Breaking Walls

In September, Bob Hope reclaimed his Tuesday night time slot and NBC’s Philip Marlowe radio adventures were over.

1947 was a good year for Van Heflin. Green Dolphin Street hit theaters in November. It co-starred Lana Turner and was that year’s biggest MGM hit. On Thanksgiving he guest-starred on an episode of Radio Reader’s Digest called “Why Keep Your Heart In Cold Storage?” It was well-received, but MGM would no longer allow Heflin to play Marlowe. He continued to appear on radio into the 1950s.

A new Hollywood agent, Ray Stark, went to work for Chandler in 1948, and in September, a revived Philip Marlowe series began a two-year run on CBS, this time starring Gerald Mohr.

Mohr played King Leopardi in the summer series’ version of “The King in Yellow.” He’d done movie work, but his face was unknown to most radio listeners. Chandler preferred his voice, which he thought packed more punch. Norman Macdonnell was in charge of the production.

Chandler made a list of suggestions for the show’s writers: Don’t always let Marlowe have the last word. Don’t make him utter knee-jerk wisecracks. Don’t let him gloat. For the most part, Mohr’s Marlowe always got the last word, added quick-one liners, and gloated.

CBS paid Chandler two-hundred fifty dollars per week, roughly 3K today. That amount was raised to four-hundred if the series found a sponsor, which it briefly did, with both Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum and Ford.

On CBS Marlowe took up the commercial slack with product-placement. Cars were Nash’s. Gas Stations pumped Mobile. Phil reached for Johnny Walker and Lifesavers candy. As he drove around L.A. he found a handy way to keep track of addresses: Their proximity to an Arthur Murray Dance Studio. Even Chandler got a plug In “The Hairpin Turn.”

On April 11th, 1950, William Conrad subbed for Gerald Mohr. Sometime around 1950, head of CBS William Paley said the network should develop a “Philip Marlowe in the Old West” – a no-nonsense, tough-as-nails frontier saga unlike any cowboy show ever heard. The show would be called Gunsmoke and debut in 1952 starring William Conrad. It was directed by Norman Macdonnell and generally considered the best radio Western of all time.

The Adventures of Philip Marlowe was canceled in September of 1950, but revived the following July for a summer run. The final CBS Philip Marlowe Adventure was on September 15th, 1951.

The August 8th episode of Philip Marlowe was called “Robin and The Hood.” Jeff Chandler guest-starred playing a dual role.

Born Ira Grossel in Brooklyn, New York on December 15th, 1918, he acted in high school with classmate Susan Hayward. Chandler went to the Feagin School of Dramatic Art and had a stint with a theater troupe. He served in the Pacific, finishing World War II as a Lieutenant.

After being discharged in December of 1945, he moved to Los Angeles. By August of 1947 he was all over radio as one of hollywood's reliable character men. That autumn he was cast as the lead in The New Adventures of Michael Shayne, a syndicated program produced by Bill Rousseau and Don W. Sharpe.

In July of 1948, Chandler was cast opposite Eve Arden in Our Miss Brooks. But on August 8th, 1947, he was featured on The Adventures of Philip Marlowe.

In 1949 Chandler was cast as Israeli leader “Kurta” in the film, Sword in the Desert. He impressed studio executives so much with his work that shortly into filming, Universal signed him to a seven-year contract. The next year, 20th Century Fox borrowed Chandler for the role of Cochise in Broken Arrow. He starred alongside James Stewart.

The performance earned him an Academy Award nomination and established him as an A-list star. Radio suddenly was less of a possibility due to time constraints, but if Chandler was leaving radio, it was against his will. In May of 1951 Chandler told the Chicago Tribune that he didn’t find film acting nearly as gratifying as radio. He wanted to eventually branch off into writing and directing. When Our Miss Brooks moved into TV in 1952, he wasn’t allowed to make the transition with the rest of the cast. Chandler would spend the rest of the decade making films.

On April 15th, 1961, Jeff Chandler was in the Philippines while working on Merrill’s Marauders. While playing a pickup game of basketball with some soldiers he severely injured his back. He was given injections to deaden the pain so he could finish the film. On May 13th, he entered a Culver City hospital to have surgery for a spinal disc herniation. An artery was damaged during surgery and Chandler hemorrhaged.

Four days later, in a seven-and-a-half-hour emergency operation, he was given fifty-five pints of blood. A third operation followed, on May 27th. An infection followed, complicated by pneumonia he caught at the hospital in his weakened state. Jeff Chandler never recovered. He died on June 17th, 1961. He was forty-two.

More than fifteen hundred people attended his funeral. Pallbearers included Tony Curtis and Gerald Mohr. For more information on Jeff Chandler, tune into Breaking Walls episode 90, or episode 106.

On July 8th, 1947, NBC broadcast an adaptation of “The King In Yellow,” originally published in Dime Detective Magazine in March of 1938. It’s a seedy saga of a hot trumpet player whose boorish behavior gets him killed.

Among those featured in this episode were Gerald Mohr, Gloria Blondell, Bill Johnstone, Willard Waterman, and Howard McNear. By the late 1940s many of Chicago’s radio stars had migrated to Hollywood, working on shows across all four networks.

By the end of July, Marlowe’s 8.0 rating was seventh overall, and the show’s production cost just one dollar per the number of urban listeners.

The June 17th, 1947 edition of Billboard Magazine reviewed the first Marlowe episode. It was noted that similar shows were expected to pull a rating of 7.5. The magazine stated that “Milton Geiger's adaptation adhered to Red Wind's language almost to the letter, and captured most of the colorful, almost poetic flavor.

“On the debit side was the enormity of the job of breaking down Chandler's complex plotting within the thirty minute limit. The program galloped through the first fifteen minutes as the action unfolded.

“The Second half pace slowed down to a crawl, however, as everyone desperately strove to clarify the proceedings. Repeated conjecture and explanation of the cast's intricate relationships unfortunately had confusion rampant by the end.”

The reviewer was quick to point out that “Even films, found that ninety minutes was hardly enough to cram in all of Chandler’s ideas. Perhaps the shorter stories will prove more suited for air. Their flair for mood and language certainly is hard to surpass.

“The commercials were harsh and repetitive, stressing that Pepsodent is "preferred three to one" by American families. Foote, Cone & Belding seems to be trying its Lucky Strike technique on the dentifrice. It's a three to one bet that the incessant "three to one" chatter becomes as notorious as LS/MFT.”

On the lead Billboard stated: “Heflin's emoting in the role of the tough guy with a heart was effective, with excellent character projection. Lurene Tuttle, as the woman in the case, put on her usual good performance. Producer James Fonda struggled valiantly to keep the pacing level, but was handcuffed by the urgency of the story.

The script contained an inside joke. The name of Lola’s dead lover was changed to Johnny Dalmas, the name of the original detective in Chandler’s “Red Wind” before the story became Marlowe’s.

Chandler thought it was flat. Van Heflin was too recognizable. He didn’t like picturing Heflin’s face emoting Marlowe’s lines. Erle Stanley Gardner told Chandler the show’s plot and narration moved too fast to be understood.

There was a bigger argument at stake within the industry: Were summer replacements a worthwhile investment? Sponsor Magazine claimed that it cost advertisers money to take a thirteen-week hiatus. It was money lost in the form of lower summertime ratings. But, You couldn’t just blame it on Summer replacements though. For example, Bob Hope’s 1946-47 rating was 27.6, but his combined rating for June and September 1947 was 14.4. People spent more time outdoors in warm months. It didn’t matter what was on the air. Plus, there was still no way to effectively measure car radio ratings. Given that Hope’s show cost twenty-one thousand weekly dollars to produce, while Marlowe cost just four thousand, Pepsodent was getting a bargain. By the end of summer, Marlowe was the highest-rated summer replacement series on the air.

The Adventures of Philip Marlowe debuted on NBC with “Red Wind” on June 17th, 1947. The 1938 short story is set on one of those evenings when the hot, dry Santa Ana wind gusts through Los Angeles, turning the mood sour.

The program aired live at 10PM on the east coast, with a second broadcast done at 9PM for the west. The script was adapted by Milton Geiger. Jim Fonda directed. Wendell Niles announced. Harry Bartell played the bartender. Lurene Tuttle was Lola Barsley. The episode also featured Elliot Reid, Bill Johnstone, and William Conrad.

By the summer of 1947, Lurene Tuttle was well-known for co-starring on The Adventures of Sam Spade. It was a decidedly different character.

By the middle of 1947, nearly eleven million babies had been born in the U.S. since the end of World War II. Young parents were staying home with their children. Homes with radios jumped six percent, car radios twenty-nine percent. Over the next year, radio would have its largest audience in history. The four major networks added one-hundred forty-seven affiliates. Network revenue topped two-hundred million dollars.

NBC had the top seven shows. The Bob Hope Show closed the 1946-47 season as radio’s highest-rated program. The comedian pulled a rating of 27.6. Network fed programs generally had thirteen, twenty-six, thirty-nine, or fifty-two weeks contracts. Hope’s NBC contract ran for thirty-nine.

Pepsodent would sponsor the new Philip Marlowe series in Hope’s time slot. Hope’s show cost twenty-one thousand dollars each week to produce. Marlowe would cost four-thousand. Heflin guest-starred on Hope’s June 3rd program to help promote the series. The Adventures of Philip Marlowe would begin the first week of June.

For more information on the state of the world in 1947, tune into Breaking Walls episodes 97, 98, and 99.

On August 26th, 1975 Chuck Schaden sat down with radio legend Lurene Tuttle (seen in the image with Marilyn Monroe) for a conversation about her life and career (full interview here - http://www.speakingofradio.com/interviews/tuttle-lurene-actress/). During the course of the chat, Ms. Tuttle spoke of early radio and her first radio role.

Van Heflin was born on December 13th, 1908 in Walters, Oklahoma. The son of a dentist, he began his acting career on Broadway in the late 1920s. Between 1928 and 1936 he appeared in. Mr. Moneypenny, The Bride of Torozko, The Night Remembers, Mid-West, and End of Summer.

That year Heflin signed with RKO and made his film debut opposite Katherine Hepburn in A Woman Rebels. He spent the next five years playing character parts. He made his radio debut on The Columbia Workshop in 1938.

Heflin signed with MGM as the U.S. was getting into World War II. In 1942 his role as Jeff Hartnett in Johnny Eager won him a best-supporting actor academy award. He got top billing in two B-Films, Kid Glove Killer and Grand Central Murder. Both were popular.

Encouraged, MGM cast him as Kathryn Grayson's love interest in a musical, Seven Sweethearts. He soon played Judy Garland's love interest in Presenting Lily Mars, before enlisting in the US army airforce as a combat cameraman.

He made a radio appearance too, in Arch Oboler’s Parade over Mutual on August 2nd, 1945. This was less than two weeks before the end of the war.

After the war, MGM loaned him to Hal Wallis to appear opposite Barbara Stanwyck in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, and to Warner Bros to co-star with Joan Crawford in Possessed. It was a hit and more radio followed.

On January 30th, 1947 Heflin guest-starred on this episode of Suspense. A month later he guest-starred on Family Theater, and in May, he was featured on Lux Radio’s “Vacation From Marriage.” Three weeks later, Heflin would begin playing Philip Marlowe.

On the July 5th, 1950 episode of The Adventures of Philip Marlowe starring Gerald Mohr, Donna Rollins has hired Marlowe by special delivery letter. The letter includes $50. He's to find out where Arnold Latimore went. When Marlowe is unable to locate Latimore he goes to Donna Rollins to return her $50. Marlowe is alarmed and put off when Ms. Reed is now unconcerned about Latimore, but nervous about something else.

Philip Marlowe, born in Santa Rosa, California, is six feet tall and weighs one-hundred ninety pounds. He has dark wavy hair. In Chandler’s first Marlowe novel, The Big Sleep, set in 1936, he’s thirty-three. Marlowe had two years of college and was an investigator for the LA District Attorney. He was fired for insubordination. 

His office is in the Cahuenga Building on Hollywood Boulevard near Ivar. James Bond author Ian Fleming once asked Raymond Chandler why he set the Marlowe stories in Los Angeles. Through Marlowe’s eyes, L.A. comes to life. He frequents everything from the nightclubs of West Hollywood to the seedy downtown hotels, from the Pasadena mansions to the Santa Monica gambling ships, from the Hollywood glamor factories to the rundown bus depots. 

He drinks whiskey, usually Four Roses or Old Forester, and sometimes drinks Gin. His preferred coffee is black and his cigarette brand is Camel. At home, he smokes a pipe, especially while playing chess by himself. It was said that Chandler wrote like “a slumming angel invested in the sun-blinded streets of LA with a romantic presence.”

The second Marlowe novel, Farewell, My Lovely, was published in 1940. This was followed by The High Window in 1942 and The Lady In The Lake in 1943. The first official Marlowe film was Murder My Sweet with Dick Powell in 1944. Powell played the adaptation of Farewell, My Lovely on the June 11th, 1945 episode of The Lux Radio Theatre.

Humphrey Bogart starred in the 1946 adaptation of The Big Sleep heard opposite Lauren Bacall at the beginning of this act. That same year Chandler and his wife bought a home in ​​La Jolla.

In early 1947 two new Marlowe films came to theaters. The Lady In The Lake starring Robert Montgomery was released in January. Montgomery reprised his role on the February 9th, 1948 episode of Lux. Then in February, an adaptation of The High Window called The Brasher Doubloon came to theaters starring the unrelated George Montgomery. 

Marlowe was a hot commodity. On March 22nd, it was announced that NBC would be bringing a summer series to the air. Tuesday nights were NBC’s highest-rated evening, and although summer ratings were always the year’s lowest, NBC executives had high-hopes that Marlowe would be a perfect fit Tuesday nights at 10PM eastern, 9PM pacific. 

The ad agency Foote, Cone, and Belding made a deal with MGM. They tabbed rising leading man Van Heflin to play Marlowe.