Who Killed the Chauffeur?

There's a legendary Hollywood anecdote about the making of the classic 1946 film noir The Big Sleep, which starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. It involves the fate of Owen Taylor, the chauffeur working for the depraved, old-money Sternwood family. In both the film and the source novel by Raymond Chandler, Taylor is found dead in the Sternwood limousine, which had been driven off the end of Lido Pier ("Lido" being Chandler-speak for Malibu). Since Taylor's head had been bludgeoned, it was not a natural death, but no one during the films production, not director Howard Hawks nor screenwriters Leigh Bracket, Jules Furthman, or William Faulkner, could figure out how actually killed Taylor and/or how he ended up awash in the Pacific. When Hawks called Chandler directly to ask, the author reportedly said, "I have no idea," and hung up.

Even though the murder of Taylor is just one tile in an incredibly complex mosaic, somebody had to off him, and for some reason. It likely had to do with the fact that the chauffeur had been madly in love with Carmen Sternwood, the unstable, vixenish younger daughter of rich, elderly General Sternwood, who was posing for pornographic photos for a Hollywood bookseller named A.G. Geiger (Carmen was posing, not the general; the family's not that depraved). Taylor followed Carmen to Geiger's Hollywood Hills bungalow, which Geiger was renting from a mobster named Eddie Mars, and either found her naked in front of a camera (the book) or "high as a kite" (the movie). Enraged, Taylor shot Geiger and took the photo negatives, fleeing the scene in the Sternwood limo. But a cheap hood named Joe Brody, who was also part of Geiger's porno operation, was there, too. Brody got into his car and chased Taylor through the city, finally catching up with him, sapping him, and taking back the negs.

At that point, Owen Taylor was still alive. How he ended up miles away in the drink is the missing puzzle piece, one that was overlooked within the labyrinthine plot, which also involved Eddie Mars blackmailing the Sternwood sisters over a murder cover-up.

The Big Sleep was shot in the fall of 1944 and was ready for release in March 1945. Today it is renowned for its convoluted plot, but the original 1945 cut contained a scene in which Philip Marlowe (Bogart) recaps everything that has happened up to that point for the District Attorney who steered him toward the Sternwood case. This included the strong implication that Joe Brody not only assaulted Taylor but helped him on his way to the big sleep. When the film was previewed, though, it received shockingly negative responses, which panicked the Warner Bros. front office which was then building up Lauren Bacall, who played the elder Sternwood daughter Vivian, as their next big wowee. The film was pulled back for retakes.

The new scenes would focus almost exclusively on the steamy chemistry between Bogie and Baby (as they were known), who had fallen in love on the set of Hawks' s previous film To Have and Have Not and were by then married. But to make room for those scenes, some existing ones had to go. The easiest one to cut, since it was self-contained, was the plot recap. As confusing as the new edit was as a result, the film became a big hit in 1946. The original 1945 version, incidentally, was show only to American servicemen overseas, though it can now be found on DVD.

But the identity of Owen Taylor's killer remained a mystery. 

While remaking a classic is rarely a good idea, I can envision a new version of The Big Sleep presented in the style of the 1985 comedic whodunit Clue, which was released with three different endings that alternated with each screening. Applied to The Big Sleep, once the story was wrapped up, an off-camera voice would holler, "Wait, who killed the chauffeur?" One of three speculative theories would follow.

SOLUTION ONE: Joe Brody saps Taylor, takes the photo negs and Taylor's gun, and flees. Taylor eventually wakes up disoriented and realizes that not only has he murdered a man, which will likely be detected, he's failed to protect his beloved Carmen. Guilt-ridden and with his brains addled by the blow, Taylor vows to end it all. He can't shoot himself, since Brody took his gun, so he drives to Lido Pier and plunges through the rails and into the ocean. The murder is really suicide.

SOLUTION TWO: Owen Taylor regains consciousness in the car and realizes the trouble he's in, which will splash back onto Carmen if he's caught and grilled by the police. He decides his best option is to disappear. Taylor plans to flee the country, figuring he can hire a boat at Lido to take him to Mexico. But in his weakened condition, he either blacks out again or dies once he's on the pier and unconsciously guns the car off the end of it and into the ocean. Technically, Joe Brody is responsible for his death since he inflicted the blow that led to Taylor's demise.

SOLUTION THREE: After he saps Taylor and takes the negs, Joe Brody panics and contacts Eddie Mars and tells him what he's done. Mars in turn calls his lieutenant, a particularly vicious torpedo named Lash Canino, to clean up the scene. Canino drives out to the limo and finds Taylor barely clinging to life. Taylor asks Canino for help, and Canino replies, "Sure, I'll help you," and then shoots him. Shoving him over on the car seat, Canino drives to Lido Pier and accelerates the car toward its end, jumping out a second before it crashes through the rail and goes over. Canino then returns to Mars to tell him the matter is taken care of.

There are surely other possibilities, though perhaps the best on-screen response to the question of who killed the chauffeur would be an AI-generated image of Raymond Chandler turning to the camera and saying, "I have no idea," and then smiling for the fade-out.

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Michael Mallory is an L.A.-based writer.