The Book is a Weapon (14)
By:
January 23, 2010
![sleep-001](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/sleep-001.jpg)
Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) studies Famous First Editions at the Hollywood Public Library, in The Big Sleep (1946, d. Howard Hawks).
![sleep-01](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/sleep-01.jpg)
BOTTLE-BLONDE LIBRARIAN (Carole Douglas): “You know, you don’t look like a man who’d be interested in first editions.”
MARLOWE: “Well, I collect blondes in bottles, too.”
![sleep-02](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/sleep-02.jpg)
Marlowe cracks himself up outside A.G. Geiger’s Rare Books and Deluxe Editions, before disguising himself as a pedantic, effeminate bibliophile.
![sleep-03](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/sleep-03.jpg)
MARLOWE: You do sell books, hmmmm?
AGNES, THE SHADY SALESGIRL (Sonia Darrin): What do those look like, grapefruit?
![sleep-04](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/sleep-04.jpg)
MARLOWE: You know anything about rare books?
ACME BOOK SHOP PROPRIETRESS (Dorothy Malone, before she went blonde): You can try me.
Fourteenth in an occasional series.