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ments of the dancer”), loose women (“The expression ‘broad’ is on the As-sociation’s list of forbidden words, and must be changed”), and illicit sex (“Please rewrite the linę, ‘Maybe you were just making love to me’... This scene with the man’s clothes in with Mrs. Grayle’s, is unacceptable and should be omitted entirely from the finished picture”). He specified not showing violence—inflicted on or by Marlowe—onscreen:

page 80 We suggest you mask this action of Amthor hitting Marlowe on the face with his gun butt. Otherwise, the scene will proba-bly be deleted by several censor boards. page 86 Again, we suggest masking this action of Marlowe hitting the man behind the ear.

For safety the censor denied free speech to avoid panie in crowded theaters:

page 83-6 In linę with standard industry procedurę, there must be no cries of “Fire.” Some other word must be substituted.

And he banned onscreen suicide:

page 154 It will not be permissible to suggest that Mr. Grayle escapes pun-ishment by committing suicide. Please, therefore, change the linę, *“Yeah, he did it himself?”—possibly indicating that Moose killed the old man before he died himself.

Breen concluded with his customary disclaimer, “You understand, of course, that our finał judgement will be based upon the finished picture.”⁵⁶ The endorsement of Farewell, My Lovely in the wake of Hollywood insid-ers viewing Double lndemnity for the first time showed that Breen expedi-ently approved Chandler’s hard-boiled materiał. The crime-and-passion bandwagon had begun.

In late spring-early summer 1944 Adrian Scott produced Farewell, My Lovely and assigned Edward Dmytryk to direct. Dmytryk was a young RKO director with'a well-deserved reputation for delivering tightly paced, mod-estly budgeted, and highly profitable pictures such as the proto-noir anti-Nazi Hitler’s Children (1943) and racist anti-Japanese political potboiler Behind the Rising Sun (1943). Farewell, My I.ovely was Dmytryk’s first A-class picture. Scott and Dmytryk cast former Warner Bros. musical star Dick Powell against type as hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe. After years of typecasting, Powell was ready to try something new. He had actually audi-tioned for the lead in Double lndemnity, Walter Neff, but lost the role be-cause Wilder felt the public would never accept the 1930S Busby Berkeley song-and-dance man as a tough crime character capable of murder. After Powell had been freelancing, RKO president Charles Koerner, keen on pro-ducing musicals in the futurę, madę a deal, signing the actor up for two RKO pictures a year and promising Powell a shot at Philip Marlowe in Farewell, My Lovely, then suggesting him for the role. In person Dmytryk found the actor to be taller and tougher than he had anticipated (absent the heavy stage makeup used in Powells customary musical films). It turned out to be excellent casting. In fact, Chandler regarded Powells performance as the truest detective Marlowe onscreen and RKO’s adaptation as the best film of his hard-boiled novels.

As in Double lndemnity, low-budget financial limitations and wartime materiał constraints enhanced the vivid film noir style in Murder, My Sweet. Because RKO viewed the film as a risky project, and did not have.Jarge sums of money for sets and production, Dmytryk’s project was budgefed under $500,000 with a short shooting Schedule. The film, completed July 1,1944, cost a modest $479,000—nearly half as much as Double lndemnity or Citizen Kane,⁵⁷ In visualizing Marlowe’s confusion and paranoia, images ac-centuated the dark mood of Chandler’s story with brilliantly stylized drug-induced dream sequences. Stranger on the Third Floor special-effects veteran Vernon L. Walker collaborated with Douglas Travers on the filnTs psycho-logical montages, art director Albert S. D’Agostino collaborated with Car-roll Clark,'and Dmytryk gave cinematographer Harry Wild a chiaroscuro painting to illustrate the tonę and style that he wanted to capture onscreen. Like Stranger on the Third Floor, Citizen Kane, and earlier horror films, Dmytryk shot far below normal camera angles to distort the perspective and view of people in the frame. Dmytryk described the film as “utter real-ism, but it wasn’t shot realistically at all.” Originally released as Farewell, My Lovely in late 1944, the film was retitled Murder, My Sweet to capitalize on its crime and romance component (and to avoid any possibility that audi-ences would think it was a Powell musical) and then released in early 1945.⁵⁸

RKO blitzed racy publicity for Murder, My Sweet. Since the Advertising Codę for publicity was morę lenient than Production Codę censorship, ads (featuring Claire Trevor’s unbelievably ample display of legs spilling out of a split skirt) ran in Life magazine on February 18,1945, with the salacious tagline: “Careful Dick... She’s as Cute as Lace Pants ... But you can’t stop a Murderess ... if you stop a Bullet First!” (The banned linę was even used twice in the film.) Exploiting the femme fatale for a returning Gl\udience in 1945, ads capitalized on infidelity and gender distress: “don’t fall for that feeling ... she kills like she kisses!” Below, a gritty image of Pow-