GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #25

SAM SPADE

When private detective Sam Spade appeared in "The Maltese Falcon", a five-part serial beginning in Black Mask in 1929 and a bestselling book in 1930, one of the most famous detectives in American literature was born.  He knows every cop and every hood in San Francisco, which he calls "my burg", and they know and respect him because he is a part of both their worlds.  He is idealistic, if not honest, and breaks the law frequently, but usually to help bring a criminal to justice.  He is the ultimate "hard-boiled dick", able to laugh at loaded guns, cops, gangsters, politicians, and seductive women.

Created by Dashiell Hammett, the author describes Spade as having the face of a pleasant Satan marked by a recurring series of V's.  He has a long, bony jaw, a jutting V of a chin under a more flexible V of a mouth.  His nostrils form another V, smaller than the others.  His yellow-green eyes are nearly horizontal but the V of his thick eyebrows rise from the twin creases above his hooked nose.  His pale brown hair grows down from high flat temples to a V point on his forehead.  He keeps his lips tightly closed when he smiles and all the V's grow longer.  Casper Gutman, his adversary in "The Maltese Falcon", calls him "wild, astonishing, unpredictable, amazing."  Incredibly, for a man of action, he does not carry a gun.

"The Maltese Falcon", called the best American detective novel by some critics, begins with Spade accepting a case from Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a statuesque redhead masquerading as a Miss Wonderly.  Almost immediately his partner, Miles Archer, is killed.  Spade hated him and has been having an affair with his wife, but feels duty-bound to find his killer.  "When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it," explains Spade.  "It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him.  He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it.  And it happens we're in the detective business.  Well, when one of your organization gets killed, its - its bad business to let the killer get away with it, bad all around, bad for every detective everywhere."  Spade becomes involved with an odd assortment of characters, each searching for a statue of a black bird, about a foot high and said to be worth a fortune.  Most of the people in the novel were modeled on people that Hammett had known as a Pinkerton agent, but Spade had no prototype.  He was, said Hammett, "idealized...in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I've worked with would like to have been".  The typical private eye wants "to be a hard and shifty fellow" continues Hammett, "able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with".  

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1930 "The Maltese Falcon" (serialized in Black Mask Sept 1929 - Jan 1930).

Three short stories were collected in the book "A Man Called Spade" (1945) but all three had previously been printed in magazines first.  "A Man Called Spade" (American July 1932);  "Too Many Have Lived" (American Oct 1932);  "They Can Only Hang You Once" (Colliers Nov 19, 1932).  A fourth story "A Knife Will Cut for Anybody" was unpublished in Hammett's lifetime, was printed in 2013.

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born May 27, 1894 in Maryland.  He left school at 14 to help the family when his father became too ill to work, and held a wide range of jobs until joining the Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1915.  He enlisted in the Army in 1918 where he contracted influenza and tuberculosis from which he suffered the rest of his life.  He returned to the Pinkertons in 1920.  His health resulted in periodic hospital stays and at the Veteran's Hospital in Spokane he met nurse Josephine Anna Dolan.  They moved to San Francisco and were married July 7, 1921.  Their daughter Mary Jane was born in October.  They lived in an apartment at Post & Hyde Streets (the model for Sam Spade's flat).  Still employed by Pinkertons whose office was in the Flood Building at Market & Powell Streets, his health made it difficult to continue detective work and he resigned in February 1922.  He was encouraged to write and in October 1922 his first story appeared in Smart Set with another in Black Mask by December.

In 1926 Hammett left the pages of Black Mask after demanding more money and took a job as advertising manager for a jeweler friend.  He had an affair with his secretary, his wife gave birth to their second daughter Josephine Rebecca, and the new editor of Black Mask, Joseph Shaw, enticed Hammett back to the pulp.  Hammett's first novel "Red Harvest" was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1929.  Dash moved to NYC - alone - as his marriage was basically over.  His TB was in regression but he endangered his health with all-night partying with S. J. Perelman and Dorothy Parker.  Enticed by Hollywood money he moved to LA in 1930 and moved his family there also, in a separate residence.  The studios brought his books to the silver screen and he wrote original screenplays.  And he met Lillian Hellman, who was a scenario reader at MGM, at a party at Darryl Zanuck's house in November 1930.  They left the party together and remained companions until his death.

In 1933 Hammett began writing the comic strip "Secret Agent X-9" and his last novel "The Thin Man" was published in January 1934.  His writing career lasted only 12 years, resulting in 5 novels, 90 short stories, and 100 book reviews.  He devoted himself to helping Lillian with her career as a playwright.  Her play "The Children's Hour" debuted on Broadway in November 1934 and was a huge success.  Dash was interested in political concerns, working with the American Communist Party, the Committee on Election Rights, and the New York Civil Rights Congress to combat anti-Semitism and fascism.

During WWII the 48-year old alcoholic "lunger" convinced the Army to let him re-enlist and he was posted in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.  He was mustered out in September 1945 as a Sergeant.  Radio plays of Sam Spade and movies of the Thin Man provided him with much-needed income.  He lived in New York with Lillian until his alcoholism forced him into the hospital in 1946.  He had to choose between drinking and rapid death, or quitting, and he never drank again.  Hammett worked for his political causes, acting as a trustee for a bail fund for jailed Communists.  This resulted in a July 1951 arrest by the FBI and when he refused to testify in U.S. District Court, taking the Fifth Amendment, was given five months in jail for contempt.  His health worsened, he was blacklisted by Hollywood, and the IRS came after him for $140,000 back taxes.  Then the government began investigating Lillian.  Senator Joe McCarthy ordered Hammett to testify before HUAC in 1953 where he again took the Fifth.

Lillian continued her successful playwright career and Dash suffered a heart attack in 1955 and was in frail health afterward.  Lillian refused to let him enter a Veteran's Hospital and he spent his last years with her at her 82nd Street apartment in Manhattan.  In late 1959 his emphysema worsened and he complained of constant shoulder pain.  Lillian made him get a complete physical and the doctor told her he had inoperable lung cancer, a fact that she kept from him.  Hammett died January 10, 1961 in a New York hospital.  J. Edgar Hoover tried to prevent it, but he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.  Lillian died in 1984.  In 1990 donations from the estates of Hammett and Hellman established a grant program under the management of the Human Rights Watch organization for the purpose of providing financial assistance "to writers for their courage in the face of political persecution".

FILMS

"The Maltese Falcon" which introduced Sam Spade to the 1930s, a period he perfectly mirrored, was filmed three times in ten years.  The third and last version is an American classic and one of the greatest movies ever made.

"The Maltese Falcon" WB, 1931.  Ricardo Cortez (Spade), Bebe Daniels, Dudley Digges, Una Merkel, Thelma Todd.  Director: Roy Del Ruth.  Sam Spade and his partner are hired by a frightened girl to trail a man - and Spade's partner is killed.  Sam learns that the girl is in league with crooks and trying to find a statue of a black falcon that is worth a fortune.  Spade suspects that she is a murderer.

"Satan Met a Lady" WB, 1936.  Warren William (plays the Spade character as more debonair and unprincipled and renamed Ted Shayne!!), Bette Davis, Alison Skipworth, Arthur Treacher, Marie Wilson.  Director: William Dieterle.  A private detective is hired by three crooks to locate a horn filled with jewels.  He plans on double-crossing the trio and selling the horn himself but is sidetracked by the murder of his partner, who he suspects was killed by one of the three crooks.  In this version, the "fat man" character of Casper Gutman is a hulking, domineering old woman (Skipworth).

"The Maltese Falcon" WB, 1941.  Humphrey Bogart (Spade), Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook, Jr., Jerome Cowan, Ward Bond.  Director: John Huston (his film debut).  This film, which closely follows the Hammett novel (adapted by Huston), is the definitive detective film.  A dour, haunted Spade probes his partner's puzzling murder through dark streets and cheap rooms, dealing with eccentric criminals (Greenstreet as the immense Gutman and Lorre as the homosexual Joel Cairo reaped a decade of top-billed melodrama roles from this one film) who pursue a falcon statue from Malta that has a fortune in gems hidden beneath a coat of lead.  In the end the statue is fake, and Spade finds his partner's killer, but there is no happy ending.  This film was so good, so perfect, that there's never been another version since.

COMICS

David McKay published a comic book adaptation of "The Maltese Falcon" in 1946 as Feature Book #48.  It was drawn by Rodlow Williard and distributed by King Features Syndicate.  It was a well done and faithful adaptation.

RADIO

"The Maltese Falcon" CBS, "Lux Radio Theater" Feb. 3, 1943.  Edward G. Robinson (Spade), Laird Cregar (Gutman).  One hour radio adaptation of the film.

"The Maltese Falcon" CBS, "Screen Guild Theater" Sept. 20, 1943.  This anthology series presented abbreviated half-hour adaptations of popular films.  The original cast of Bogart, Astor, Greenstreet, and Lorre re-enacted their roles for this show.

"The Maltese Falcon" CBS, "Academy Award Theater" July 3, 1946.  The original film stars again recreated their roles for this 30-minute radio adaptation.

"The Adventures of Sam Spade" ABC, July 12 - Oct. 4, 1946.  13 half-hour episodes.  Howard Duff as Sam Spade, Lurene Tuttle as secretary Effie Perrine.  Several of these shows were based on Hammett's Continental Op stories.  The show was set in San Francisco and was sponsored by Wildroot Cream Oil.  Spade's private detective license number was 137596 and he ended each show dictating a report on the case to Effie and saying, "Period.  End of report."  He referred to his cases as "capers".  Closely identified with the program was it's hair-tonic sponsor and the recurring jingle "Get Wildroot Creme Oil, Charlie..."  The sponsor also ran comic-style ads in magazines and Sunday comic sections titled "The Adventures of Sam Spade" and drawn by the legendary Lou Fine who went on to do his own private eye comic strip "Peter Scratch".

The first 13 shows were basically a summer replacement series but it generated enough success that the sponsor took the show to CBS and sold them on the show.  The show ran on CBS from Sept. 29, 1946 until Sept. 25, 1949, producing 157 half-hour episodes.  This is notable in that the series began its long run on CBS while two episodes of the ABC show were still to be aired, with the same cast of Duff and Tuttle, and the same sponsor.  The only real sequel to "The Maltese Falcon" was a two-part radio episode called "The Khandi Tooth Caper" that reunited Spade with Gutman and Cairo.  As an inside joke, Robert Montgomery, who played Philip Marlowe in the film "The Lady in the Lake", makes a cameo appearance in this radio episode.  The two-part episode aired Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 1946.  

On December 5, 1946 a one-hour episode of the Sam Spade show titled "The House on Cypress Canyon" aired on the CBS anthology series "Suspense" which was hosted by Montgomery.  And "The Khandi Tooth Caper" also aired on "Suspense" on January 10, 1948.  "The Adventures of Sam Spade" with Duff, Tuttle, and Wildroot Creme Oil moved to NBC for 51 episodes from Oct. 2, 1949 to Sept. 17, 1950.  The show was so popular that it inspired a spin-off "Sara's Private Caper" starring Sara Berner.  She was a police department stenographer who moonlighted as an amateur sleuth to solve crimes.  The Sara show debuted June 15, 1950, but was cancelled 11 weeks later on August 24.  Confusion over marketing the show as a mystery or comedy hampered the success of it.

There is much confusion over the next radio series, as others claim that Hammett's left-wing political interests caused the Sam Spade show to be cancelled and all reference to Hammett and Spade to be erased from the radio airways.  This is not entirely accurate.  Duff, a movie actor, had dedicated four years to the radio series and decided it was time to move on.  To accommodate him and launch a new actor as Sam Spade, the sponsor introduced a replacement series called "Charlie Wild, Private Eye", an obvious play on their own jingle "Get Wildroot Creme oil, Charlie..."  It ran on NBC Sept. 24 - Nov. 10, 1950 with George Petrie as Charlie Wild.  The comic ads in the magazines also reflected this.  After 13 episodes the revamped series "The New Adventures of Sam Spade" was launched on November 17 with Steve Dunne as Spade and Tuttle as Effie.  This show was cancelled after 24 episodes on April 27, 1951, because of Hammett's Communist affiliations.  And Wildroot adopted a new spokesperson for their comic ads in magazines and newspapers - "Fearless Fosdick", the Dick Tracy satire from the "Li'l Abner" comic strip.

The BBC in England did an adaptation of "The Maltese Falcon" in 1984 with Tom Wilkinson as Spade.  And in 2009 "Hollywood Theater of the Ear" did a version with Michael Madsen as Spade, Sandra Oh as Brigid, and Edward Herrmann as Gutman.  This version was nominated for a Grammy.