BW - EP130—010: Philip Marlowe Comes To Radio—Marlowe After CBS

Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting

Raymond Chandler wrote three more Philip Marlowe novels: The Little Sister in 1949, The Long Goodbye in 1953, and Playback in 1958. He became a dual citizen of the U.S. and Great Britain. His wife, Cissy died in 1954. In 1955, he attempted suicide. Heartbroken and drunk, Chandler neglected to inter her cremated remains. They sat for fifty-seven years in a storage locker at Cypress View Mausoleum. Chandler was in the midst of a new Marlowe novel, Poodle Springs, when he passed away on March 26th, 1959. Robert B. Parker finished the novel thirty years later. Chandler is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, in San Diego, California. Later that year ABC brought Marlowe to TV for the first time in a series starring Philip Carey. It lasted five months. James Garner starred as Marlowe in a 1969 film, while Elliott Gould played Marlowe in the cult classic Long Goodbye from 1973, and a middle-aged Robert Mitchum starred in the 1975 Farewell, My Lovely and the 1978 Big Sleep. Between September of 1977 and January of 1978 BBC dramatized The Big Sleep, The High Window, The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, and The Long Goodbye. Ed Bishop starred as Marlowe. Ten years later, BBC did a version of Farewell, My Lovely. The shows were later heard in Los Angeles over NPR’s affiliate KCRW-FM. BBC was back at it again with new adaptations of Chandler’s novels starring Toby Stephens in 2011. Meanwhile HBO produced two series of Marlowe TV episodes in the mid-1980s starring Powers Boothe, and both Danny Glover and James Caan have played Marlowe in made-for-TV films in the years since. It has recently been announced that Liam Neeson will star in a new Marlowe film in 2023.