Raymond Chandler

He became romantically involved with a married woman, Cissy Pascal and married her after her divorce, in 1924. She was a model and eighteen years his senior. For most part, their relationship was strained, but they were emotionally reconciled to each other.

Though he was linked with many women, Raymond Chandler loved his wife dearly. When she died in 1954, he was driven deeper into alcoholism and depression. His loneliness even drove him to attempt suicide.

He died of pneumonia on March 26, 1959, at the Scripps Memorial Hospital. His literary agent Helga Greene with whom he was linked, inherited Chandler's $60,000 estate, after winning a 1960 lawsuit.

Raymond Chandler was born on July 23, 1888, in Chicago to Maurice and Florence Chandler. His father, a railway engineer, was an alcoholic. Following the divorce, his mother took him along in 1895, to live in England to live with his grandmother.

He was admitted to Dulwich College in 1900. His teachers considered him bright, but somewhat absent minded. Here, he imbibed the English aristocratic values of honor, service and chivalry.

He did not attend college and preferred to hone his knowledge of foreign languages. With this in mind, he spent some time in Paris and Munich during his teenage years.

Raymond Chandler returned to England and joined the civil services in 1907. He ranked third out of 800 candidates and topped the classics paper. He, however, found it difficult to fit into the bureaucracy.

He moved to the U.S in 1912 and tried his hand at many fields. During ‘The First World War’, he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He saw action in the trenches of France.

He joined the Dabney Oil Syndicate as an accountant. By 1933, he had risen to the post of Vice-President. However, he was fired from the company due to his alcoholism and absenteeism.

‘The Great Depression’ aggravated his financial crisis. He now took to his original passion of writing to supplement his meager income.

He began writing short stories—the first one to be published was titled ‘Blackmailers Don’t Shoot’. It appeared in 1933 in the celebrated pulp crime fiction magazine, ‘Black Mask’.

He partnered with the film director Billy Wilder and wrote the screenplay for the movie, ‘Double Indemnity’ which was based on a novel of the same name penned by James M. Cain. It made a whopping $5,000,000 at the box office.

He wrote the original screenplay for the movie ‘Blue Dahlia’ in 1946. It was his first attempt at a screenplay which was not an adaptation of a novel.

‘The Long Good Bye’, published in 1953, is considered his autobiographical sketch which reflected the emotional upheaval that the writer experienced during his wife’s illness and her eventual death, his problems with alcohol and his suicide attempt.