Classic Chandler
BBC Radio 4 presents dramatisations of all Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels, with Toby Stephens playing Philip Marlowe throughout.
Philip Marlowe is a moral man in an amoral world. California in the 1940s and 1950s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, reflecting all the tarnished glitter of the American Dream.
The police are corrupt, the businessmen well-heeled racketeers with politicians in their pockets and their daughters have gone to the bad.
The taxi-drivers, maids and bartenders restore Marlowe's faith in human nature - scratching out a living at the bottom of the pile, Marlowe is there with them, in his shabby office with its cracked sign and no air-con, waiting for the next client to walk through the door.
Alison Hindell, Head of Audio Drama, says: "Classic Chandler is collectors' stuff. The Philip Marlowe stories cover the full range of Chandler's characters including some very tricky women; the crystalline sense of period and place; the plots - byzantine with their twists and turns, seductions and knock-out punches: all are presented together for the first time as a complete set.
Add to that the superbly focussed scripts by Robin Brooks and Stephen Wyatt along with Toby Stephens's sharp interpretation of Marlowe and the result is a memorable experience. And in addition, I found that, although the mood and the tone are definitely noir, the imagination is fired into full colour by these productions. The power of radio."
This series brings all the Philip Marlowe novels to Radio 4's Saturday Play. The Big Sleep 1939, Farewell My Lovely 1940, The High Window 1942, The Lady in the Lake 1943, The Little Sister 1949 and The Long Goodbye 1953, and two lesser known novels, Playback 1958 and Poodle Springs, unfinished at the time of his death in 1959.
Toby Stephens is best known for playing megavillain Gustav Graves in the James Bond film Die Another Day (2002) and Edward Fairfax Rochester in the BBC television adaptation of Jane Eyre (2006). In autumn 2010 Toby starred as a detective in Vexed, a three-part comedic television series for BBC Two. He also made his debut at the National Theatre as George Danton in Danton's Death.
Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 23, 1888, but spent most of his boyhood and youth in England, where he attended Dulwich College and later worked as a freelance journalist for The Westminster Gazette and The Spectator. During World War I, he served in France with the First Division of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, transferring later to the R. A. F. In 1919 he returned to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually became director of a number of independent oil companies. The Depression put an end to his business career, and in 1933, at the age of forty-five, he turned to writing, publishing his first stories in Black Mask. By the time he published his first novel, The Big Sleep (1939), featuring the iconic private eye Philip Marlowe, it was clear that he had not only mastered a genre but had set a standard to which others could only aspire. He died in 1959.
Feature: A Coat, A Hat and A Gun
11.30am-noon, Thursday 3 February 2011
Harriett Gilbert presents a reappraisal of the life and legacy of the man from Upper Norwood who invented the private investigator as we know him. "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun." Philip Marlowe has become the archetypal American detective anti-hero, yet his creator was educated at English public school, took the Civil Service exam and started a career in the Admiralty. With contributions from writer Sarah Dunant, Professor John Sutherland, David Thomson, and David Fine. Producer Rebecca Stratford.
Afternoon Play: Double Jeopardy
Friday 4 February 2011, 2.15-3.00pm
In 1944 Raymond Chandler (Patrick Stewart) and Billy Wilder (Adrian Scarborough) work on a screen adaptation of James M Cain's novel Double Indemnity. Billy Wilder is a 36-year-old German Jewish émigré just making his name as a director and Raymond Chandler is a reformed alcoholic with a developing reputation as a novelist - but absolutely no experience of writing for the movies. By Stephen Wyatt.
Saturday Play: The Big Sleep
Saturday 5 February 2011, 2.30-4.00pm
Philip Marlowe (Toby Stephens) becomes entangled with the Sternwood family - respectable sister with gambling addiction (Kelly Burke), younger sister with drink/drug problem (Leah Brotherhead) and an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures. Dramatised by Robin Brooks; director Claire Grove.
Saturday Play: The Lady in the Lake
Saturday 12 February 2011, 2.30-4.00pm
Derace Kingsley (Sam Dale), a wealthy businessman, hires Philip Marlowe to find his estranged wife Crystal. Kingsley fears that rich, reckless Crystal may have got herself into a scandal and the last place she was known to have been was a resort called Little Fawn Lake. Dramatised by Stephen Wyatt; director Claire Grove.
Saturday Play: Farewell My Lovely
Saturday 19 February 2011, 2.30-4.00pm
When Philip Marlowe sees a huge, loudly dressed man casually throwing a bouncer out onto the the pavement as he goes into a bar, he knows it's time to walk away, so he follows him inside. The big guy is Moose Molloy (Richard Ridings), recently released from an eight-year prison sentence and now on the hunt for his old sweetheart, a red-haired nightclub singer named Velma Valento. Marlowe follows a trail which includes a stick-up, blackmail, an irresistable blonde, a psychic, drugs and murder, and it leads him all the way to the top of a corrupt state of California. Dramatised by Robin Brooks; director Mary Peate.
Saturday Play: Playback
Saturday 26 February 2.30-3.30pm
Philip Marlowe is hired to tail the mysterious Betty Mayfield (Sarah Goldberg) all the way to the seaside town of Esmerelda, without knowing why or the identity of his employer. It's not long before he realises that he's not the only one on the trail, and that he too is being watched. Director Sasha Yevtushenko; producer Claire Grove.
Saturday Play: The Long Goodbye
Saturday 1 October 2.30-3.30pm
Toby Stephens is back as Raymond Chandler's fast-talking private eye Philip Marlowe.This is California in the 50's, as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, reflecting all the tarnished glitter of the American Dream. Outside a club on Sunset Boulevard Marlowe meets a drunk named Terry Lennox, a man with scars on one side of his face. They forge an uneasy friendship but everything changes when Lennox shows up late one night, asking for a favour.
Dramatised by Stephen Wyatt; directed by Claire Grove.
Saturday Play: The High Window
Saturday 8 October 2.30-3.30pm
When a rare gold coin is stolen from her collection, Mrs Murdoch hires private eye Philip Marlowe to find it. The tough matriarch is convinced about the identity of the thief, but Marlowe's own enquiries lead him elsewhere. He's soon caught in the crossfire of a family at war with itself.
Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko; produced by Claire Grove
Saturday Play: The Little Sister
Saturday 15 October 2.30-3.30pm
A small, neat girl walks into Philip Marlowe's office. Orfamay Quest is looking for her brother Orrin. She gives Marlowe twenty dollars and lots of moral disapproval. Marlowe takes the case and finds himself drawn into the glamorous world of the Hollywood film studios.
Dramatised by Stephen Wyatt; directed by Claire Grove
Saturday Play: Poodle Springs
Saturday 22 October 2.30-3.30pm
Fresh from his honeymoon with heiress Linda Loring, Philip Marlowe has set up shop in the upmarket Californian town of Poodle Springs. But the life of a kept man soon loses its charm, and when he's asked to find a gambler on the run from his debts, Marlowe can't resist. Toby Stephens plays iconic detective Philip Marlowe.
The eighth and final Philip Marlowe novel, Raymond Chandler's Poodle Springs was unfinished at the time of the author's death in 1959. It remained so for another 30 years, until crime writer Robert B. Parker completed the novel to mark the centenary of Chandler's birth.
Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko; produced by Claire Grove.
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