With the success of Murder, My Sweet, director Edward Dmytryk, producer Adrian Scott, writer John Paxton and Dick Powell would reunite the following year for another film noir, Cornered (1945).

With Raymond Chandler's new popularity on screen, 20th Century-Fox decided to do a new version of his The High Window, which they had filmed in 1943 as the Mike Shayne mystery Time to Kill, starring Lloyd Nolan. The new version, The Brasher Doubloon (1947), gave George Montgomery a shot at playing Marlowe.

Before that, Warner Bros. brought Chandler's The Big Sleep (1946) to the screen, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in the leads. This time Chandler sold the rights to director Howard Hawks for $20,000, ten times what he had gotten for Farewell, My Lovely (Hawks then sold the rights to Warner's for $50,000).

Powell, Trevor and Mazurki repeated their roles for a Lux Radio Theatre version of the film in 1945. Powell and Mazurki returned for a Hollywood Startime adaptation in 1948, with Mary Astor as leading lady.

The film's success brought Powell similar roles in two radio series, Richard Diamond, Private Detective and Rogue's Gallery.

Murder, My Sweet also inspired two different radio series, the short-lived Philip Marlowe in 1947, with Van Heflin, and the more successful The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, starring Gerald Mohr, from 1948-1951. In 1949, it was America's most popular radio series.

Powell would become the first actor to play Philip Marlowe on television, in a 1954 adaptation of The Long Goodbye for the series Climax. Other TV Marlowes included Philip Carey, in a short-lived ABC series; Powers Boothe, in a series of films for HBO; and James Caan in a later HBO movie.

One of television's most original Marlowes was African-American actor Danny Glover, who played the role in an episode of the Showtime series Fallen Angels in 1995. The performance brought him an Emmy nomination.

AVCO Embassy remade Chandler's novel in 1975 under the original title, Farewell, My Lovely. By then, the film was treated as a period picture. Robert Mitchum won solid reviews for his performance as an aging Philip Marlowe, with Charlotte Rampling as Velma, Jack O'Halloran as Moose, John Ireland and Harry Dean Stanton as the police detectives and Sylvia Miles winning an Oscar® nomination as the informant Jessie Florian. A follow-up based on The Big Sleep (1978) was less successful.

by Frank Miller