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1957 · 500113 — <p>"Ray" on light blue personal 6925 Neptune Place letterhead La Jolla June 3 1957. 4to. 2 pages on separate leaves stapled together. To Edgar N. Carter at N.H. Swanson Company in West Hollywood: "Would it make any difference to a TV deal if I agreed to write the dialogue not the story -- only I suppose what you could call a polish job. Of course the writer would loathe me. I must make it clear that any work I should do would on be done in any TV studio since it might be from Tahiti or Tasmania. I understand that changes might be made because some actor might say "This line just isn't me" or some director might like George Marshall have an itching pencil. I ought to have something to say about who is to play the part. I think the actor is more important than the summer radio shot. I think you have the job of convincing these lauatics that if a show is to last it must cost not too much and must have some sort of special quality. Marlowe is a character of some nobility of scorching wit sad but not defeated lonely but never really sure of himself. It is impossible to think that such a man would not have a sex life but so many writers of this sort of story have made it too blatant and too vulgar. Marlowe would get almost any woman into bed with him by a certain obscure technique which depends almost entirely on making a woman feel that you respect her. Some of this has to go into Philip Marlowe if his is to be any good. If it is not possible to achieve this I think we should forget the whole thing. After all a great many writers have been trying to steal him from me for 15 years and they have never done it yet".</p> unknown