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
Chandler (film) Chandler (film) Chandler (also known as "Open Shadow") is a 1971 neo noir film directed by Paul Magwood and based on a story of his own creation. The film stars Warren Oates as a man with the single name of Chandler: "as in Raymond," he says at one point. It co-stars Leslie Caron, married at the time to the film's producer, Michael Laughlin. Cameo roles feature Gloria Grahame and Scatman Crothers. In a deliberate throwback to 1940s films noir, a former private eye from that period, Chandler, takes up his old work again, and finds himself constantly driving old cars.