Philip Marlowe TV Series "The Ugly Duckling"

Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe became a half hour television series that aired on ABC for 26 episodes in 1959/60 "The Ugly Duckling" is the first.

Donna Raymond is a vixen who has her claws in David Jordan, a married man. He is a lawyer who looks after his wealthy wife's interests. Donna arranges to have someone run Mrs. Jordan off the road but she survives. At this point Marlowe is called in by Paul Howard who is Mrs. Jordan's father.

It is decided that Marlowe will offer $10,000 to Miss Raymond to leave town. Marlowe goes to her apartment makes his pitch and leaves her the ten grand. As he is leaving her room Marlowe runs into Hank the hotel dick who is an old friend. He agrees to call Marlowe if Miss Raymond doesn't check out.

Later that night Marlowe gets a call from Hank telling him Miss Raymond hasn't checked out. He calls her and she denies that he gave her the money. We also see that Mrs. Jordan is in the room with her. When Marlowe gets back to the hotel he finds Miss Raymond dead.

Marlowe makes an an anonymous tip about the murder and goes to leave. Before he can get away he is knocked out and dragged back into the room. We are next at police headquarters where Marlowe is in the clear but Mrs. Jordan has been arrested when she denies having been there when her fingerprints are found their.

We next find Marlowe back at the Jordan house where he finds Mr. Jordan, who is supposed to be out of town. Also there is Mr. Howard who we find out is carrying a .38 the same caliber as was used in the murder. So now we have three suspects.

Marlowe then returns to Miss Raymond's room Hank has let him back in so he can look for the missing ten grand. Who should turn up at that point but Rossi who gets the drop on Marlowe when he pulls a .38. Marlowe manages to get the gun away from Rossi and we go back to police headquarters.

There we find that Rossi has an alibi for the murder and that the gun that was used in the murder was Marlowe's backup which has has hidden in his car. It is suspected that Mrs. Jordan had access to the gun so Marlowe isn't held.

We next see Hank on the phone with Mr. Howard who can't believe that Marlowe hasn't been charged. When Hank hangs up the phone we see Marlowe is also there and he's solved the case. Hank had the passkey and knew Miss Raymond had been paid off. In addition Hank knew about Marlowe's backup gun. First he tries threatening then bribing Marlowe. There is a brief struggle Marlowe gets the gun away from Hank and the case is closed.

The cast was; Philip Carey as Philip Marlowe, William Schallert as Police Lieutenant Manny Harris, Virginia Gregg as Luceille Jordan and Barbra Bain as Donna Raymond.

We have posted another episode from this series.    • Philip Marlowe TV Series "Murder Is A Grav...  

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