Marty Jencius and Cindy Rotz follow Humphrey Bogart's Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall's Vivian Rutledge through rain, blackmail, and a plot nobody can fully explain, and ask whether a movie needs to make sense when it has this much style.
FILM ESSENTIALS
- Director/Producer: Howard Hawks
- Screenplay: William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman, from Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel
- Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Martha Vickers
- Supporting: John Ridgely, Dorothy Malone, Elisha Cook Jr., Bob Steele, Regis Toomey, Peggy Knudsen
- Cinematography: Sidney Hickox | Music: Max Steiner | Editor: Christian Nyby
- Warner Bros. | Black and white | about 114 minutes
- Budget about $1.6 million; box office about $4.9 million
- Premiered in New York on August 23, 1946
- Second of four Bogart and Bacall films
- National Film Registry, 1997 | Rotten Tomatoes: 96% | AFI's 32nd greatest film hero (Marlowe)
TRIVIA
- Chandler's first novel introduced Philip Marlowe. By Hawks's account, he bought the rights the day after suggesting it.
- Hawks and Bogart couldn't agree on who killed the chauffeur, so they asked Chandler. He reportedly said he didn't know either.
- Faulkner and Brackett reportedly wrote alternating sections and met only once. Faulkner went home to Mississippi to write, and Hawks assumed Brackett was a man. She later wrote Rio Bravo and an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back.
- Bogart married Bacall on May 21, 1945, a few months after the shoot wrapped. Jack Warner reportedly sent a memo: "Word has reached me that you are having fun on the set. This must stop."
- Marlowe asks for an 1860 first edition of Ben-Hur. The novel wasn't published until 1880.
- Eddie Mars's henchmen are named Sidney and Pete, a nod to Greenstreet and Lorre.
- After Bacall's Confidential Agent flopped, Hawks reshot scenes in 1946, including the famous horse-racing exchange.
- The 1945 cut, shown to servicemen overseas, was rediscovered at UCLA in the mid-1990s. A 2015 Blu-ray includes both versions.
- Dorothy Malone, in the bookshop scene, later won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Written on the Wind (1956).
- Charles Waldron, as General Sternwood, died before the film premiered. James Stewart played the role in the 1978 remake.
- Max Steiner's score was later reused on Warner Bros. TV shows such as Maverick.
- The film turned 80 in August 2026.
CONTACT US
YouTube: youtube.com/@FadetoChat
Email: ThePodTalkNetwork@gmail.com
Network: ThePodTalk.Net
Substack: http://www.substack.com/@thepodtalknetwork
Cindy's blog: https://acozycreativelife.com/
