There was an interesting article called "Farewell, my L.A."
in today's LA Times about the old Ambassador Hotel being torn
down:
http://tinyurl.com/dfb4w
or
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-strick22jan22,0,5513457.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary
Writer Wesley Strick ( a screenwriter whose credits include
1991's CAPE FEAR) writes (in part):
Someone once observed that three of Chandler's best-known
titles - "Farewell, My Lovely," "The Big Sleep" and "The Long
Goodbye" - were different ways of saying "death." It's a
commonplace that the dark currents of noir flowed from the
insecurities of GIs returning home after years overseas:
young men who weren't sure that their girlfriends and wives
were waiting for them - or, if they were waiting, had they
been faithful? Put the two together and you get the genre's
twin themes: betrayal and extinction.
Now that the Ambassador is plowed under, I pause to reflect:
Is it a surprise that the hotel got the wrecking ball rather
than a loving restoration? Not when you consider its fate in
a noir context. The hapless romantic Moose Malloy spends all
of "Farewell, My Lovely" searching for his lost love. When he
finds her at last, is he rewarded with a kiss? No, Moose gets
five bullets in the stomach, fired point-blank.
In noir-land, the good die young and the bad sleep well.
Through noir's tinted lens, Southern California is Eden
Spoiled - per Chandler, the "tarantula on a slice of angel
food."
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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