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Raymond Chandler

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:2,000.00 - 2,500.00 USD
Raymond Chandler

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Auction Date:2018 May 09 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
TLS signed “Ray,” two pages, 8.5 x 11, personal letterhead, September 10, 1947. Letter to "Swanie," his agent H. N. Swanson, in part: "Why don’t you quit trying to panic me about this U–I script? If they are crooked enough to try to get out of this deal on a technicality, they will find one without our help. I am aware that a deal like this could not be made right now, but I am also aware that not very many high-budget pictures are made with a total story coast of $100,000. As a matter of fact, they could have got off the deal at one time, which was about the time I had been informed by your Mr. Bruington that he has proposed to charge me $5,000 for his work on the contract. I offered to give Joe Sistrom back his deal while we were still talking story, but he would have nothing to do with the suggestion.

I expect to have the first draft screen play done by the end of this month, but even if I do not, I don’t think the sky will fall in. I am certainly entitled, if necessary, to an extra few weeks on account of sickness. The contract expressly provides for delay on account of sickness, up to two months, and this in addition to any other delay permitted by the contract.

Tyler and I have been through your proposed agency agreement (or rather I should say the agreement drawn up by your lawyers—you may not even have read it). My reaction is that it is not too satisfactory, but in view of the fact that the boys took three months to compile this instrument, I don’t think there is any great hurry about a detailed discussion of it from my point of view. Nor do I intend to fight it out, clause by clause, with a couple of lawyers acting in your interest and none acting in my interest. In a general sense, it seems to me that the contract very carefully states all matters for your protection, and those which are for my protection are either evaded, watered down, or would be presumptively a part of the agency relationship even if not stated.

For instance, in my letter to you of May 27, containing the notes for the provisions which I thought should go into the contract, in Paragraph 7 I said, ‘Your right to collect monies for my account carries with it the obligation to determine the correctness of the amounts so collected.’ This comes out in your contract, see your Paragraph 5, as an obligation to ‘request correction of any apparent errors thereon.’ How apparent do they have to be? Does a bell have to ring or something?…

Paragraph 13 of your proposal states ‘you agree that you will abide by the rules of good business ethics in your dealings with me,’ etc. What kind of a contract is it which requires one of the parties to act like an honest man? What is the purpose of this provision? I suspect it is nothing but eyewash.

In your Paragraph 14, you provide that no cancellation of waiver shall be effective unless in writing and signed by ‘both of us.’ Suppose I give you notice of cancellation and you don’t sign it? This is absurd.

Attached the proposal is a 7-year agency contract covering personal services, and not even with the alterations Sanders held out for. Is it likely that I would sign this for any such term? Of course it isn’t…

I don’t want to deal with you at arm’s length, Swanie. One of the nasty things about Hollywood is that you have to deal with people at arm’s length even when you are working for them. That is one of the things I want to get away from. I have a great admiration for Bruington’s legal abilities as a partisan lawyer, but I think I should be very unwilling to sign any document drawn up by him for someone else’s benefit.” In fine condition.

Chandler’s eye for clerical inconsistencies and inequity was sharpened by his time spent as a journalist and then as the vice president of the Dabney Oil Syndicate, experience that no doubt assisted in his devising of hard-boiled crime plots and the incessant decrypting of book and movie contracts sent to him by the ever-present H. N. Swanson. Swanson's exclusive focus on the sale of motion picture rights to literary properties, as well as the representation of the writers, earned him notable clients such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, James M. Cain, William Faulkner, Pearl Buck, and Elmore Leonard. Chandler's The Big Sleep was among the many novels Swanson sold to the Hollywood studios.