The Misadventures 
of Not Phil                

What to make of The Adventures of Philip Marlowe? 
If you come to it as a Raymond Chandler fan, 
you know 'Adventures' is an absurd word 
for the producers to have used. 
One might as well say The Adventures of Marcus Welby 
or The Adventures of Oral Roberts. 
To be fair, 'Adventures' was a prefix 
they slapped on the face of every other show in those days. 
But it fit neither the character of Philip Marlowe, 
nor the nature of Raymond Chandler's stories. 
The casting was another clue that the people involved 
weren't entirely in tune with Philip Marlowe—  
a strange shortcoming, considering that radio in those days 
was all about tuning. 
Raymond Chandler aspired to literary loftiness, 
and to a good degree he attained it in The Long Goodbye, 
good chunks of which crossed into the realm of literature. 
Despite the emphasis on being boiled rather hard, 
Chandler's Philip Marlowe is intelligent, educated, and...  thinkey. 

Gerald Mohr could project hard, but he could not project intelligent. 
Chandler meant Marlowe's wisecracks to be cracked. 
What Mohr did do well was to flip his lines flippantly, 
as though he were in a Mickey Spillane novel 
hacked out by F. Scott Fitzgerald in flapper style. 
TAoPM's writers gave Mohr blithe (not cracky) lines, 
and Mohr tossed them off glibly.  Okay, fair enough. 

But ruminative narration done with a consciousness 
as heavy as a cop's tired feet and pavement shoes, 
was nowhere in Mohr's walking range. 
He was not even to shine when he should have shone. 
The show opens with the rat-a-tat tongue-twisting intro: 
'Get this and get it straight!  Crime is a sucker's road 
and those who travel it wind up in the gutter, 
the prison or the grave!' 
It would seem this mini-speech was not, 
as in the case of William Conrad's in Gunsmoke, 
transcribed only a few times and played countless times. 
Mohr seemed to have gotten an incredibly many chances to read it, 
but never nailed it.  Yes, not even once. 
The mailman rang countless times, but never delivered. 
If you want to laugh the long laugh, 
check the beginning of each episode, and listen to Mohr's zippy tongue 
stub its toes on its own brogans or flub the rhythm.  Every time. 

Van Heflin effortlessly breathed intelligence and sensibility 
into his Marlowe, but the sensitivity and soft voice 
didn't quite fit the character either. 
Chandler was indeed right about the Heflin series being 'flat,' 
yet his semi-endorsement of Mohr as at least having personality 
is at most...  underwhelming. 
Robert Montgomery was unavailable, Dick Powell was engaged. 
Humphrey Bogart could have done Marlowe in his sleep, 
but that dream portrayal never happened on radio. 
He would soon sail on a mediocre but fun series, 
while Macdonnell and Hite were stuck on cement with a mediocre Marlowe. 

All that said, what about Hite's scripts for this show? 
Well...  the disappointing fact is that you don't 
really feel her in these episodes. 
Only rarely are you going to be able to hear 
or watch an episode of Gunsmoke 
and not catch on to the fact that it's built on a Kathleen Hite script-- 
you can sense her mind and sensibility behind it. 
(It doesn't matter even if it's a 'guy' she's writing about or through.) 
The eleven TAoPM scripts may as well have been written 
by someone—anyone—else. 
They are very much in line with the style of the show, 
and in that sense they are perfectly crafted. 
But if you are to listen to any of these episodes 
without knowing she was credited for it, 
you're not really likely to leap to your feet at some point 
and exclaim, "Aha! I can tell, Kathleen Hite dunnit!" 

Another curious point:  Gunsmoke legend has it that William Paley 
was a TAoPM fanatic, and sent a decree down the CBS flunky line 
that there ought to be a western version of it—a Philip of the plains. 
Grant for a minute that this is true, and the ironies start leaping 
out of the gopher holes:  a just-okay show inspires a perfect show; 
William Conrad hands in a horridly clueless performance 
in his one appearance as Marlowe; 
Kathleen Hite writes eleven hollow & impersonal scripts, etc. 

Or, it just might be that in the metaphysical scheme of things, 
all these pre-Gunsmoke shows like TAoPM and Escape and Suspense 
served as honing ground and drawing practice 
for all the writers and actors 
who would make radio Gunsmoke into a story of consistent perfection. 
And if there's a positive thing that can be said about TAoPM, 
it is that it stands tall as proof of Hite's versatility; 
after all, its formula is about as male as male can be, 
and she does it effortlessly. 


November 2, 2005 

Copyright © 2005-2011 E. A. Villafranca, Jr. 
All Rights Reserved