They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered color plate. It showed him holding a smeare… - Raymond Chandler
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They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered color plate. It showed him holding a smeared palette with a dirty thumb and wearing a tam-o’-shanter which wasn’t any too clean either. His other hand held a brush poised in the air, as if he might be going to do a little work after a while, if somebody made a down payment. His face was aging, saggy, full of the disgust of life and the thickening effects of liquor. But it had a hard cheerfulness that I liked, and the eyes were as bright as drops of dew. I was looking at him across my office desk at about four-thirty when the phone rang and I heard a cool, supercilious voice that sounded as if it thought it was pretty good. It said drawlingly, after I had answered: “You are Philip Marlowe, a private detective?
Raymond Thornton Chandler (23 July 1888 – 26 March 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter who specialized in the crime fiction genre.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Photographer uncredited. Published by Alfred A. Knopf. (Public domain / CC0)
you have to hold your teeth clamped around Hollywood to keep from chewing on stray blondes.
Thick cunning played on her face, had no fun there and went somewhere else.
Well, George Anson Phillips is a kind of pathetic case... He was the sort of cop who would be likely to hang a pinch on a chicken thief, if he saw the guy steal the chicken and the guy fell down running away and hit his head on a post or something and knocked himself out. Otherwise it might get a little tough and George would have to go back to the office for instructions.
