“Anyone who doesn’t like Hollywood is either crazy or sober.”
The patron saint of late bloomers, Raymond Chandler lost his job as an oil industry executive at the age of forty-four due to excessive drinking, then launched a new career as a hard-boiled fiction writer—and proceeded to revitalize the genre. His sharp, lyrical prose and dialogue had a lasting influence on writers of all stripes, and his evocative renderings of thirties/forties Los Angeles, his adopted home, are still considered definitive. He eventually completed eight novels, each centered on private detective Philip Marlowe; all but one were turned into films. (Most notable: The Big Sleep in 1946, directed by Howard Hawks, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, with a screenplay by William Faulkner.) Chandler earned two Academy Award nominations as a screenwriter himself, first for Double Indemnity (1944), then for The Blue Dahlia (1946). He was hired by Hitchcock to adapt Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train but was fired after calling the director a “fat bastard.” He spent his final years in seclusion at his home in La Jolla, California; he remains one of the most revered architects of classic film noir.
RAYMOND CHANDLER KNEW THERE was no alternative. The novelist and screenwriter sat in producer John Houseman’s office, his confidence shattered. The day before, Paramount had offered him a bonus of $5,000 if Chandler delivered the remaining pages of his screenplay The Blue Dahlia on schedule. And given that they’d already been shooting for weeks, the phrase “on schedule” was pretty generous.
The truth was, The Blue Dahlia had been a rush job from the beginning. In early 1945, actor Alan Ladd had been unexpectedly called up to the army. Paramount wanted to squeeze one more film out of him before he left, but they had nothing in the pipeline that was suitable. So they had exactly three months to write, cast, and shoot a film from scratch—for one of their biggest stars.
Chandler, who was under contract with Paramount at the time, happened to have a half-written novel laying around that he thought might make a better screenplay. He gave the first 120 pages to Houseman. A few weeks later, with only a partially completed script in place, principal photography began. Veronica Lake was to star alongside Alan Ladd (both boozers in their own right). And then Chandler got writer’s block.
Production rolled on, eventually getting ahead of the pages, and panic started to set in. And yet, Chandler didn’t consider the $5,000 bonus an enticement, he considered it an insult, a bribe that revealed a complete lack of faith. For a man in a crisis, it only made things worse. No, much as it pained Chandler to disappoint Houseman, he didn’t see any possible way he could complete the film. Unless …
It was no secret that Chandler had had problems with alcohol in the past. But before shooting began, he had assured Houseman that he was sober—happily, proudly sober—he had given up booze for good. But drinking empowered Chandler in a way nothing else could, unlocked his creative tumblers. And if Chandler was going to crank out the rest of The Blue Dahlia, he was going to have to start drinking again—and twenty-four/seven. This required nothing less than a “continuous alcoholic siege.”
Houseman, who had already coaxed Citizen Kane out of the impossibly besotted Herman J. Mankiewicz, was not fazed by the pronouncement. To seal the deal, the two men lunched at Perino’s, where Chandler downed three double martinis before the meal and three stingers after. Houseman would observe that his mood seemed much improved.
And so for the final eight days of shooting, Chandler wrote from home. As planned, he was utterly ruined with booze every waking second. Because he ate no solid food—none—Paramount provided a doctor to inject glucose into his arm twice daily. He was also given six secretaries, working in three relays of two each, and a direct line both to Houseman’s office and the studio switchboard. Limousines were made to wait outside, ready to run pages to the set at a moment’s notice.
In the end, the plan actually worked. The Blue Dahlia was completed on time. And while it was initially rejected by the Production Code for, among other things, excessive references to alcohol, it went on to earn Chandler an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. A real Hollywood ending.
Except this was a noir drama, and so required a final twist. Houseman later discovered that Chandler hadn’t exactly been sober earlier in the shoot, as he’d claimed. In fact, he’d been on a binge since before The Blue Dahlia began and was having trouble even driving himself to the production lot. What had seemed like a heroic act of self-sacrifice—Chandler throwing himself off the wagon for the sake of art—was nothing more than an elaborate scam to stay home and get loaded. For Chandler it was all or nothing. Or, to hear one of his characters say it, “I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”
HARD-BOILED DETECTIVES are a thirsty lot. Nick and Nora Charles of The Thin Man were Dashiell Hammett’s (and perhaps cinema’s) thirstiest. Still they brought a certain sophistication to their intoxication. As Nick famously said, “Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, and a dry martini you always shake to waltz time.” It was martinis they loved most.
For Raymond Chandler, the detective was Philip Marlowe, played first by Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep, then in later years by Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely, as well as by Elliott Gould in The Long Goodbye. In the latter, Marlowe says, “Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.” As for what kind of drink, Chandler himself tells us straight, “A real Gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.”
It should be noted that The Long Goodbye (1973), directed by Robert Altman, was set twenty years after the novel was published. And yet Philip Marlowe remained true to form, even in by-then health-conscious Los Angeles: he smokes like a chimney, a cigarette always drooping from his lips; he’s a loner, disinterested in the hippies next door eating hash brownies and practicing tantric yoga. Marlowe is every bit the private dick; he even wears a jacket and tie and drives a 1948 Lincoln convertible. But Marlowe doesn’t drink gimlets. In fact, the one cocktail he orders is a Seven & Seven, truly a cocktail of the times. Easy to drink and impossible to screw up, one sip and you can taste the hard-boil softening.
1½ OZ. GIN
1½ OZ. ROSE’S LIME JUICE
Pour gin and lime juice into a mixing glass filled with ice cubes. Stir well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Can also be served on the rocks in an Old-Fashioned glass.
Chandler’s is not a bad recipe and certainly simple enough to make, but if too tart, change the ratio of gin/lime juice to 2/1. And add a lime wedge as garnish.
BACK IN 1925, NOBODY would have predicted that a young waiter named Alexander Perino, fired from his job at the Biltmore Hotel after dropping a tray of tea and crumpets, would become one of Los Angeles’s most successful restaurateurs. But in 1932, seven years later, his eatery would open and go on to become one of the city’s’ finest restaurants for the next half-century.
One of the few Hollywood restaurants specializing in haute cuisine, the swank eatery drew such luminaries as Frank Sinatra, who occasionally played the Steinway in the bar, and Cole Porter, who once wrote a song on the back of a menu. Bette Davis had a booth permanently reserved in her honor; child-star Margaret O’Brien had a Shirley Temple–style cocktail named after her. Bugsy Siegel was a regular during the 1940s, and Richard Nixon celebrated the announcement of his trip to China with crab legs and a bottle of Château Lafite in 1971.
Given Alexander Perino’s humble beginnings as a waiter, it should be no surprise that the service was impeccable. There was even a strict policy that dictated no member of the staff was allowed to wait on more than eight diners at a time.
In 1950 the restaurant moved two blocks west, to a larger location designed by renowned architect Paul R. Williams (who also handled the expansion of Chasen’s). The result was described by a restaurant critic as “early thirties Grand Hotel.” The oval dining room boasted banquettes bathed in peach and pink. One of the chandeliers cost $150,000. Dessert carts were pure silver and dishes were stamped with the restaurant’s name on the bottom.
Three decades later, around 1983, newspapers reported growing financial trouble at Perino’s. The newest owner in a long line, Frank Esgro had come in with a laundry list of bold ideas that were absolutely unnecessary. Esgro would open and close a lavish second location downtown (a loss of $7.5 million) and did things like advertising a new $12.50 Sunday buffet (the loss of dignity was incalculable.) But when Perino’s entered bankruptcy proceedings in January 1986, a court-appointed trustee revealed that he knew the real problem. “Too many waiters,” he told the Los Angeles Times.
