Shaking The Raymond Chandler Tree

Join Esotouric, L.A.’s most eclectic sightseeing tour company, with special guest Sybil Davis, for a deep dive into the evolving field of Raymond Chandler studies.

Your hosts Kim Cooper and Richard Schave gave their first tour of Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles in 2007. As with all Esotouric tours, the route and narrative has been subject to change, with new locations added and original research reshaping how the story unfolds.

While traveling in Chandler’s footsteps, they’ve explored real-life crime scenes and time capsule landmarks where the author lived, loved and worked—many of which show up in barely fictionalized fashion in the short stories and novels.

And over thirteen years, through ongoing research in special collections archives, digital databases and around the city, they made bombshell discoveries that are worthy of Chandler’s detective hero Philip Marlowe, and that transform our understanding of who Raymond Chandler really was, while illuminating personal mysteries he intended to take with him to the grave.

In this webinar, you’ll take a virtual tour through Raymond Chandler’s life in Southern California, with intimate visits to places that still carry a hint of the noir master’s cigar smoke. You’ll stroll down Olive Street, where Chandler worked as an oil company executive and got a front row seat to the corruption and depravity that go hand in hand with wealth and power, insights that he would weave into his writing. You’ll follow Philip Marlowe to a small room in a shabby Downtown hotel, where someone is waiting with an icepick in their neck. And you’ll hear how we sleuthed out the existence of Chandler’s first serious piece of Los Angeles writing: a previously unknown comic operetta in the style of Gilbert & Sullivan, a collaboration with Julian Pascal, whose wife Cissy would become the love of his life.

And you’ll meet Sybil Davis, the daughter of Chandler’s last secretary Jean Fracasse, to hear what the writer was really like, as he struggled to find his creative voice and personal footing after the death of his wife and muse Cissy.

You’ll also hear about Kim Cooper’s nonfiction novel “The Kept Girl,” which features the young Chandler and a real-life model for Philip Marlowe on the trail of a cult of murderous angel worshippers, and about the new Raymond Chandler map of Los Angeles, a collaboration between Cooper and artist Paul Rogers.

This webinar is an illustrated lecture packed with original research, photographs and archival material that will bring Raymond Chandler’s story to life on your digital device. And you’ll find the look of an Esotouric webinar is a little different than your standard dry Zoom session, with lively interactive graphics courtesy of the mmhmm app.

Snap the brim of your favorite fedora as we virtually visit the real places and characters who inspired timeless tales like “The Big Sleep,” “The Lady in the Lake” and “The Little Sister,” and get to know the fascinating man behind the larger-than-life Raymond Chandler persona.

So, tune in and discover the incredible history of Los Angeles, with the couple whose passion for the city is infectious.

Rights and permissions: By attending an Esotouric webinar, you acknowledge that the entirety of the presentation is copyrighted, and no portion of the video or text may be reproduced in any fashion.