The Big Sleep racketeering; Al Capone and Meyer Lansky were not role models. A figure like A. G. Geiger, the dirty-books racketeer in Raymond Chandler's "Big Sleep" (1939) who supplements his business activities as owner of a pornographic lending library in Hollywood by arranging sex orgies and blackmailing rich customers, is a fascinating but lurid exaggeration. However susceptible film personalities were to blackmail, it was not the métier of book dealers." The Big Sleep The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature the detective Philip Marlowe. It has been adapted for film twice, in 1946
Mystery film film was filmed entirely from Marlowe's viewpoint. The audience sees only what he does. Montgomery only appears on camera a few times, once in a mirror reflection. Another Chandler novel "The High Window" was made into the film "The Brasher Doubloon" (also 1947) starring George Montgomery. This was essentially a remake of "Time to Kill" (1942), a Michael Shayne adventure starring Lloyd Nolan. Chandler also wrote an original screenplay for "The Blue Dahlia" (1946) starring Alan Ladd. "The Glass Key" (1942), also starring Ladd, was the second film adaptation of Hammett's novel. Another standout film of this period is "Out