What did you watch? The 1944 (or 1945? )Philip Marlowe caper, Murder, My Sweet.

Why are we murdering sweets? What have you got against candy? The story is based on the Raymond Chandler novel Farewell, My Lovely, and is the first movie adapting the Philip Marlowe character, at least directly. What happened back in ye olden days is that often published stories would get adapted, or at least their plots used with character names changed – sometimes, an already existing character out there in the media would now be the focus of the plot.

So, instead of Philip Marlowe, it was a character called The Falcon who took on the case from the 1940 book in a 1942 film “The Falcon Takes Over.” That’s like if Spider-Man was a millionaire playboy who had to fight The Joker. I don’t know if movie and book audiences made these connections and fought over them like we do over details of the MCU or whatever. Maybe people have short memories in 1945 and there’s no UHF or cable to replay The Falcon Takes Over on Saturday afternoons. I do know that lifting plots and transposing characters happened decades later, because there’s two TERRIBLE Columbo episodes from the 1990s that lifted plots from “Ed McBain/87th Precinct” novels that had nothing to do with Columbo’s How-Catch-Em formula.

Anyway, Hollywood decided to get off The Falcon train and prop up Chandler’s private eye, and cast in this role was Dick Powell, who…was not known as a tough guy lead. Quite the opposite: a crooner and a romantic comedy type for a decade or so prior. They had to change the title because “Farewell My Lovely” sounded like a romantic comedy if it starred Dick Powell. He was getting older and was looking for different roles, so he went waaaay against type and was the first screen version of Philip Marlowe.

That’s a lot working against him to be a hard boiled detective, but Marlowe isn’t all fists and gunfire. That’s more of a Mike Hammer character. Marlowe wisecracks a lot in the face of criminals and nosy cops, both of whom are willing to turn violent on him as he’s just trying to find a dame for a client or whatnot. That’s kind of where Powell works in this role, and the film’s direction and effects help bring the an already exaggerated detective tale to life. 

Powell as Marlowe is in his office one night when a giant man sneaks in and demands that the detective find his girlfriend. The man, Moose Malloy, had gone to jail, and was released thinking that his lady Velma was out there looking for him, and he wanted to make sure they didn’t miss each other if, say, he got busted for another crime or something. Marlowe & Moose go to a bar Velma used to work at and the staff try to ignore them but Moose throws the owner around – literally, and Marlowe hints to the big guy that maybe he should look for this dame himself and get back to Moose.

The next day another guy, Marriott, shows up and offers $100 to Marlowe to go with him to stand guard while Marriott buys back some stolen property. On the job, Marlowe is knocked out, and wakes up to find Marriott beaten to death. The cops have questions, and warn him to stay away from a guy named Jules. Apparently Marriott was a known accomplice of Jules, who was a phony psychic and Marlowe pieces together that the two were in a scheme to blackmail and or steal from clients using the knowledge that Jules gets from wealthy ladies in the area. One of these ladies is Helen, who is married to the much older Grayle. The jewels were a gift from Grayle and she had hoped that Marriott would help her get them back and everyone suspects Jules. (Jules? Jewels? They refer to the latter as a jade necklace).

Stories intersect, violently, there’s offers to Marlowe from everyone to find the jade necklace, and Moose is still out there lumbering and making his own alliances that make Marlowe’s jobs much more difficult while the cops think Marlowe killed Marriott. Murder, My Sweet is not as well known as other Chandler adaptations, such as The Big Sleep released a couple years later. The Big Sleep starred Humphry Bogart a few years after he played Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (no relation to the aforementioned character Falcon) and is well regarded as one of the best detective movies ever, not to mention the pairing of soon to be real life couple of Bogart & Lauren Bacall. Bogart became everyone’s idea of the character (including creator Chandler’s), even though the character would be recast in future movies. That all said (sorry), it absolutely sticks to the Philip Marlowe formula as he navigates multiple jobs that intersect usually in awful ways, and it does so with a brilliant voiceover and a surprising amount of cartoonish scene transitions and even a couple special effects all to give the not-tough-guy actor some help in displaying his state of mind as he’s being knocked around by the storylines.

I’ve seen a few other adaptations (The Big Sleep, Lady In The Lake, The Long Goodbye), some of which are lauded as some of the best noir filmmaking (not Lady In The Lake), but Murder, My Sweet is my favorite. It has some B-movie parameters – maybe the studio wasn’t sure about Powell, they had already changed the name, so there’s a lot of reusing the same locations and just a small cast. Like any mystery, there’s only so many characters, so there’s only a few choices to figure out who did what as Marlowe pieces it together for the audience. But they made use of everything they had. Powell does his best to carry himself as both a smooth and tough talker with everyone, it’s usually everyone else trying to intimidate him but Powell throws it back at them and that’s how he wins the role.

The other star is Moose – played the 6’5” Mike Mazurki. It’s just good filmmaking to set up this giant violent man as a sneaky ninja when he just appears in frame. I absolutely believe that Marlowe et al didn’t see him when they turned around and he’s asking the same question, “Where’s Velma?”

I kept thinking of The Big Lebowski – the Coens have stated that the plot was “what if we put one of our friends in a Chandler novel like The Big Sleep?” but I think this is the plot with missing people and money that The Dude had wandered into. This movie is a lot of fun, highly recommended.

Anything about the cast? Let’s stick with Mike Mazurki. He started off as a lawyer but then turned to wrestling and eventually was cast as heavies in various films for the next 40 or so years. One of his last roles was the comedy Mob Boss (1990), which stars Eddie Deezen, Morgan Fairchild, and William Hickey. I would recommend this groaner of a slapstick comedy just for the use of sound effects.