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
The Big Sleep (1946 film) screenwriters knew whether chauffeur Owen Taylor was murdered or had killed himself. They sent a cable to Chandler, who told a friend in a later letter: "They sent me a wire ... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either". After its completion, Warner Bros. did not release "The Big Sleep" until they had turned out a backlog of war-related films. Because the war was ending, the studio feared the public might lose interest in the films, while "The Big Sleep" subject was not time-sensitive. Attentive observers will note indications of the film's wartime production, such as period dialogue, pictures