December 2024 update: On the occasion of Sybil Davis putting her copy of The Princess and the Pedlar up for auction, we wrote about how the Raymond Chandler Estate thwarted our efforts to stage the lost operetta in Los Angeles on its 2017 centennial, and how the Estate has failed to let the Philip Marlowe character adapt to give Angelenos the tools they need to navigate public corruption today.
Raymond Chandler wanted the world to believe that he had reinvented himself as a mystery writer in 1933, after he was fired from the Dabney Oil Syndicate. He deliberately omitted the existence of The Princess and the Pedlar from his bibliography—yet at the end of his life, he gave a copy of the libretto to a young friend, who has treasured it ever since.
A creative team has assembled in Los Angeles with the intention of giving The Princess and the Pedlar the theatrical debut that was interrupted by World War I and perhaps by the blossoming of the love affair that would result in Julian Pascal's wife Cissy leaving him for Chandler several years later.
But they need your help.
If you would like to help bring The Princess and the Pedlar to the stage, please sign the petition asking that the Raymond Chandler Estate grant permission for the show to go on.
To learn more about this discovery, click here.
