Noir II – Advanced Investigation MB-302  Cain Building  T-Th 9 a.m.

Answers for Quiz #1

Here are the answers for your first quiz. I hope you did well. Please don’t turn in your papers until you have completed the second quiz—to be administered soon.

Remember the Kollege of Mystery Knowledge operates on the honor system, proving there is honor among thieves.  

Q 1 Name the actors who have played Philip Marlowe in film. 

A. If you named Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery and James Garner give yourself full credit. That’s far from a complete list, but it’s all a devout Raymond Chandler fan needs to know.

Wikipedia says 18 actors have portrayed Marlowe, including Philip Carey who was the detective in a short-lived 1959 TV series.  IMDB lists 17 Marlowes. It says the first Marlowe of the silver screen was James Kirkwood in the1934 not-really-a-classic Hired Wife. Neat trick because Chandler’s first published Marlowe novel was in 1939.  Maybe Kirkwood was a different Philip Marlowe.

Check out the lists of other Marlowes here:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls066052539/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Marlowe

Extra credit on this question if you also said Elliot Gould once played a version of Marlowe.

Q 2 Who wrote the first modern mystery story? Clue: it was published 182 years ago.

A. Modern murder mysteries got started in 1841 with the publication of a murder mystery in Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia. The Murders in the Rue Morgue was written by Edgar Allen Poe.  Like some mysteries that would follow, the story is narrated by the detective’s sidekick. The mystery introduces Paris Detective Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin who used his “analytical power” to solve a series of gruesome murders in Paris.

Q 3 Where did the idea for the TV show Columbo come from?

A . Remember Peter Falk? His technique, once he identified a murderer, was to ask unassuming questions.  He acted humble and when the suspect lied, Columbo rubbed his brow and professed to be confused. He asked hypothetical questions to get the suspect to contradict himself.

Russian literature fans may recognize this technique from the Fyodor Dostoyevsky novel, Crime and Punishment. In the book, the detective, Porfiry Petrovich uses the same interrogation technique on a suspect.  In an interview years after the TV series, William Link, Columbo creator, said he got inspiration for the Peter Falk character from Crime and Punishment.

Q 4 True or false, the movie based on the book, The Maltese Falcon, starred Bette Davis, Bebe Daniels and Warren William.

A . True. Davis, Daniels and Warren William, not to mention Arthur Treacher, were all stars of Warner Brothers films based on Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.  Warners produced three films based on the book, but only the 1941 Humphrey Bogart-Mary Astor version became the classic and the model for noir films ever since.

In 1931 Daniels and Richardo Cortez starred in The Maltese Falcon and five years later Davis and William starred in Satan Met a Lady.  Both films were based on the 1930 Hammett novel.

Q 5  Who was Ross Macdonald’s PI?

A. Macdonald’s detective was Lew Archer, played in two films by Paul Newman. Macdonald took the name Archer from the last name of Sam Spade’s partner Miles Archer.  Played in The Maltese Falcon by Jerome Cowan, Archer met his death on a foggy San Francisco street early in he film.

Q 6 Who wrote the short story Rear Window which became a film of the same name?

A. Cornell Woolrich, who also wrote under the names George Hopley and William Irish, authored more than 20 noir novels, nearly all of which were turned into movies, some several times. According to IMDB more than 50 films

were based on Woolrich stories and books. Rear Window, although not his best story, is by far the most- remembered film.

 

 

 

*Band leader Kay Kyser starred in a radio program in the 30s and 40s called Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge. That’s where my silly title comes from.