Tuesday, July 27, 2021

The Brasher Doubloon (1947): Second Film Adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The High Window

The Brasher Doubloon starts with Raymond Chandler’s famous detective Philip Marlowe driving up to Mrs. Elizabeth Murdock’s residence in Pasadena, California. It’s a very windy day, and he grumbles about the wind on his way up the walk to the front door. His voice-over narration states, “I was sore at myself for coming all the way out to Pasadena on a day like that, just to see about a case. And how I hate summer winds. They come in suddenly off the Mohave Desert and you can taste sand for a week. I knew it was the voice of the girl on the phone that had gotten me. And I was reminding myself how often your ears play a dirty trick on your eyes. But this time, there was no letdown.”

From the start of The Brasher Doubloon, with its windy conditions and Marlowe’s reference to what I presume are the Santa Ana winds, I was curious about its filming locations. I didn’t find anything about filming locations or the weather conditions during the shooting schedule, but I did find an interesting blog about Mrs. Elizabeth Murdock’s house. Click here to see some history and filming information related to the house at the “I Am Not a Stalker” blog.

Except for detective Philip Marlowe’s dislike of the weather conditions, The Brasher Doubloon starts out much like the novel on which it is based: Raymond Chandler’s The High Window. Marlowe meets Mrs. Elizabeth Murdock and her personal secretary Merle Davis at Mrs. Murdock’s home in Pasadena. After some preliminary questions, Mrs. Murdock decides that Marlowe will do as the private investigator for her case. She hires him to find a missing coin, the Brasher doubloon, which was part of her deceased husband’s coin collection.

But the film very soon presents some noticeable differences from the novel. First, the film’s Marlowe is very much attracted to Merle Davis, and he takes every opportunity to find out what he can about her while he is working on Mrs. Murdock’s case. In the novel, Marlowe isn’t sure what to make of Merle Davis when he first meets her, but there is never any indication anywhere in the narrative that he is romantically interested in her. Also in the novel, Mrs. Murdock is certain that her daughter-in-law, Linda Conquest, a nightclub singer, stole the coin when she moved out a week earlier, and she insists that Marlowe look into her daughter-in-law’s affairs and retrieve her coin. In the film, the character of Linda Conquest doesn’t even exist.

The Brasher Doubloon is in the public domain. Click here to watch it at the Internet Archive. The digital copy at the archive is in English with Spanish subtitles. I don’t speak Spanish, but even I could tell that the translation was shaky. Beggars can’t be choosers; it is free, after all!

I’m going to confess up front that I did not like this adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The High Window. As portrayed in The Brasher Doubloon, Philip Marlowe is more brash and more physical. He lacked all of the poetry and wry observations of Marlowe in the novel, and he has none of the dry wit and good humor of Lloyd Nolan’s Michael Shayne in Time to Kill, which was the first screen adaptation of The High Window. And the screenplay took great liberties with Raymond Chandler’s plot. The film waters down Chandler’s story to make Philip Marlowe more of a ladies’ man and Merle Davis more willing to accept his romantic overtures. This second film adaptation is a poor telling of Chandler’s novel, and it doesn’t fare well in comparison to Lloyd Nolan’s Michael Shayne (the stand-in for Philip Marlowe) in Time to Kill.

After reading The High Window and learning that two film adaptations of the novel have been made, I decided to write about the novel and the two films as part of a series on my blog. Time to Kill was the first, released in 1942. The Brasher Doubloon, released in 1947, is the second.

◊ Click here for my article about Raymond Chandler’s novel The High Window.

◊ Click here for my article about Time to Kill, the first film adaptation of Chandler’s novel.

This article about The Brasher Doubloon is the third and last article in the series for July 2021.

George Montgomery portrays Marlowe as a rougher detective than the one in Chandler’s novel or Lloyd Nolan’s portrayal of him in Time to Kill. The scene in The Brasher Doubloon where he deduces that Rudolph Vannier is a freelance camera operator doesn’t appear in the novel, but I mention it here because Marlowe physically assaults Vannier and takes his wallet. Marlowe is portrayed as combative, Vannier as meek and weak: not at all the case in the novel. Later in the film, Marlowe gets into a fistfight with characters that don’t exist in the novel. Philip Marlowe, as written by Chandler, isn’t in the habit of getting into any physical confrontations—that’s just not his style—and it was odd to see him in this position in the film. If you haven’t read any of Chandler’s novels, however, you might accept this film version of Marlowe as just like any other ordinary detective in a film noir.

(This article about The Brasher Doubloon contains spoilers.)

I have read on a few sites online that The Brasher Doubloon was meant by the studio, Twentieth Century Fox, to be a more faithful adaptation of Chandler’s novel, but I disagree with that assessment of the final film. Let me list just a few of the glaring differences between The Brasher Doubloon and the novel:

The Brasher doubloon has a romantic and violent history in the film. The only history it has in the novel is the history of its ownership by the Murdocks.

Philip Marlowe is attracted to Merle Davis and wants to pursue her romantically. Marlowe did no such thing in the novel.

George Anson never follows Philip Marlowe in the film as he does in the novel, and thus his role in the film is minor (he appears only as a dead body in the film).

I already mentioned that Linda Conquest, Leslie Murdock’s wife, is eliminated from the film altogether. But this is such a glaring change that it deserves to be mentioned twice.

Leslie Murdock is a tough character in this film. He hangs out with goons and gamblers, and he is not the momma’s boy that appears in the novel.

Rudolph Vannier is not a coin collector, and he never visited Philip Marlowe’s office in the novel.

Philip Marlowe breaks into the Murdock home, something he never does in the novel. He always consults with his client Mrs. Murdock directly because, in the novel, he does have some principles.

Mrs. Murdock wants Merle Davis to use her feminine wiles to get the doubloon from Philip Marlowe. Merle Davis is incapable of such tactics in the novel.

Davis’s character has more of a role in The Brasher Doubloon than in Time to Kill, but her character is not portrayed faithfully compared to Chandler’s novel. Her problems with men and her abuse, first at the hands of the deceased Mr. Murdock and then by Mrs. Elizabeth Murdock, are not really addressed in either Time to Kill or The Brasher Doubloon, but they are given more coverage in the latter film. It’s still not enough, however, because her story is much more interesting in the novel than either film adaptation portrays it.

Turning Merle Davis into a romantic lead for Philip Marlowe isn’t true to the novel, and it isn’t true to the development of both characters in the novel. In the film, Davis goes to Marlowe’s apartment to demand the doubloon from him, not to report that she believes that she killed Vannier. She shows a lot more backbone in the film, but her backstory is filed down to the bare minimum, a few crumbs of detail. Davis does go to Marlowe’s apartment in the novel, but she is in a state of shock and needs help, which Marlowe provides for her. The scene between the two characters in Marlowe’s apartment is particularly ridiculous in The Brasher Doubloon, especially when she demands that Marlowe empty his pockets and then that he strip so that she can find the doubloon on him. Merle Davis wouldn’t even entertain such an idea in Chandler’s novel.

Is it obvious by now that I much prefer the novel to either film adaptation? But if I had to choose between either of the two film adaptations, I would definitely go with Time to Kill. And not just because I am a big fan of the Lloyd-Nolan-as-Michael-Shayne film series of B pictures. Time to Kill not only adapted the novel more faithfully but also kept its ties to the Michael Shayne film series. Shayne is still Shayne, just like he is in the first six Nolan-as-Shayne films, and even though he is a stand-in for Philip Marlowe in Time to Kill, the last film in the series. I saw Time to Kill first, and I enjoyed it immensely. But I didn’t realize what a gem it was until I had The Brasher Doubloon to compare it to!

February 6, 1947, release date    Directed by John Brahm    Screenplay by Dorothy Bennett, Leonard Praskins    Based on the novel The High Window by Raymond Chandler    Music by Alfred Newman, David Buttolph    Edited by Harry Reynolds    Cinematography by Lloyd Ahern

George Montgomery as Philip Marlowe    Nancy Guild as Merle Davis    Florence Bates as Mrs. Elizabeth Murdock    Conrad Janis as Leslie Murdock    Roy Roberts as Police Lieutenant Breeze    Robert Adler as Police Sergeant Spangler    Jack Conrad as George Anson    Jack Overman as the manager of the Florence Apartments    Houseley Stevenson as Elisha Morningstar    Fritz Kortner as Rudolph Vannier    Marvin Miller as Vince Blair

Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox    Produced by Twentieth Century Fox

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