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Underneath the wisecracking, hard-drinking, tough private eye, Marlowe is quietly contemplative, chess-playing, and philosophical. While he is not afraid to risk physical harm, he does not dish out violence merely to settle scores. Morally upright, he is not bamboozled by the genre's usual femme fatales, like Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep. As Chandler wrote about his detective ideal in general, "He might seduce a countess; he would not despoil a virgin."
Marlowe has been played on the screen by Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Elliot Gould and many others.
Marlowe has proved such a complex and attractive character that he has appeared in short stories and novels by writers other than Chandler, such as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration ( 1988).