One doesn’t—at least, we didn’t—associate Raymond Chandler and his private eye protagonist Philip Marlowe with the espionage adventures of Ian Fleming‘s James Bond. The characters live in two different eras, for one thing, with very little overlap in the 1950s. But the two authors, born twenty years apart—Chandler in 1888, Fleming in 1908—were members of a sort of mutual admiration society, and in 1958, someone at the BBC got the idea of placing them in a radio studio before a pair of microphones and giving them some time to discuss the art of the “thriller,” a term they use to encompass both Chandler’s hard-boiled, Los Angeles-bound detective fiction and Fleming’s globe-trotting spy stories.

The half-hour program is available for streaming via the BBC’s online archive, and we encourage fans of either writer to avail themselves of it.

In the early going, the pair of authors banter a bit what exactly a thriller is, and Chandler bemoans the fact that in the U.S.A., mystery writers are not afforded much respects by critics and publishers.

Fleming notes the contrast between the pair’s respective literary milieus, given that all of Chandler’s work was set in Los Angeles, while Fleming’s protagonist traveled the world. Fleming admitted to taking “copious notes” when traveling, and Chandler praises this practice, noting that Fleming’s lengthy and successful career as a journalist serves him well in this regard.

Chandler then teases Fleming a bit for having missed the detail, in a scene set in Las Vegas, of a waitress bringing Bond a glass of ice water to start the meal.

“That amused me,” Chandler says with a chuckle, “because that’s the first thing that happens in an American restaurant, the glass of ice water. It’s put down by the waitress or the busboy.”

“I kicked myself over that,” Fleming admits, “because I rather pride myself on trying to get these details right, and that was a very bad break.”

Fleming later asks Chandler how mob killings are arranged, and Chandler is happy to oblige with a lengthy account of how such hits are carried out.

Fleming also notes the difference between the pair’s respective protagonists, noting that Marlowe is “a real hero; he behaves in a heroic fashion.”

Not so Bond, says his creator.

“My leading character, James Bond, I never intended to be a hero,” insists Fleming. “I intended him to be a sort of blunt instrument wielded by a government department, who would get into these bizarre and fantastic situations and more or less shoot his way out of them — get out of them one way or another. Of course, he’s always referred to as a hero, but I don’t see him as a hero myself. I think he’s, on the whole, a rather unattractive man.”

Fleming goes on to admit that, as Chandler suggests, that he did allow Bond some feelings and sentiment in Casino Royale, but the two men agree that while a man in Bond’s line of work might experience emotions, he must, as Chandler puts it, “quell them.”

Fleming states that he is impressed with Marlowe’s (and Chandler’s) attitude toward gun violence, which he communicates by reading a passage from Chandler’s then-brand new novel, Playback (a book that was then and is now widely considered by far Chandler’s weakest—it was the last one he ever completed), in which Marlowe mocks a woman who is holding a gun on him by expressing his weariness with guns. “Guns never settle anything,” Fleming quotes Marlowe as saying. “They’re just a fast curtain to a bad second act.”

“I think that’s well put,” Fleming says with relish. “That is a far more sensible point of view than the one I put forward in my books, where people are shooting each other so much and so often, you often need a program to tell who’s in the act and who’s a spectator.”
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We’ve been enjoying “Classic Chandler,” BBC Radio 4′s series of dramatizations based on Raymond Chandler‘s seven published Philip Marlowe novels and Poodle Springs, the Marlowe novel left unfinished at the time of Chandler’s death that was completed decades later by Robert B. Parker, author of the popular series of Spenser detective novels.

We’ll admit that we’re not terribly sold on Toby Stephens‘ Marlowe,. He sounds a bit … insubstantial, to be honest, and his accent is all over the map (view the video below and see if you don’t agree). But that’s a relatively niggling point. The fact that Chander’s unparalleled work is being introduced to a new generation overrides any such objections we might be inclined to raise. Plus, it’s a kick to listen to the kind of radio dramas that once played such an important role in American popular culture but are now so rarely produced (we can’t help but wonder why the radio drama has continued to thrive in the UK and yet is all but extinct on this side of the pond).

The four novels that have already aired are available for listening, free of charge, at the Radio 4 web site, but we wouldn’t recommend putting off giving them a listen. Word is, the links to those free streams will soon come down. (If the links are already gone by the time you read this, the programs are available on CD at Amazon UK.)

The other four novels will air, as we understand it, in the fall.

Speaking of which, that’s one other complaint we have: Why not air the eight novels in the order they were published? Instead, Radio has so far aired, in order, The Big Sleep (the fist Marlowe novel), The Lady in the Lake (the fourth), Farewell, My Lovely (the second), and Playback (the seventh and final novel published during Chandler’s lifetime). It seems an odd choice to air these dramatizations out of order in this way. Playback, adapted from an unproduced Chandler screenplay, is considered by most observers the great writer’s weakest effort—he wasn’t at all well when he wrote it—so saving it and Poodle Springs for last certainly seems the better way to have gone.

But we’re pleased enough to see this series being presented, and we encourage the entire Cladrite community to pop over and give it a listen.

But what if you aren’t satisfied with driving by the homes in which Bogie and Bacall, Jimmy Stewart, and Bette Davis resided? What if you’re more interested in viewing the former residences of the likes of Ted Healy, Una Merkel, or Gummo Marx—not Groucho, Chico, Harpo, or Zeppo, but Gummo Marx?

Then you need only dial up The Movieland Directory, a very impressive online resource, indeed.

The Movieland Directory is downright hard to stump, and don’t think we didn’t try. It gave us addresses for Ned Sparks, for Jack Pickford (Mary’s prodigal brother, don’t you know), for Zasu Pitts, for Billy Gilbert—it even had addresses for El Brendel, for Pete’s sake.

The site also does reverse look-ups. You can enter an address, and if someone related to the movie industry ever lived there, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll turn up.

For instance, our friend Pat used to live on Alta Vista Boulevard, between Sunset and Fountain Avenues. By looking up her block (we’ve forgotten her exact address), we learned that Billy Wayne, who appeared in more than 250 pictures between 1931 and 1958 (but apparently starred in none of them—he’s listed as “uncredited” at IMDB.com in the overwhelming majority of them), used to live just a few doors south of Pat. That’s not terribly exciting, perhaps, but what if it had been Joan Crawford or Buster Keaton or Raymond Chandler? (Considering how often the peripatetic Chandler moved, it well could have been.)

John Ince, brother to motion picture pioneer Thomas Ince and a silent-movie actor and director in his own right, who would became a full-time character actor with the advent of talkies, also lived on what would later be Pat’s block.

And Peter Ostberg, a cabinet maker who was a Universal Studios employee in 1917 (and perhaps before and after that year, who knows?), lived right next to where Pat would live, though his residence has since been replaced by a contemporary apartment building that sits beside the similar one in which Pat resided.

Now, we don’t know Peter Ostberg from Adam, but it’s intriguing to have his name and these tidbits of info turn up in a search like this. (It is to us, anyway—perhaps we’re too easily fascinated.)

You’ll find former addresses of contemporary stars listed in the database, too, and it’s fun to see what those stars have in common with the stars of years gone by.

For instance, in the 1990s, Julia Roberts lived in the Colonial House Apartments at 1416 Havenhurst Drive. And so, at some point in their lives, did Fred Allen, Joan Blondell, Eddie Cantor, Marion Davies, Bette Davis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, William Powell, and Norma Talmadge, not to mention a slew of more contemporary stars.

We managed to stump the Movieland Directory database only twice. It returned no addresses when we submitted the name of author Ursula Parrott, a once bestselling author of scandalous fiction that might be considered an arguably more sensational precursor to today’s chick lit—but then, though many of her novels were made into movies, we’re not sure Parrott ever resided in L.A., which would take the site off the hook. And the Movieland Directory has no info on Ed Wood, Jr., everyone’s favorite famously inept movie director, which came as something of a surprise to us.

But that’s nitpicking. Give the site a try, and you’ll no doubt find 95% or more of the names you’re looking for. And you might learn just a little bit of Hollywood history

Robert Mitchum would have been 93 today, if he’d managed to stick around.

Was there ever a cooler movie star, with his sleepy eyes, barrel chest, and smooth way with tough-guy repartee? Mitchum was so cool he recorded calypso records on which he sang with a faux Caribbean accent. Honestly, who else could have pulled that off and kept his cachet?

It’s a damn shame Mitchum didn’t get to play Philip Marlowe at an appropriate age. His belated stab at the role, in 1975′s Farewell My Lovely, shows that he was perfectly suited to play Raymond Chandler‘s shamus. One can get a sense of how it might have gone by watching the film noir classic Out of the Past (1947), in which Mitchum plays a Marlowe-esque private eye, and at an age that was right in line with Marlowe’s.

We wrote to Mitchum in 1980 or so, asking him for an autographed photo. As we requested, we received a shot of him in the role of Marlowe, and it was inscribed, “Cheers! Bob Mitchum.” We don’t for certain if it was signed by the man himself or by someone who did his signing for him, but we like to think that Mitchum, who didn’t brook much nonsense from anyone, woulnd’ bother to send out proxy signatures, that he’d either sign them himself or not at all.

We’ll close by recalling Mitchum’s response to a reporter’s question after serving time in 1948 for marijuana possession:

“[Prison is] like Palm Springs, without the riff-raff.”

Dashiell Hammett, the man most responsible for the rise of hardboiled detective fiction, would have been 116 today.

The litany of his best work is quite impressive, indeed: The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, The Glass Key, Red Harvest, and many dozens of short stories. Though his most famous creations are Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles (having Humprey Bogart, William Powell, and Myrna Loy bring those characters to life on the silver screen no doubt has something to do with that), the protagonist Hammett, himself once a Pinkerton Detective, turned to most frequently was The Continental Op, a short, pudgy middle-aged detective for the Continental Detective Agency.

We’re unapologetic Raymond Chandler fans here at Cladrite Radio — for our money, he’s king of the hardboiled hill — but we think Hammett is aces, too, and we certainly agree that he played a vital role in legitimizing what was then a new genre of detective fiction. Hammett may not have invented hardboiled mysteries, but he opened the door for the literary world to give detective fiction its due and he was a huge influence on so many writers that followed him — Chandler and Ross Macdonald chief among them. As Chandler wrote in his essay on the art of the mystery, The Simple Art of Murder, Hammett “gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse.”

If you’ve never read Hammett, you have many options as to where you might begin. You could start with some of the Continental Op stories or perhaps our favorite of Hammett’s novels, The Maltese Falcon. Whichever you choose, you’re sure to be left wanting more when you’ve turned the last page. Hammett’s is a habit-forming oeuvre.