There are few authors who have become so synonymous with one genre of fiction, as Raymond Chandler has done. Think of detective fiction involving a private eye and most people will immediately think of Philip Marlowe. Raymond Chandler’s style of writing has been often imitated but no better style has ever been found for the genre.
Raymond Thornton Chandler was born on the 23rd July, 1888 in Chicago, Illinois. Raymond Chandler was the only son of Maurice Chandler, an American railroad worker and Florence Chandler. Maurice though was an alcoholic, and the two soon divorced. Upon confirmation of the divorce in 1895, Florence returned to England taking her son with her. Chandler therefore spent in childhood days in Upper Norwood in London, in a house with his mother, uncle, aunt and grandmother. Florence and Chandler were basically supported by his uncle, who was a prominent London lawyer.
School wise Chandler was predominantly educated at Dulwich College, from 1900, also in London, where he did reasonably well in what was best described as a classical education. Chandler had the opportunity to go to university but instead decided to spend time in Germany and France. Abroad he took time to study international law, but returned to England in 1907. In the same year he took on British nationality, mainly in an attempt to get a job with the Civil Service.
Chandler passed the Civil Service examination, and was one of the best in the year. This enabled him to take up a civil servant position within the Admiralty. It did not take him long though to realise that the Civil Service was not for him, and he resigned after twelve months in the role. This twelve months though had made him aware that he would prefer a literary career, and had even managed to get a poem published.
Looking to writing to make a living, Chandler turned his hand to journalism and as a reviewer, but he couldn’t find anything to interest him as much as his own writings did. His own writing was actually mildly successful and by 1912 he had managed to publish twenty seven poems, and a “The Rose Leaf Romance”, which was his first published short story.
Unhappy with his life in England, Chandler sought to return to America, something he achieved by borrowing money from his uncle. He struggled though any job to interest him, and have decided to live in Los Angeles, took jobs picking fruit and stringing tennis rackets. In search of a more steady income Chandler took a bookkeeping course by correspondence which he completed ahead of schedule. This qualification enabled him to achieve a position with a Los Angeles’s creamery.
In 1917, with the First World War raging, Raymond Chandler decided to enlist in the Canadian Army, with whom he was sent to the Western Front. After a short time in the trenches, Chandler transferred to the Royal Air Force, with whom he was training when the war came to an end. Raymond Chandler found himself discharged from the military services in 1919, from Vancouver, and promptly travelled back to Los Angeles. This time around Los Angeles was a lot kinder to him and he found work with the Dabney Oil Syndicate as a bookkeeper, after a short time working for a bank in San Francisco. The start of the 1920s proved to be a happy and a sad time for Chandler. Raymond Chandler’s mother died in September 1923, but he had found his true love at the same time.
Raymond Chandler was in love with Pearl Eugenie Pascal, also known as Cissy. It was though a union that Chandler’s mother had looked favourably on. Cissy was eighteen years older than Chandler’s thirty-six years of age, when they married in 1924. Cissy had also already been married and divorced twice beforehand. In love, Chandler also saw his career progress and by 1932 he was vice-president of the Dabney Oil Syndicate. This happy situation though soon came to an end though as Cissy fell ill and the depression started to hit the business. Chandler turned to alcohol, just as his father had done many years before. The alcohol saw him absent from work on numerous occasions and there were also rumours of liaisons with the office secretaries. Thus in 1932 Chandler was fired and became one of the increasing numbers of Americans out of work.
From a good income, Chandler and Cissy now found themselves reliant on their limited savings. With job prospects poor, Raymond Chandler turned his hand to creative writing to make a living. The most popular form of literature at the time was pulp fiction, and so Chandler taught himself to deal with the word limits and subjects required from the publishers. Raymond Chandler was a natural and in 1933, his first story “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot” was published in Black Mask magazine. Chandler also started to develop his unique style of evocative metaphors in his writings.
Chandler did fairly well in the world of pulp fiction although he was not the most prolific of writers. In a world where the likes of Lester Dent and Erle Stanley Gardner could write dozens of books each year, Chandler managed only nineteen stories between 1933 and 1939, spread over the Black Mask, Dime Detective and Detective Fiction Weekly magazines. This may have been due to Chandler trying to go beyond the boundaries of normal pulp fiction creating a depth to the characters involved.
The work though was not in vain, and in 1939 at the age of fifty one, Raymond Chandler managed to get his first novel published. This was “The Big Sleep”, and it has proved to be one of the most enduring detective novels of all time. This was the first introduction of Philip Marlowe, and the private eye soon became a cult character, although Philip Marlowe had actually appeared in an earlier short story, “Killer in the Rain”. Philip Marlowe went on to appear in six more novels; “Farewell, My Lovely” (1940), “The High Window” (1942), “The Lady in the Lake” (1943), “The Little Sister” (1949), “The Long Goodbye” (1953), and “Playback” (1958).
The success of his Philip Marlowe novels did open up new opportunities for Chandler, and in 1943 he commenced a career as a screenwriter. Despite disliking the way that Hollywood operated Chandler found himself working with Billy Wilder on the 1944 film “Double Indemnity”. The film was based on the work of James M. Cain, who loved the adaptation, although Wilder found Chandler difficult to work with. Chandler also collaborated on the screenplays for “And Now Tomorrow” (1944), “The Unseen” (1945) and “Strangers on a Train” (1951). This last film was written with Alfred Hitchcock, who ended up replacing chandler as he was unhappy with Chandler’s work.
Raymond Chandler actually only wrote one screenplay by himself which was the Oscar nominated “The Blue Dahlia” (1946), although he did have a large input on the Bogart adaptation of “The Big Sleep” in 1946. By the 1950′s though Chandler turned his back on Hollywood and instead went back to his own writings.
Despite the success of his novels, Chandler did not write faster than he had done before. In his whole life he only published seven novels and a total of twenty four short stories. The income from his work though did allow a comfortable living for Chandler and his wife. The couple moved to La Jolla, near San Diego in 1946. The climate was good for Cissy, who was suffering from fibrosis of the lungs.
His writing did not receive a huge amount of recognition in the industry, although as previously mentioned he was not the most prolific of writers. In 1946 he received a screenplay award from the Mystery Writers of America, and eight years later received another award for a novel. The same organisation made him president of themselves in 1958.
Chandler started to decline though after the death of Cissy in 1954, Cissy had been suffering from fibrosis of the lungs. Chandler and Cissy had been married for thirty years and it had a profound effect on the author. Chandler slipped into bouts of depression, and he turned to drink as he had done years before. Chandler still managed to write although the quality of his work his often said not to be as good as it had been during in peak, although it was during Cissy’s illness that “The Long Goodbye” was written.
The first few months after the death of his wife were a difficult time for Chandler and he attempted suicide on more than one occasion. Whether he seriously intended to end his life is not known though, as his most famous attempt saw him phone the police to tell them he was going to kill himself.
The complications to be found in his life were not solely alcohol and depression related and he soon found himself connected to a number of women. He travelled to England where he struck up a relationship with Jessica Tyndale and then Linda Loring. He also became linked to Sonia Orwell, who was George Orwell’s widow, and Natasha Spender, who was Stephen Spender’s wife, Spender being a well known English poet of the day. His love though seems to have been split between his secretary, Jean Fracasse and his literary agent, Helga Greene. It was Helga who did much to care for Chandler, and it was she who pushed Chandler to finish “Playback” which was published in 1958.
Raymond Chandler passed away on 26th March 1959 at his home in La Jolla. The cause of death was recorded as pneumonial peripheral vascular shock and pre-renal uremia. It was on his death bed that he proposed to Helga Greene, and she inherited his estate following his death. It was though not a clear cut inheritance though and a lawsuit ensued with Jean Fracasse. It was this lawsuit that prevented Raymond Chandler from being buried next to his deceased wife, Cissy, and instead ended up in the Potter’s Field at Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego.
Chandler left behind a great legacy in literary terms. His characters were used in subsequent books, but the impact on the whole genre of detective and crime fiction has been much more of an impact. It is no exaggeration to suggest that with Philip Marlowe a whole literary genre may have fallen by the wayside.
Copyright - First Published 14th June 2008
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