By June Lupino had dropped out and was replaced by Nancy Guild. In May 1946 Fox said that George Montgomery would play the lead and that filming would begin in July. In January 1946 Fox announced that the film would star Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney, who had been so successful in Laura, and that Richard Macaulay would write the script. Both Mature and Brahm were taken off Three Little Girls in Blue to do the film. In December there was yet another casting change: Victor Mature was given the role. In October 1945 Fox announced that John Payne would play the lead role and that filming would begin in January 1946.

Fred MacMurray, who had been in Double Indemnity, would play Marlowe.

In May 1945, they announced that Leonard Praskins was writing a script and Robert Bassler would produce. Fox decided to film The High Window again, this time more faithfully. įollowing the success of the Chandler adaptation Murder My Sweet (1944) and Chandler's adaptation of Double Indemnity (1944), the author became in fashion in Hollywood: Warners filmed The Big Sleep, MGM did The Lady in the Lake (1946), and Paramount filmed a Chandler original, The Blue Dahlia (1946). The New York Times said: 'Chandler has given us a detective who is hard boiled enough to be convincing without being disgustingly tough and that is no mean achievement.' įilm rights were bought in May 1942 by 20th Century-Fox, who used it as the basis of a script for Time to Kill (1942), a movie in their B-picture series about Michael Shayne. The course of his investigation leads Marlowe to realise that the source of the mystery hinges upon Merle Davis, the timid and neurotic secretary of Mrs Murdock. Believing the case to be a fairly routine one, Marlowe soon finds himself confronted by murder and a succession of shady characters and lethal crooks. Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by wealthy widow Elizabeth Murdock to investigate the theft of a rare coin, the Brasher Doubloon, from her deceased husband's private collection. The High Window had already been adapted for film in 1942 as a Michael Shayne adventure starring Lloyd Nolan. It is based on the 1942 novel The High Window by Raymond Chandler.įred MacMurray, Victor Mature, and Dana Andrews were all mentioned at different times as having been cast as Philip Marlowe in the film before the studio settled on George Montgomery, appearing in the final film of his 20th Century Fox contract. The Brasher Doubloon (known in the UK as The High Window) is a 1947 American crime film noir directed by John Brahm and starring George Montgomery and Nancy Guild.

The high window