The Big Lebowski
The Big Lebowski is a 1998 crime comedy film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Jeff Bridges as a Los Angeles slacker and avid bowler, he is assaulted as a result of mistaken identity, after which The Dude learns that a millionaire named Jeffrey Lebowski was the intended victim. The millionaire Lebowski's trophy wife is kidnapped, he commissions The Dude to deliver the ransom to secure her release. Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, David Huddleston, John Turturro appear, in supporting roles; the film is loosely inspired by the work of Raymond Chandler. Joel Coen stated, "We wanted to do a Chandler kind of story – how it moves episodically, deals with the characters trying to unravel a mystery, as well as having a hopelessly complex plot that's unimportant." The original score was composed by a longtime collaborator of the Coen brothers. The Big Lebowski was a disappointment at the U. S. received mixed reviews at the time of its release. Over time, reviews have become positive, the film has become a cult favorite, noted for its idiosyncratic characters, dream sequences, unconventional dialogue, eclectic soundtrack.
In 2014, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, being deemed "culturally or aesthetically significant". A spin-off based on John Turturro's character, titled Going Places, was filmed in 2017, with Turturro acting as writer and director. In 1991, Jeffrey "the Dude" Lebowski is a middle-aged slacker who gets assaulted in his Los Angeles home by two goons hired by pornographer Jackie Treehorn, demanding money owed him by the wife of another, wealthier Jeffrey Lebowski. Realizing they have the wrong man, they leave, but not before one of them urinates on the Dude's rug; the next day, the Dude tells what happened to his friends and bowling partners, Donny Kerabatsos and Vietnam veteran Walter Sobchak. The Dude seeks compensation from the other Lebowski, a cantankerous and wheelchair-bound philanthropist, his request is refused, but the Dude tells Brandt, Lebowski's sycophantic assistant, that Mr. Lebowski said he could take any rug in the house.
The Dude meets Bunny, Lebowski's young trophy wife. A few days the Dude is told that Bunny has been kidnapped, Lebowski wants the Dude to deliver a briefcase containing ransom money and recognize the culprits; that night, another pair of thugs appear at the Dude's apartment, knock him unconscious and take his rug. When the kidnappers call, Walter comes along intent on giving them another briefcase so he and the Dude can keep the ransom for themselves; when they arrive at the meeting location, Walter throws out his briefcase, intercepted by the kidnappers, who leave on motorcycles. That night, after another game of bowling, the Dude's car is stolen with the real briefcase still inside. Lebowski's adult daughter Maude reveals she took the rug and asks the Dude to visit her, she plays a video showing. She thinks Bunny staged her own abduction and asks the Dude to recover the ransom which her father withdrew from the family's personal foundation. Shortly thereafter, the Dude is confronted by Lebowski, angry that the Dude failed to deliver the ransom money, he shows him a severed toe, presumed to be Bunny's.
Three German nihilists invade the Dude's apartment and threaten him, identifying themselves as the kidnappers. Maude says the nihilists are Bunny's friends; the next day, the Dude's car is found by the briefcase. While cruising in the car, the Dude finds the homework of a high school student named Larry Sellars on his seat. Walter and the Dude go to his house that evening, they demand Larry to confess about the stolen money, but he does not respond, so Walter wrecks a new sports car parked outside he thinks Larry bought with the money. However, the real owner of the car rushes outside and wrecks the Dude's car in revenge, thinking it to be Walter's; the Dude is forcefully taken before Treehorn by his goons. Treehorn asks about the money she owes him. Treehorn drugs the Dude's white russian cocktail causing him to have a dream about starring in a Treehorn film about bowling with Maude, he awakes in police custody. On the ride home, after being kicked out of a cab, The Dude unknowingly passes Bunny driving a sports car.
The Dude finds his bungalow ransacked by Treehorn's goons. He is greeted by Maude, who seduces him to conceive a child, the Dude objects until Maude states he will have no involvement in the child's upbringing, she explains that her father has no money of his own, his wife having left everything to the family charity. Having had an epiphany, the Dude has Walter drive him back to the Lebowski estate where they find Bunny's crashed car, but she is otherwise safe; when Bunny left town on an unannounced trip for a few days, her friends faked a kidnapping so they could extort money from Lebowski. When Lebowski, who hated his wife, heard of the supposed kidnapping, he withdrew the money from the foundation, kept it for himself and gave the Dude an empty briefcase. Walter and the Dude confront Lebowski, who refuses to admit responsibility, Walter throws him out of his wheelchair, thinking he is faking his paralysis; the Dude and his friends return to the bowling alley, assuming the ordeal is over, only to be confronted in the parking lot by the
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad and were known for publishing European and Latin American writers in addition to leading American literary trends, it was acquired by Random House in 1960, acquired by Bertelsmann in 1998, is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. The Knopf publishing house is associated with its borzoi colophon, designed by co-founder Blanche Knopf in 1925. Knopf was founded in 1915 by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. along with Blanche Knopf, on a $5,000 advance from his father, Samuel Knopf. The first office was located in New York's Candler Building; the publishing house was incorporated in 1918, with Alfred Knopf as president, Blanche Knopf as vice president, Samuel Knopf as treasurer. From the start, Knopf focused on European translations and high-brow works of literature. Among their initial publications were French author Émile Augier's Four Plays, Russian writer Nikolai Gogol's Taras Bulba, Polish novelist Stanisław Przybyszewski's novel Homo Sapiens, French writer Guy de Maupassant's Yvette, a Novelette, Ten Other Stories.
During World War I these books were cheap to obtain and helped establish Knopf as an American firm publishing European works. Their first bestseller was a new edition of Green Mansions, a novel by W. H. Hudson which went through nine printings by 1919 and sold over 20,000 copies, their first original American novel, The Three Black Pennys by Joseph Hergesheimer, was published in 1917. With the start of the 1920s Knopf began using innovative advertising techniques to draw attention to their books and authors. Beginning in 1920, Knopf produced a chapbook, for the purpose of promoting new books; the Borzoi was published periodically over the years, the first being a hardback called the Borzoi and sometimes quarterly as the Borzoi Quarterly. For Floyd Dell's coming-of-age novel, Moon-Calf, they paid men to walk the streets of the financial and theatre districts dressed in artist costumes with sandwich boards; the placards directed interested buyers to local book shops. The unique look of their books along with their expertise in advertising their authors drew Willa Cather to leave her previous publisher Houghton Mifflin to join Alfred A. Knopf.
As she was still under contract for her novels, the Knopfs suggested publishing a collection of her short stories and the Bright Medusa in 1920. Cather was pleased with the results and the advertisement of the book in the New Republic and would go on to publish sixteen books with Knopf including their first Pulitzer prize winner, One Of Ours. Before they had married, Alfred had promised Blanche that they would be equal partners in the publishing company, but it was clear by the company's fifth anniversary that this was not to be the case. Knopf published a celebratory 5th anniversary book in which Alfred was the focus of anecdotes by authors and Blanche's name was only mentioned once to note that "Mrs. Knopf" had found a manuscript; this despite ample evidence from authors and others that Blanche was in fact the soul of the company. This was covered extensively in The Lady with the Borzoi by Laura Claridge. In 1923 Knopf started publishing periodicals, beginning with The American Mercury, founded by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, which it published through 1934.1923 marked the year that Knopf published Kahlil Gibran's the Prophet.
Knopf had published Gibran's earlier works. In its first year, the Prophet only sold 1,159 copies, it would double sales the next year and keep doubling becoming one of the firm's most successful books. In 1965 the book sold 240,000 copies. Samuel Knopf died in 1932. William A. Koshland joined the company in 1934, worked with the firm for more than fifty years, rising to take the positions of President and Chairman of the Board. Blanche became President in 1957 when Alfred became Chairman of the Board, worked for the firm until her death in 1966. Alfred Knopf retired in 1972, becoming chairman emeritus of the firm until his death in 1984. Alfred Knopf had a summer home in Purchase, New York. Following the Good Neighbor policy, Blanche Knopf visited South America in 1942, so the firm could start producing texts from there, she was one of the first publishers to visit Europe after World War II. Her trips, those of other editors, brought in new writers from Europe, South America, Asia. Alfred traveled to Brazil in 1961, which spurred a corresponding interest on his part in South America.
Penn Publishing Company was acquired in 1943. The Knopfs' son, Alfred "Pat" Jr. was hired on as trade books manager after the war. In 1952, editor Judith Jones joined Knopf as an editor. Jones discovered Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl in a slush pile and acquired Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Jones would remain with Knopf, retiring in 2011 as a senior editor and vice-president after a career that included working with John Updike and Anne Tyler. Pat Knopf left his parents' publishing company in 1959 to launch his own, Atheneum Publishers, with two other partners; the story made the front page of the New York Times. In a 1957 advertisement in the Atlantic Monthly, Alfred A. Knopf published the Borzoi Credo; the credo includes a list of what Knopf's beliefs for publishing including the statement that he never published an unworthy book. Among a list of beliefs listed is the final one--"I believe that magazines, movies and radio will never replace good books." In 1960 Random House acquired Alfred A. Knopf.
It is believed that the decision to sell was prompted by Alfred A. Knopf, Jr. leaving Knopf to found his own book company, Atheneum Bo
The Big Sleep (1946 film)
The Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. The film stars Humphrey Bogart as private detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as Vivian Rutledge in a story about the "process of a criminal investigation, not its results." William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman co-wrote the screenplay. In 1997, the U. S. Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally or aesthetically significant," and added it to the National Film Registry; because the film was scheduled for release a year after it was made, parts of the original 1945 cut were afterwards rescripted and shot. A copy of the 1945 version was restored and released in 1997. Private detective Philip Marlowe is summoned to the mansion of General Sternwood; the general wants to resolve the ‘gambling debts’ that his daughter Carmen owes to bookseller Arthur Gwynn Geiger. As Marlowe is leaving, Sternwood's older daughter, the divorced Mrs. Vivian Rutledge, stops him.
She suspects her father's true motive for calling in a detective is to find his protégé Sean Regan, who had mysteriously disappeared a month earlier. Marlowe goes to Geiger's shop, minded by Agnes Louzier, follows Geiger home. Hearing a gunshot and a woman’s scream, he breaks in to find Geiger's body and a drugged Carmen, as well as a hidden camera empty of film. After taking Carmen back home, he discovers the body has disappeared. Vivian comes to Marlowe's office the next morning with scandalous pictures of Carmen that she received with a blackmail demand for the negatives. Marlowe returns to Geiger's bookstore and follows a car to the apartment of Joe Brody, a gambler who blackmailed General Sternwood, he finds Carmen in Geiger's house, where she insists that it was Brody who killed Geiger. They are interrupted by small-time gangster Eddie Mars. Marlowe goes to Brody's apartment, they are interrupted by Carmen. Marlowe sends Vivian and Carmen home. Brody admits that it was he, behind the blackmailing has to answer the door and is shot.
Marlowe chases the killer and apprehends Carol Lundgren, Geiger's former driver, who believes Brody is swindling him. Marlowe arranges for them to come and arrest the killer. Marlowe visits Mars' casino, where he asks about Regan, supposed to have run off with Mars' wife. Mars tells Marlowe that Vivian is running up gambling debts. Vivian wins a big wager and wants Marlowe to take her home. A stooge of Mars' attempts to rob Vivian. While driving back, Marlowe presses Vivian on her connection with Mars. Back at his own home, Marlowe finds a flirtatious Carmen waiting for him, she says she mentions that Mars calls Vivian frequently. When she attempts to seduce Marlowe, he throws her out of his apartment; the next day, Vivian tells him. Mars has Marlowe beaten up to stop him investigating further, he is found by an associate of Brody's who wants to marry Agnes. Jones conveys an offer from her to reveal the location of Mars' wife for $200; when Marlowe goes to meet him and be taken to where she is hiding, he spots Canino, a gunman hired by Mars, there to find Agnes himself.
Canino poisons Jones after he discloses Agnes' location. Agnes telephones the office while Marlowe is still there and he arranges to meet her, she reveals. When he gets there, Marlowe is attacked by Canino, he wakes to find himself tied up, with Mona watching over him. Vivian frees Marlowe, allowing him to get to his gun and kill Canino, they drive back together and Marlowe calls Mars from Geiger's house, pretending to be still in Realito. Mars arrives with four men; when Mars enters, Marlowe reveals that he has discerned the truth: Mars has been blackmailing Vivian, claiming that her sister Carmen had killed Regan. He forces Mars outside, where he is shot by his own men. Marlowe calls the police, telling them that Mars was the one who killed Regan, he convinces Vivian that her sister needs psychiatric care. The writing of the film script involved three different authors, including the American novelist William Faulkner; the writing was influenced by a primary focus of the Hays Office censorship policies which were used to restrict sexual themes.
In the novel, Geiger is selling pornography illegal and associated with organized crime, is a homosexual having a relationship with Lundgren. Carmen is described as being nude in Geiger's house, nude and in Marlowe's bed. To ensure the film would be approved by the Hays Office, changes had to be made. Carmen had to be dressed, the pornographic elements could only be alluded to with cryptic references to photographs of Carmen wearing a "Chinese dress" and sitting in a "Chinese chair"; the sexual orientation of Geiger and Lundgren goes unmentioned in the film because references to homosexuality were prohibited. The scene of Carmen in Marlowe's bed was replaced with a scene in which she appears dressed, sitting in Marlowe's apartment, when he promptly kicks her out; the scene, shot in 1944, was omitted in the 1945 cut but restored for the 1946 version. The Big Sleep is known for its convoluted plot. During filming neither the director nor the screenwriters knew whether chauffeur Owen Taylor was murdered or had killed himself.
They sent a cable to Chandler, who told a friend
Farewell, My Lovely
Farewell, My Lovely is a novel by Raymond Chandler, published in 1940, the second novel he wrote featuring the Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe. It was adapted for the screen three times and was adapted for the stage and radio. Private detective Philip Marlowe is investigating a dead-end missing person case when he sees a felon, Moose Malloy, barging into a nightclub called Florian's looking for his ex-girlfriend Velma Valento; the club has changed owners, so no one now there knows her. Malloy ends up escaping; the murder case is assigned to Lt. Nulty, a Los Angeles Police detective who has no interest in the murder of a black man. Marlowe advises Nulty to look for Malloy's girlfriend, but Nulty prefers to let Marlowe do the routine legwork and rely on finding Malloy based on his huge size and loud clothes. Marlowe decides to look for the girl, he tracks down Mrs. Jessie Florian, the widow of the nightclub's former owner and plies her with bourbon. Mrs. Florian claims. Before making further progress, Marlowe receives a call from a man named Lindsay Marriott, who claims his friend has been robbed and requests Marlowe's presence in delivering a ransom payment for stolen jewellery.
That evening, in a deserted canyon, Marlowe waits in the dark and is hit on the head from behind. When he awakes, Marriott is dead. A lovely passerby, Anne Riordan, takes him home. Lt. Randall, the cunning but honest Los Angeles cop investigating Marriott's murder, is skeptical about the story. At Marlowe's office, Anne explains that she is from Bay City, a policeman's daughter interested in local crime, her father was cashiered by the corrupt cops running the Bay City Police. She tells Marlowe that she learned from Randall that the stolen necklace belongs to a Mrs. Lewin Lockridge Grayle, the young wife of a wealthy and influential Bay City resident. Mrs. Grayle is a ravishing blonde whom Grayle met when she was singing for the radio station he owned, she married him in Europe under an assumed name to keep her background secret. Anne offers to have her hire Marlowe to find the necklace. Marlowe examines some marijuana cigarettes he found on Marriott's body and discovers the card of a psychic, Jules Amthor.
He makes an appointment to see him. On a hunch, he investigates Mrs. Florian's house and discovers Marriott held a trust deed on it, meaning he could foreclose on her at will. Following up with Mrs. Florian, she reveals she was once a servant for Marriott's family, Marlowe suspects she was somehow blackmailing him. Marlowe visits Mrs. Grayle, who finds him attractive and hires him, which he can use as an excuse to continue investigating the two murders, they make a date to meet again at the club of a local hoodlum, Laird Brunette, near the spot where Marriott was killed. At Amthor's office Marlowe probes him for his connection to the drugs. Amthor calls in a pair of Bay City detectives out of their jurisdiction to arrest Marlowe, claiming Marlowe tried to blackmail him, but instead of taking him to jail they knock him unconscious and lock him up in a private hospital run by Dr. Sonderborg, a drug dealer, who keeps him docile with drug injections, he escapes. He discusses the case with Randall, annoyed at his persistence in investigating the case.
They suspect Marriott of blackmailing wealthy women, in league with Amthor, return to Mrs. Florian's, only to find her murdered shaken to death by Moose Malloy; because of the involvement of the Bay City cops Amthor called in, Marlowe visits the corrupt Bay City police chief, John Wax, who brushes him off until Marlowe mentions that he's been hired by Mrs. Grayle. Marlowe is told that Malloy may be hiding out on a gambling boat anchored beyond the three-mile limit and run by Brunette, who controls the corrupt city government in Bay City. Marlowe sneaks on board with the help of Red Norgaard, another honest cop fired by Bay City, despite being caught by Brunette, persuades him to pass a message through his criminal network to Malloy. Marlowe calls Mrs. Grayle, ostensibly to have her pick him up at his apartment for their date. Malloy, responding to Marlowe's message, shows up first and hides when Mrs. Grayle arrives. Marlowe confronts her: she is Velma and had used Marriott to keep Mrs. Florian in line after she recognised Velma's voice on Grayle's radio station.
Marriott had worked as an announcer at the same station. Mrs. Grayle convinced Marriott to set up Marlowe to be killed in the canyon, but did so to kill Marriott because she viewed him as a'weak link' who would reveal her secret past, she had informed on Malloy about the robbery that sent him to prison. When Malloy hears this, he flees. Amthor and the crooked cops are all exposed. Velma flees, but when she is tracked down in Baltimore, she kills the detective who recognises her and commits suicide when cornered. Philip Marlowe Lt. Nulty Moose Malloy Mrs. Jessie Florian Lindsay Marriott Jules Amthor Dr. Sonderborg Mrs. Lewin Lockridge Grayle known as Velma Valento Mr. Lewin Lockridge Grayle Laird Brunette Anne Riordan John Wax Farewell, My Lovely, like many of Chandler's novels, was written by what he called cannibalising previous short stories—taking written short stories and altering them to fit together as a novel; this practice is sometimes known as a fix-up. In this case the three stories were "Try the Girl", "Mandarin's Jade", "The Man Who Liked Dogs".
"Try the Girl" provided the initial story about a hoodlum looking for his old girlfriend who has moved on to a more respectable life. "Mandarin's Jade" was the basis for the middle sections about a jewel th
The Simple Art of Murder
The Simple Art of Murder is hard-boiled detective fiction author Raymond Chandler's critical essay, a magazine article, his collection of short stories. The essay was first published in The Atlantic Monthly in December 1944; the magazine article appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature, April 15, 1950. The article, somewhat rewritten, served to introduce the collection The Simple Art of Murder, 1950, which contained eight of Chandler's early stories pre-dating his first novel, The Big Sleep; the essay is considered a seminal piece of literary criticism. Although Chandler's primary topic is the art of detective fiction, he touches on general literature and modern society as well; the opening statement – "Fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic" – places Chandler in a lineage with earlier American Realists, in particular Mark Twain and his critique of James Fenimore Cooper, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses". Chandler dissects A. A. Milne's The Red House Mystery much as Twain tears apart Cooper's The Deerslayer, namely by revealing what is ignored, brushed over, unrealistic.
"If the situation is false," Chandler writes, "you cannot accept it as a light novel, for there is no story for the light novel to be about." He expands his criticism to the bulk of detective fiction of the English variety which he complains is preoccupied with "hand-wrought dueling pistols and tropical fish." In addition to Milne, Chandler confronts Dame Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, E. C. Bentley, Freeman Wills Crofts. "The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers." Chandler's critique of the "classic" Golden Age detective story goes beyond a lack of realistic characters and plot. The classic detective story "has learned nothing and forgotten nothing." Chandler reserves his praise for Dashiell Hammett. Although Chandler and Hammett were contemporaries and grouped as the founders of the hard-boiled school, Chandler speaks of Hammett as the "one individual... picked out to represent the whole movement," noting Hammett's mastery of the "American language", his adherence to reality, that he "gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse."
Chandler concludes his essay by moving from reality in literature to reality itself, "a world in which gangsters can rule nations and rule cities... it is not a fragrant world, but it is the world you live in." He states that this world requires the hero of Hammett's fiction, a man who walks the "mean streets" with a sense of honor and a notion of justice, who neither wears them on his sleeve nor allows them to be corrupted. The Geraldine McEwan telemovie based on Agatha Christie's novel The Murder at the Vicarage shows Miss Marple reading Chandler's book. Early in the telemovie Miss Marple says, "There is never anything simple about murder." The Simple Art of Murder at Faded Page Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder ISBN 0-394-75765-3 The Simple Art of Murder, Random House. "The Simple Art of Murder", American Literature, The University of Texas. Oates, Joyce Carol. "The Simple Art of Murder". The New York Review of Books
The Big Sleep (1978 film)
The Big Sleep is a 1978 British neo-noir film, the second film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. The picture was directed by Michael Winner and stars Robert Mitchum in his second film portrayal of the detective Philip Marlowe; the cast includes Sarah Miles, Candy Clark, Joan Collins, Oliver Reed featuring James Stewart as General Sternwood. The story's setting was changed from 1940s Los Angeles to 1970s London; the film contained material more explicit than what could only be hinted at in the 1946 version, such as homosexuality and nudity. Mitchum was 60 at the time of filming, far older than Chandler's 33-year-old Marlowe. In 1970s England, private detective Philip Marlowe is asked to the stately home of General Sternwood, who hires Marlowe to learn, blackmailing him. While at the mansion, he meets the general's spoiled and inquisitive daughter Charlotte and wild younger daughter Camilla. Marlowe's investigation of the homosexual pornographer Arthur Geiger leads him to Agnes Lozelle, an employee of Geiger, to Joe Brody, a man that Agnes has taken up with.
He discovers Camilla at the scene of Geiger's murder, where she has posed for nude photographs, takes her home safely to a grateful Charlotte. Returning to the crime scene, Marlowe is interrupted by gambler Eddie Mars, who owns the house where Geiger's body was found. Mars' wife Mona hasn't been seen in a while and may have run off with Rusty Regan, Charlotte's missing husband. Due to Charlotte Regan's gambling debts, Mars appears to have a hold over Charlotte as well. Camilla tries to get her pictures back from Brody, now in possession of them. Marlowe intervenes but Brody is killed by someone unseen. A man named, he is working with Agnes now, she is willing to sell information as to Mrs. Mars' whereabouts, but on the night Marlowe shows up for their meeting, Harry is poisoned by Lash Canino, a hit man, working for Eddie Mars. Marlowe pays Agnes for the address, he tracks down Canino at a remote garage, where he is taken prisoner. Mars' missing wife Mona is there as well. At a moment when Canino is out, Marlowe persuades her to set him free.
In a shootout, he kills Canino. Camilla Sternwood appears to be grateful to Marlowe and asks him to teach her how to use the gun he just returned to her so that she can protect herself, he takes her to a wooded area. After he sets up an empty can on the ledge of a wall of the ruins of a Roman castle for her to use as a target, she points the gun at him and begins pulling the trigger repeatedly. Marlowe had given her the weapon loaded with blanks, she becomes hysterical at the ruse and he takes her home. It turns out that the disturbed Camilla had murdered her sister's husband Rusty and that Charlotte had covered everything up with Eddie Mars' help. After confronting Charlotte with the facts, Marlowe tells her to have Camilla hospitalized, he drives away from the Sternwood residence the same way he came in, hoping that the gravely ill general will never know the truth about his two wicked daughters. Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe Sarah Miles as Charlotte Sternwood Regan Richard Boone as Lash Canino Candy Clark as Camilla Sternwood Joan Collins as Agnes Lozelle Edward Fox as Joe Brody John Mills as Inspector Jim Carson James Stewart as General Sternwood Oliver Reed as Eddie Mars Harry Andrews as Norris Colin Blakely as Harry Jones Richard Todd as Commander Barker Diana Quick as Mona Grant James Donald as Inspector Gregory John Justin as Arthur Geiger Mitchum had portrayed Philip Marlowe three years earlier in Farewell, My Lovely, a film shot as a period piece rather than set in the present day.
Mitchum remains the only actor to play the character in more than one movie. Dick Powell portrayed him in a movie, an episode of Climax! Adapting The Long Goodbye, several radio plays. Powers Boothe portrayed the character in a series of 1986 dramas made for HBO. Actors who had earlier played Marlowe in feature-length films include Powell, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Montgomery, George Montgomery, James Garner and Elliott Gould. Marlowe would be played by James Caan in the 1998 television film Poodle Springs. Mitchum, Sarah Miles and John Mills reunited for this film, having starred together eight years before in Ryan's Daughter. Diana Quick performs the song "Won't Somebody Dance with Me", a ballad composed by Lynsey De Paul. Roger Ebert gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4 and wrote that "despite all the great costumes and sets and London locations they’re given to work with, the actors don’t seem engaged." Janet Maslin of The New York Times described the film as "senselessly gaudy" and "overloaded with big names, in this case the net effect of an all-star cast is to make an confusing mystery harder to follow."
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 1.5 stars out of 4 and wrote, "All of the zigs and zags of the original story are in the remake. Talented actors such as Edward Fox and Oliver Reed sleepwalk through their parts." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times panned the film as "a flat, routine procedural detective mystery utterly devoid of any film noir atmosphere." Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote, "The production is handsome, but in the updating and relocation a lot has been lost." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "Everything is out of whack in this transposition of Chandler's material. The actors seem to be going
OCLC
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Incorporated d/b/a OCLC is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs". It was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest online public access catalog in the world. OCLC is funded by the fees that libraries have to pay for its services. OCLC maintains the Dewey Decimal Classification system. OCLC began in 1967, as the Ohio College Library Center, through a collaboration of university presidents, vice presidents, library directors who wanted to create a cooperative computerized network for libraries in the state of Ohio; the group first met on July 5, 1967 on the campus of the Ohio State University to sign the articles of incorporation for the nonprofit organization, hired Frederick G. Kilgour, a former Yale University medical school librarian, to design the shared cataloging system.
Kilgour wished to merge the latest information storage and retrieval system of the time, the computer, with the oldest, the library. The plan was to merge the catalogs of Ohio libraries electronically through a computer network and database to streamline operations, control costs, increase efficiency in library management, bringing libraries together to cooperatively keep track of the world's information in order to best serve researchers and scholars; the first library to do online cataloging through OCLC was the Alden Library at Ohio University on August 26, 1971. This was the first online cataloging by any library worldwide. Membership in OCLC is based on use of services and contribution of data. Between 1967 and 1977, OCLC membership was limited to institutions in Ohio, but in 1978, a new governance structure was established that allowed institutions from other states to join. In 2002, the governance structure was again modified to accommodate participation from outside the United States.
As OCLC expanded services in the United States outside Ohio, it relied on establishing strategic partnerships with "networks", organizations that provided training and marketing services. By 2008, there were 15 independent United States regional service providers. OCLC networks played a key role in OCLC governance, with networks electing delegates to serve on the OCLC Members Council. During 2008, OCLC commissioned two studies to look at distribution channels. In early 2009, OCLC negotiated new contracts with the former networks and opened a centralized support center. OCLC provides bibliographic and full-text information to anyone. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat—the OCLC Online Union Catalog, the largest online public access catalog in the world. WorldCat has holding records from private libraries worldwide; the Open WorldCat program, launched in late 2003, exposed a subset of WorldCat records to Web users via popular Internet search and bookselling sites.
In October 2005, the OCLC technical staff began a wiki project, WikiD, allowing readers to add commentary and structured-field information associated with any WorldCat record. WikiD was phased out; the Online Computer Library Center acquired the trademark and copyrights associated with the Dewey Decimal Classification System when it bought Forest Press in 1988. A browser for books with their Dewey Decimal Classifications was available until July 2013; until August 2009, when it was sold to Backstage Library Works, OCLC owned a preservation microfilm and digitization operation called the OCLC Preservation Service Center, with its principal office in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The reference management service QuestionPoint provides libraries with tools to communicate with users; this around-the-clock reference service is provided by a cooperative of participating global libraries. Starting in 1971, OCLC produced catalog cards for members alongside its shared online catalog. OCLC commercially sells software, such as CONTENTdm for managing digital collections.
It offers the bibliographic discovery system WorldCat Discovery, which allows for library patrons to use a single search interface to access an institution's catalog, database subscriptions and more. OCLC has been conducting research for the library community for more than 30 years. In accordance with its mission, OCLC makes its research outcomes known through various publications; these publications, including journal articles, reports and presentations, are available through the organization's website. OCLC Publications – Research articles from various journals including Code4Lib Journal, OCLC Research, Reference & User Services Quarterly, College & Research Libraries News, Art Libraries Journal, National Education Association Newsletter; the most recent publications are displayed first, all archived resources, starting in 1970, are available. Membership Reports – A number of significant reports on topics ranging from virtual reference in libraries to perceptions about library funding. Newsletters – Current and archived newsletters for the library and archive community.
Presentations – Presentations from both guest speakers and OCLC research from conferences and other events. The presentations are organized into five categories: Conference presentations, Dewey presentations, Distinguished Seminar Series, Guest presentations, Research staff
