Raymond Chandler's Pacific Palisades

Esotouric Tour Highlights Iconic Author's Los Angeles

October 02, 2008

Michael Aushenker , Staff Writer

It's Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles, and we're just living in it!

That's the subtext of a pair of literary bus tours, offered by Esotouric, including 'Raymond Chandler's Bay City,' which on Saturday, October 18, will cover Santa Monica landmarks referenced in his novels and ends up in Pacific Palisades, which, at two points of his career, Chandler called home.

Chandler (1888-1959) was the Los Angeles-obsessed pulp novelist best known for inventing the quintessential private investigator Philip Marlowe, the hard-boiled protagonist of seven books portrayed in 1946 by Humphrey Bogart in Howard Hawks' 'The Big Sleep,' an adaptation of the first Marlowe book with a screenplay co-written by William Faulkner. Chandler himself co-wrote another film noir classic, Billy Wilder's 'Double Indemnity' (1944).

Despite its being his preferred genre, to call Chandler a 'mystery writer' would be a misnomer, as Chandler was more concerned with waxing eloquent about his Southern California environs than clearly laying out the mechanics of his murder mysteries. An oft-repeated anecdote describes how when Faulkner and Hawks, in the midst of shooting 'Big Sleep,' contacted Chandler to ask him who killed General Sternwood's chauffer, Chandler telegraphed back, 'I don't know.'

Nevertheless, Los Angeles was Chandler's ultimate muse, and Esotouric's 'Bay City' tour focuses on his middle period, which includes Marlowe installments 'Farewell My Lovely' and 'Lady in the Lake' and their short story sources, such as 'Bay City Blues.'

A blend of Chandler fact and fiction, 'Bay City' covers the Westside as filtered through Chandler's worldview in his works, and the real life rackets, murders and graft which gave Bay City, a.k.a. Santa Monica, its renegade reputation decades ago. Included on this route are the ruins of Pickfair (Mary Pickford's former beach house, near which gambling ships took to the Pacific and flouted Prohibition-era laws) over by Leows Beach Hotel on Ocean Avenue.

More pertinent to Palisadians, 'Bay City' explores the local residences where the author lived with Cissy, the affluent divorcee and enigmatic redhead who became his wife and inspiration for several characters. With a penchant for peregrination and Cissy's wealth, the Chandlers moved some 35 times throughout Southern California, from the Palisades to La Jolla. Two of those addresses, 943 Hartzell and 857 Iliff, are local.

'They were very nomadic,' says Esotouric founder and docent Richard Schave, adding that the restless Cissy was the catalyst for their peripatetic lifestyle. 'They lived in the desert in the winter, mountains in the summer ' every six months, Cissy thought they should be moving. They should summer in Big Bear Lake, spend the winter in Palm Springs.'

The Chandlers often rented, including in the Palisades.

'You could live so cheaply in Southern California,' Schave says. 'They bought only one home, in 1947 in La Jolla.'

This was after Chandler, who was under contract with Paramount, was leased out to Universal to write the ultimately un-produced screenplay 'Playback' for roughly $100,000. Upon payment, Chandler tore up his Paramount contract and moved to La Jolla, where Cissy died in 1954. During his tumultuous final five years, the author sold the La Jolla home and spent stretches living in England, before returning to his old femme fatale, California, and dying in San Diego in 1959.

(For detail on Chandler's life and Palisades connection, search the Palisadian-Post's archive at www.palisadespost.com for 'Sleuthing Chandler's Los Angeles,' December 13, 2007).

Also on Schave's tour: the notorious Thelma Todd Caf' in Castellammare, now Paulist Productions' headquarters on PCH.

'Castellammare is the last stop on the tour, the d'nouement,' Schave says. 'It's the mansion that is now the headquarters for Paulist Productions on PCH.

'In [the second Marlowe book] 'Farewell, My Lovely',' Schave continues, 'Lindsay Marriot lives in a house that is no longer there. Philip Marlowe parks in Castellammare and goes up the stairs to Lindsay Marriot's house. Decades ago, there were four flights of stairs; two flights washed away.

'Thelma Todd lived there. The Todd case inspired 'Lady in the Lake,' in which the doctor murders his wife and makes it look like asphyxiation.'

In addition to the Westside-centric 'Bay City' tour, Esotouric will conduct the Eastside counterpart, 'Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles' (a.k.a. the 'In A Lonely Place' tour) one week earlier, focusing on the quondam Dabney Oil employee's formative years.

Schave, 39, formed Esotouric with his wife, Kim Cooper, 41. The pair met as UC Santa Cruz students back in the mid-1980s and had remained friends over the years. They married in 2006.

In-between point A and Z were a number of twists worthy of Marlowe's investigative services. Cooper, who grew up in Venice, Culver City and Hollywood (prime grist for the Chandler mill), spent much of the 1990s editing the music 'zine Scram, which she started while living in San Francisco. Cooper also attended graduate school in Santa Barbara and lived in London.

In 2004, Schave reconnected with Cooper. At the time, Cooper was living in Lincoln Heights and married to another man. Schave even worked with her former husband on a movie project, while Cooper, who had wrapped up Scram magazine with issue 22, had jumped online to create a succession of well-received blogs, such as www.1947Project.com.

Esotouric conducts 16 tours in a rotation every Saturday. The division of labor between Schave and Cooper is simple: Schave leads on literary and architecture tours, covering such icons as John Fante and Charles Bukowski, while Cooper specializes in the grisly murders: real-life noir that inspired 'L.A. Confidential' and 'The Black Dahlia.' Esotouric's architecture tours are influenced by the couple's college mentor, late architecture critic Reyner Banham.

  'Bay City' explores every facet of Chandler's universe, from the glamorous side to its brummagem corners. As all Esotouric tours emphasize, there's more to Los Angeles than Hollywood.

'L.A. is great because it's an underdog,' Cooper says. 'The things they make fun of about this city aren't even Los Angeles. This is a city of people reinventing themselves, people with guts, gumption and egos running amok. I love the little secrets it has and all the little places that haven't changed.'

'Raymond Chandler's Bay City' on Saturday, October 18, runs from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. and departs from the public parking lot on Cardiff one block south of the Museum of Jurassic, 9341 Venice Boulevard, Culver City. Tickets: $58. Check-in at 12:30 p.m. for a 1 p.m. departure. Tickets can be ordered online until the morning of the tour. Contact 310-995-4591 after 8 a.m. on tour day. For information on all tours, visit www.esotouric.com.