Lippert’s “Pier 23” played an Irish private eye who crosses paths with a bad girl played Ms. Savage. So don’t tell Jerry and Tony that dad had a past in the “dark city.”https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037518/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1
