Background
The novel was the first one Chandler wrote after working as a screen writer for Paramount in Hollywood and reflects some of his experiences with and disdain for the film industry.
Although Chandler's name and fiction are almost synonymous with Los Angeles, he spent most of his adolescence in England and he retained the preference for manners and formality which he learned in the English public school system. This put him immediately at odds with the informal atmosphere in Hollywood.
For example, Chandler took an instant dislike to Billy Wilder his writing partner on Double Indemnity. According to Wilder's own recollection " was a very peculiar, a sort of rather acid man, like so many former alcoholics are... he didn't really like me ever"
Chandler was not the kind of person to directly confront someone. The partnership with Wilder seemed to be going well on the surface. Then one day Chandler didn't show up for work and delivered a typed list of complaints to Paramount officials, demanding that they be resolved before he would return to working on the script. John Houseman, one of Chandler's few Hollywood friends, remembers one item in particular:
"Mr Wilder was at no time to swish under Mr Chandler's nose or to point in his direction the thin, leather-handled malacca cane which Mr Wilder was in the habit of waving around while they worked"
Chandler utilized this experience in the novel. When Marlowe visits the office of Mavis Weld's agent (Chapter 18), he describes the agent in language that is virtually identical to his complaint against Wilder:
He walked away from me to a tall cylindrical jar in the corner. From this he took one of a number of short thin malacca canes. He began to walk up and down the carpet, swinging the cane deftly past his shoe.
I sat down again and killed my cigarette and took a deep breath. "It could only happen in Hollywood," I grunted.
He made a neat turn and glanced at me. "I beg your pardon."
"That an apparently sane man could walk up and down inside the house with a Picadilly stroll and a monkey stick in his hand."
Read more about this topic: The Little Sister
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