Gumshoe Blues

Re-reading Raymond Chandler at the moment - it's been a while. God I love his writing.

I smelled Los Angeles before I got to it. It smelled stale and old like a living-room that had been closed too long. But the coloured lights fooled you. The lights were wonderful. There ought to be a monument to the man who invented neon lights. Fifteen stories high, solid marble. There's a boy who really made something out of nothing.

- 'The Little Sister' (1949)

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Of course the best film of a Chandler novel, the one that truly and most accurately evokes Philip Marlowe's world of all-night drugstores, hired heavies with blackjacks, bent Bay City cops and platinum blondes who are not all they seem is, ironically, the one made, and set, in 1973 - albeit a 1973 shot through with and/or rammed uncomfortably up against Chandler's 40s, thanks in no small measure to John Williams' blue, blue score, and the constantly reiterated title song, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer...no less.

Jack Sheldon - 'The Long Goodbye' (vocal) (1973)
John Williams - 'The Long Goodbye' (vocal*) (1973)
Dave Grusin Trio - 'The Long Goodbye' (instrumental) (1973)

* I think, Clydie King.