Frank MacShane Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, Columbia University Press: NY, 1981, 501 pp., 1981, 1944
"Dear Charles Morton, (October 12th, 1944)
" . . . The Big Sleep . . . sold to Warners and Howard Hawks is even now shooting a picture from it with Bogart and a new girl (Lauren Bacall) . . . Bill Faulkner and a girl named Leigh Brackett wrote the script. . . .
"The other day I thought of your suggestion for an article of studied insult about the Bay City (Santa Monica) police. A couple of D.A.'s investigators got a tip about a gambling hell in Ocean Park, a sleazy adjunct to Santa Monica. They went down there and picked up a couple of Santa Monica cops on the way, telling them they were going to kick in a box, but not telling them where it was. The cops went along with the natural reluctance of good cops to enforce the law against a paying customer, and when they found out where the place was, they mumbled brokenly: "We'd ought to talk to Captain Brown about this before we do it, boys, Captain Brown ain't going to like this." The D.A.'s men urged them heartlessly forward into the chip and bone parlor, several alleged gamblers were tossed into the sneezer and the equipment seized for evidence (a truckload of it) was stored in lockers at local police headquarters. When the D.A.'s boys came back next morning to go over it everything had disappeared but a few handfuls of white poker chips. The locks had not been tampered with, and no trace could be found of the truck or the driver. The flatfeet shook their grizzled polls in bewilderment and the investigators went back to town to hand the Jury the story. Nothing will come of it. Nothing ever does. Do you wonder why I love Bay City? Alas, that its gambling ships are no more. The present governor of California (Earl Warren, Governor of California and later Chief Justice of the United States) won his office by disposing of them. Others had tried (or pretended to) for years and years. But there was always the legal argument as to whether the 12-mile limit should be measured from this place or that. Warren solved it very simply, and no doubt quite illegally. He commandeered enough boats and deputies to surround the ships and keep anyone from leaving them or reaching them. Then he just stayed there until they gave up.
"A real clinical study of such a town would be fascinating reading."
"Sincerely, Raymond Chandler"