MovieChat Forums > Marlowe (1969) Discussion > Was Steven Cannell a big fan of this mov...

Was Steven Cannell a big fan of this movie?

posted 12 years ago by Tresix
6 replies | jump to latest

In this movie, Marlowe (James Garner) gets Winslow (Bruce Lee) to leap at him and fall to his death by implying that he's gay. In the pilot of "The Rockford Files", Jim Rockford (Garner, again) insults a thug (William Smith) by implying that he's gay in order to get him to slip in some soap on the floor and knocking him out.

In the movie, Marlowe asks a thug who's beating him up "Does your mother know what you do for a living?". In the first episode of "…Rockford…", "The Kirkoff Case", a gang of thugs are working Jim over and he asks the head thug "Does your mother know what you do for a living?".

This movie has a gangster named Sonny Steelgrave (played by H.M. Wynant). On "Wiseguy", it's most memorable villain was named Sonny Steelgrave (played by the late Ray Sharkey). If Cannell wasn't a big fan, he certainly liked Marlowe a lot.

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[–] pengel-1 10 years ago

No question. Cannell only stole from the best - Raymond Chandler's dialogue

Seriously, I'm a Cannell fan and he was a great TV writer. He didn't create "Rockford" with James Garner in mind (he imagined the ex-con PI to be short) but you can see the blueprint for "Rockford" all over this movie.

[–] kwestmo (4114) 4 years ago

"blueprint for "Rockford" all over this movie" I recently watched this movie and am currently watching the Rockford Files. Marlowe was a lot smarter than Rockford. The Garner attitude comes thru in both

[–] pengel-1 10 years ago

I had read "The Little SIster" just before "Wiseguy" premiered and the name Sonny Steelgrave really struck me.

[–] Tresix 10 years ago

I remember that he initially wanted Robert Blake to be Rockford but thought that, with Blake's short height, Rockford would look too cowardly. Then again, Blake didn't seem too intimidated when he played Baretta. A character better suited for him than Jim would have ever been.

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[–] pengel-1 10 years ago

I never knew that. Irony of ironies. When Tony Musante walked away from the successful "Toma" cop show after one year, Blake was hired and it was completely retooled as "Baretta."

What I do know is that Cannell originally wrote Rockford to be one episode of "Toma" in 1973. There was a writer's strike. They needed to keep production going with simultaneous episodes.

The story Cannell wrote was about a skid row drunk's murder. It was a case that Toma couldn't find time to investigate. Instead he called on a parolee private eye to take it on. The "Toma" episode didn't happen, but that was a much grittier show than Rockford. That said, now I can picture Blake doing that as a one-off.

The script ended up with James Garner -- probably by way of Garner's best friend and Roy Huggins' brother-in-law, Luis Delgado. Garner liked it but changed it. You know the rest.

[–] kwestmo (4114) 4 years ago

Cannell was probably familiar with this film.

I believe Cannell was a fan of Raymond Chandler who wrote the novel this was based on. Cannell uses the fictional Bay City in both the Rockford Files and Renegade. The name of the mobster in MARLOWE was named Sonny Steelgrave. In the first story arc of Wiseguy, the mobster was named Sonny Steelgrave. It seems like another connection exists which I can't recall now.