Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 23, 1888, the son of an English immigrant from Somerset and an American from Massachusetts. His parents divorced when he was seven, and he was raised by his mother in England. He returned to the United States in 1907 and attended Dulwich College, a private school in Los Angeles. After graduation, he worked as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.
In 1912, Chandler began working as a clerk for the Dabney Oil Company. He was later promoted to bookkeeper and then to accountant. He quit in 1917 to join the U.S. Army, serving in France during World War I. After the war, he returned to the Dabney Oil Company and married Cissy Pascal, a co-worker. The couple had one child, a daughter named Julie.
In 1923, Chandler quit his job at the oil company and began writing fiction. His first published story, “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot,” appeared in Black Mask magazine in 1933. Chandler became one of the most popular writers of detective fiction with his novels The Big Sleep (1939) and Farewell, My Lovely (1940). His hard-boiled style and use of slang influenced many other writers, including Ross Macdonald and Robert B. Parker.
Chandler’s marriage to Cissy Pascal ended in divorce in 1935. He married Helen Henshaw in 1942, and the couple remained together until Chandler’s death in 1959.
Chandler died of pneumonia on March 26, 1959, at the age of 70.
General Info
Full Name
Raymond Chandler
Died
March 26, 1959, La Jolla, California, United States
Profession
Author, Screenwriter, Novelist
Education
Dulwich College
Family
Spouse
Cissy Pascal
Parents
Maurice Chandler, Florence Chandler
Accomplishments
Awards
Edgar Award for Best Novel
Nominations
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Academy Award for Best Writing Adapted Screenplay
Movies
Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, Murder, My Sweet, The Blue Dahlia, The Long Goodbye, Strangers on a Train, Lady in the Lake, The Brasher Doubloon, The Falcon Takes Over, Time to Kill, Farewell, My Lovely, Marlowe, The Unseen, Morning Patrol, And Now Tomorrow
[on Hollywood] They don't want you until you have made a name, and by the time you have made a name, you have developed some kind of talent they can't use. All they will do is spoil it, if you let them.
2
[writing tip] When in doubt have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
3
[on Hollywood] Wonderful what Hollywood will do to a nobody. It will make a radiant glamor queen out of a drab little wench who ought to be ironing a truck driver's shirts, a he-man hero with shining eyes and a brilliant smile reeking of sexual charm out of some overgrown kid who was meant to go to work with a lunch-box.
4
[on writers] They live over-strained lives in which far too much humanity is sacrificed to far too little art.
5
[on writing] Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.
6
I see [Marlowe] always in a lonely street, in lonely rooms, puzzled but never quite defeated.
7
[line assigned to private eye, Philip Marlowe] I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat, and a gun.
8
[on author James M. Cain] Faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billy goat. He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naif, a [Marcel Proust] in greasy overalls, a dirty boy with a piece of chalk.
9
[letter to Howard Hunt on self-plagiarism allegation] I am the copyright owner. I can use my material in any way I see fit ... There is no moral or ethical issue involved.
10
[on Ernest Hemingway] He never wrote but one story. All the rest is the same thing in different pants - or without different pants. And his eternal preoccupation with what goes on between the sheets becomes rather nauseating in the end. One reaches a time of life when limericks written on the walls of comfort stations are not just obscene, they are horribly dull. This man has only one subject and he makes that ridiculous.
11
The Blue Dahlia (1946) wasn't a top-notch film by any means, largely because Veronica Lake couldn't play the love scenes and too much had to be discarded.
12
The making of a motion picture is an endless contention of tawdry egos, almost none of them capable of anything more creative than credit stealing and self-promotion.
13
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid . . . He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.
14
A good title is the title of a successful book.
15
[on attending the Academy Awards for the first (and last) time, 1941] If you can get past those awful idiot faces on the bleachers outside the theater without a sense of the collapse of human intelligence, and if you can go out into the night and see half the police force of Los Angeles gathered to protect the golden ones from the mob in the free seats, but not from the awful moaning sound they give out, like destiny whistling through a hollow shell; if you can do these things and still feel the next morning that the picture business is worth the attention of one single, intelligent, artistic mind, then in the picture business you certainly belong because this sort of vulgarity, the very vulgarity from which the Oscars are made, is the inevitable price that Hollywood exacts from each of its serfs.
16
Hollywood has all the personality of a paper cup.
17
The motion picture is like a picture of a lady in a half-piece bathing suit. If she wore a few more clothes, you might be intrigued. If she wore no clothes at all, you might be shocked. But the way it is, you are occupied with noticing that her knees are too bony and that her toenails are too large. The modern film tries too hard to be real. Its techniques of illusion are so perfect that it requires no contribution from the audience but a mouthful of popcorn.
18
I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself get snotty about it.
19
Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man's nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a television set.
20
If my books had been any worse I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I should not have come.
Facts
#
Fact
1
Chandler derogatorily referred to Veronica Lake as "Moronica.".
2
His wife Cissy was over seventeen years older than he was and was, to his embarrassment, sometimes thought by strangers to be his mother. Chandler was devoted to her and tried to commit suicide after her death.
3
Attended Dulwich College in London, the same school attended by C.S. Forester and P.G. Wodehouse.
4
He spent much of his childhood in London, England and became a British citizen in 1907. He did not regain his American citizenship until 1956.
5
He was 50 years old when his first novel was published.
6
Was of Irish descent and spent many summers in Waterford, Ireland.
7
He gave up writing at the age of 22 after the suicide of his friend Richard Middleton. Chandler felt that, if someone as talented as Middleton couldn't make it, he didn't have a chance.
8
Former journalist and oil executive. First started writing for the pulp magazine "Black Mask" magazine at the age of 45. He wrote the first of the seven novels that made him famous in 1939.
His final completed novel, "Playback" was originally written as a screenplay for Universal Studios. After paying him for it, Universal passed on shooting it, so Chandler converted it to a novel.
12
Encouraged Ian Fleming to continue writing his James Bond novels in the mid 1950s by writing a few words of recommendation to Fleming's American publishers.
13
Died midway through writing his last Philip Marlowe novel, "Poodle Springs," in 1959. More than three decades later, it was completed by Chandler admirer Robert B. Parker (author of the "Spenser" novels), and became a best-seller.
14
Legendary detective novelist and occasional screenwriter. Created Philip Marlowe.
15
Was in his early 40s before selling his first magazine story.
Movies
Writer
Title
Year
Status
Character
Double Indemnity
1973
TV Movie 1944 screenplay
The Long Goodbye
1973
novel "The Long Goodbye"
Marlowe
1969
novel "The Little Sister"
Storyboard
1961
TV Series short story - 1 episode
Philip Marlowe
TV Series character - 24 episodes, 1959 - 1960 creator - 2 episodes, 1959 - 1960
77 Sunset Strip
1958
TV Series screenplay - 1 episode
TV de Vanguarda
1957
TV Series 1 episode
Schlitz Playhouse
1957
TV Series story - 1 episode
Climax!
TV Series story - 1 episode, 1954 novel - 1 episode, 1954
Lux Video Theatre
1954
TV Series previous screenplay - 1 episode
Studio One in Hollywood
1951-1953
TV Series story - 2 episodes
Strangers on a Train
1951
screen play
Nash Airflyte Theatre
1951
TV Series story - 1 episode
Robert Montgomery Presents
1950
TV Series novel - 1 episode
The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse
1949
TV Series story - 1 episode
The Brasher Doubloon
1947
novel "The High Window"
Lady in the Lake
1947
novel
The Big Sleep
1946
from the novel by
The Blue Dahlia
1946
written by
The Unseen
1945
Murder, My Sweet
1944
novel
And Now Tomorrow
1944
screen play
Double Indemnity
1944
screenplay
Time to Kill
1942
novel "The High Window"
The Falcon Takes Over
1942
novel "Farewell, My Lovely"
Trouble Is My Business
book abandoned
The Long Goodbye
2014
TV Mini-Series based on the novel by - 5 episodes
Marlowe
2007
TV Movie characters
Mazaný Filip
2003
character
Poodle Springs
1998
TV Movie book
Once You Meet a Stranger
1996
TV Movie screenplay "Stranger on a Train" / teleplay
Fallen Angels
TV Series based on a story by - 1 episode, 1995 based on a short story by - 1 episode, 1993
Morning Patrol
1987
excerpt
Philip Marlowe, Private Eye
TV Series novels - 10 episodes, 1983 - 1986 story - 1 episode, 1986
Ich werde warten
1982
TV Movie novel
The Big Sleep
1978
novel
Farewell, My Lovely
1975
novel
Actor
Title
Year
Status
Character
Double Indemnity
1944
Man Reading Book Outside Keyes' Office (uncredited)
