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RARA-AVIS: Gutman's use of tem 'rara avis'
On Sat, 8 Feb 1997, William Denton <buff@vex.net> wrote:
[SNIP]
> [D]oes Gutman actually call the Falcon a "rara
> avis" in the book? I looked through it a couple of times, going over
> the scenes with the fat man, and couldn't see it. Does he in fact
> only say this in the movie?
[SNIP]
Here's Gutman's single use of the term in the novel:
251 T H E R U S S I A N 'S H A N D
"I was sure you would. Well, sir, the shortest farewells are the
best. Adieu." He made a portly bow. ''And to you, Miss O'Shaughnessy,
adieu. I leave you the rara avis on the table as a little momento."
As for filmic uses of the phrase, I havn't checked this, but I would
say off the top of my head (subject to faulty recollection, confusion
and just plain old error) that there are several uses of the term
'rara avis' in Huston's 1941 film, by the Gutman character as well as
Spade(?)
I'm not sure if the term is used in the 1931 and/or 1936 films. The
novel itself appears in the 1931 film (Miss Wonderly is reading it,
Spade picks it up at her apartment). It's not called *The Rara Avis*
though: the close-up of the cover, featuring a bird which looks very
similar to the bird on the dust-jacket of the 1930 novel, bears the
title*'The Black Bird*, an intertextual filmic reference that
anticipates the David Giler spoof that would appear some forty-four
years later.
Eddie Duggan
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