Second of three parts
See Part 1, ‘Film Noir in Culver City’
One of the main reasons that crime stories about Culver City never made it to the screen was that from 1925 until the end of the 1950s, Culver City was the eminent domain of
Metro Goldwyn Mayer, the studio that defined the motion picture industry. And it was Louis B. Mayer who defined MGM.
When Arthur Loew, the son of motion picture theatre tycoon Marcus Loew came to Culver
City to take charge of foreign distribution, he was told to take a Beverly Hills post office box
because Culver City didn't mean anything to the rest of the world. Until the close of World War II, Culver City was a wide spot in the road surrounded by a golf course, three major
motion picture studios, several riding stables and oil derricks.
The closing credits of
an MGM movie declared "Made In Hollywood, USA," much to the chagrin of residents of Culver City.
Louis B. Mayer loved the fact that MGM was isolated from the other studios. As a result, MGM employees had a hard time comparing salaries and working conditions with employees from other studios.
Until the mid-1950s. MGM was a city unto itself, with its own police department, fire department, first-class commissary, barber shop, haberdashery and intramural sports programs.
Ray Moselle recalled that he worked briefly as an assistant cameraman at MGM. "I didn't know anything about movie cameras,” he said. “But I was a good baseball player, and Joey Newman, who was an assistant
director for David Selznick, needed a shortstop for his baseball team."
Writer Budd Schulberg recalled MGM as "a principality of its own. They weren't just running a studio but a whole little world. Their power was absolutely enormous."
When an MGM star got into a jam, one of the special policemen the studio kept on its payroll in every local police agency would tip off MGM Police Chief Whitey Hendry. While Hendry worked the police, publicist Ralph
Wheelright worked the press. The newspapers killed many an adverse story involving MGM
for fear of losing access to the stars.
“Film noir” is a term invented by French film critic to describe a type of film that is characterized by a dark, somber tone and the cynical, pessimistic attitude of its main characters.
The godfather of Los Angeles noir was writer Raymond Chandler. He created private detective Philip Marlowe, who has been portrayed on film by Dick Powell (in “Murder My Sweet”) Humphery Bogart, (in “The Big Sleep”), Robert Montgomery (in “Lady In The Lake”), George Montgomery (in “The Brasher Doubloon”), Robert Mitchum (in “Farewell My Lovely”) James Garner (in “Marlowe”) and Elliot Gould (in “The Long Goodbye”).
Chandler was born in Chicago 121 years ago, in 1888. When his parents divorced, he moved to England with his mother and grandmother. He saw action in World War I, and moved to Los Angeles in the early 1930s. He was in his 40s when he began his writing career with short stories that he sold to the pulps.
His first novel, "The Big Sleep," was published in 1939. The book was adapted for film in 1944 and starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
In the film, General Sternwood, who hires Marlowe to find an old friend, was allegedly modeled after oil tycoon E.L. Doheny. Sternwood's home was based on the Greystone Mansion, (the Doheny estate).
In Chandler's novel, Marlowe confronts Rusty Regan's killer, Sternwood's daughter, in an abandoned oil field south of Jefferson Boulevard in Culver City.
From the novel:
“It was a narrow dirt road, not much more than a track, like the entrance to some foothill ranch. A wide five-bar gate was folded back against a stump. Looked like it hadn't been
shut in years.
“The road was fringed with tall eucalyptus trees and deeply rutted.
“I followed the ruts along, and the noise of the city traffic became curiously and quickly faint, as if it were not in the city at all but far away in a daydream land.
“Then the oil-stained motionless walking beam of a squat wooden derrick stuck up over a branch. I could see the rusty old steel cable that connected this walking beam with a half-dozen others.
The beams didn't move,
probably hadn't moved in over a year. The wells were no longer pumping. There was a pile of rusted pipe, a loading platform that sagged at one end, a half-dozen empty oil drums lying in a ragged pile.
“There was the stagnant, oil scummed water of an old sump, iridescent in the sunlight.
“ ‘Are they going to make a park out of all of this?’ I asked.”
This climatic scene in the book, however, was jettisoned from the movie.
General Sternwood's older
daughter was played by Lauren Bacall. The chemistry between her and Bogart made it impossible for her to be the killer. Four writers, including William Faulkner, labored over the script.
To this day, nobody is certain who killed Rusty Regan.
(To be continued Tuesday)
Mr. Hawkins may be contacted at rjhculvercity@aol.com