Sam Marlow
Created by Andrew J. Fenady
Way back in the seventies,
during the mini-nostalgia boom for all things from the thirties
and forties, actor Robert Sacchi parlayed his spooky resemblance
to Humphrey Bogart into a nice little career in TV commercials
and movie cameos, most notably in Woody Allen's Play It Again,
Sam. The big payoff, though, was the 1980 release of The
Man With Bogart's Face (1980, 20th Century Fox), wherein Sacchi
was cast as, well, a man with Bogart's face.
It's essentially a one-gag flick, but it's a good gag, adapted by Andrew J. Fenady from his own 1977 novel. Seems there's this former LA cop, probably short a few crayons for a complete set, who retires, and blows his entire life's savings ton plastic surgery so that he can look like his hero and idol, Humphrey Bogart. Then he gets a P.I. ticket, a '39 Plymouth, a trench coat and fedora, and sets up shop as SAM MARLOW (as in, Sam from Sam Spade, and Marlow from Phillip Marlowe).
But business isn't exactly booming for Sam, no matter who he looks like. His only client is his landlady, who hires him to keep an eye out for her midget lover. Until, that is, he's hired to track down the famed Eyes of Alexander, two priceless, perfectly-matched sapphires. Before you can say "The Maltese Falcon," he's up to his fedora in eccentrics all out for the gems, most of them take-offs on various characters from old detective flicks. Michelle Phillips does Gene Tierney, Victor Buono does Sidney Greenstreet, Herbert Lom does Peter Lorre, etc.
It's a pretty amusing little film, more a gentle tribute to the great detective flicks of the 30's and 40's than a hard-nosed parody, yet it has it moments. If you enjoyed Steve Martin in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, you'll probably get a kick out of this one too. There's some snappy patter and the flick's ripe with cameos and nods to past. George Raft pops up, in his last film role, and Mike Mazurski (Moose Malloy in Murder, My Sweet) has a bit part playing himself. And famed Hollywood reporters James Bacon and Robert Osborne show up playing, of all things, Hollywood reporters (Osborne later became the host of Turner Classic Movies). The only thing they missed is that the whole thing should have been shot in black and white.
The notion of a private eye with an unhealthy obsession with Bogart later showed up, and was put to greatg use in John Wagner and Alan Grant 's The Bogie Man. And Fenady himself wrote The Secret of Sam Marlow, a sequel to the first novel, that appeared about the same time the film based on the first one came out.
UNDER OATH
NOVELS
FILM
