Public Hero Number One

I'M WATCHING television again. Now that I'm living alone in the city. I've had to tune in on patterns of after work relaxation. I buy TV Guide. I read it. I try new shows. Some are funny. Most are about detectives. Somebody who notices these things recently noticed that there were more crime/detective shows on the three networks this year than even before. I think that's significant. What follows are some thoughts in search of a theory.

Right after World War II, the private eye replaced the cowboy as hero, in the eyes of the average white middle class man on the street. The heroic image had changed with the environment--increasing urbanization, progress, etc. But this didn't stop certain filmmakers from making Westerns. Ford and Peckinpah continued making good Westerns, but did it by altering their concepts; Ford by turning inward, studying "the American's struggle between self-destruction and life affirmation," to quote John Landau in the latest Rolling Stone; Peckinpah reacted similarly, by examining the end of the Old West.

Howard Hawks's El Dorado is, on the other hand, a classic Western. It has simple values, recognizable goods and evils, as well as the heroically American notion of self-reliance and the personal code of justice. You have John Wayne's moral obligation to the McDonald family after he accidentally kills a son: his resurrection of alcoholic sheriff Robert Mitchum as well as his instinctive refusal to work for the land barons, which leads to a moral decision to work against them. What's fascinating is Hawks's dissociation from his contemporary environment. El Dorado, simple to the point of mindlessness, was made in 1967, after Blow Up, a film of remarkable complexity, but drawn along the same lines of moral involvement on the part of the individual, and reflecting the incipient cynicism of the decade's end a good three years early.

Like the Yardbirds, Blow Up seems significantly ahead of its time. What's remarkable about El Dorado is that it can seem so significantly behind its time, and still be so successful.

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe is the cowboy of El Dorada. Chandler, using the West again as a frontier, with an unfamiliar lifestyle, offers a similar formula. Marlowe operates out of a unique, a personal system of value. Consequently, he is only nominally legitimate. His world is as moral as he makes it, but, on the highest levels, he is an intensely moral man. Marlowe is certainly his own man. He has codes of morality, justice, legitimacy. And he is comfortable in an urban, mechanized world. Even though the same essential things happen in each succeeding Chandler novel, the character Philip Marlowe seems to surpass his environment, deepening our perception of him, and strengthening him through the stereotype.

I THINK THAT Bogart was the catalyst. In each film after Casablanca. Bogart played a role outlined by Chandler. Yet the role was so much in own stylistically, and he emphasized it so much in film after film, that Bogart became our idea of Philip Marlowe, no matter whom he played. That is, he contributed as much to the public's perception of Marlowe as Chandler. Rick Leland and Marlowe are remarkable similar, even though Casabalanca was released before Chandler achieved any popularity. Aloofness merged with compassion, ruthlessness with a unique sense of justice, cynicism with a deep sense of morality--it is a role Bogart spent the forties growing into, and expanding.

Now, I see Raymond Chandler every time I turn on the television. In Perry Mason reruns, in Frank Sinatra as Tony Rome, Peter Falk as Columbo, or brand new episodes of Cannon there are elements of Philip Marlowe. Somehow, (using Bogart, perhaps as media image, because we watch television now for the same kind of entertainment our parents looked for in the movies 25 years ago) someone has turned Marlowe into the average American, leading the slightly above average American life. And therefore into a cultural hero, because you should only be slightly above average. Marlowe is more viable than Ford's or Hawks's silent cowboys, though, to be sure, that is the result of inevitable updating, call it urbanization. But he carries the same characteristics that took John Wayne through God knows how many movies, and won the West to boot. The change is as natural as our own.

SO I WATCH Cannon. I organize my social calender around it. It is as well made as any number of movies, and it is consistently well made. Wednesday's episode suffered a bit from banality, but is sure had everything else. The fat man is my idea of a detective, and the media barons have improved on standard fare, by making their detective overweight, leisurely, and in no particular need of the work. There is much Philip Marlowe in what remains, though. Frank Cannon is direct, dry and witty. He also holds on to the Marlowe notion of moral involvement. His own material comfort underscores his morality. He believes in himself as a reasonably legit Good Samaritan.

Cannon also benefits from solid direction. Lawrence Dobkin, directing Wednesday's show, was able to infuse it with subtlety and humor, as well as a few interesting cinematic moments, and keep to his formula of fifteen minute episodes with ease. It is well edited, and the use of location works almost to score the dialogue.

Cannon could be as fine a show as television has produced. There's no arguing its significance in the study of the country's end of the century culture. That's the final point. Cannon is no more than a further extension of characters that began with Natty Bumppo. He simply moves well in a mechanized society. The fat man is worth arranging your week around.