Sam Spade
Created by Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)

"When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't matter what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it."

The original blonde Satan, Dashiell Hammett's SAM SPADE is surely one of the most important figures in the entire private eye genre. He made his debut in 1929 in the pages of Black Mask, in the serialized first part of The Maltese Falcon, and the genre has never been the same. He's a "hard and shifty fellow," a partner in the Archer and Spade Detective Agency of San Francisco. He doesn't particularly like his partner, and he's not above sleeping with his wife, but when Miles is murdered, he swings into action, and ends up mixed up with a quest for a priceless statuette, a rara-avis, called the Maltese Falcon.

Collected and published in book form, the novel was a bestseller when it first appeared, and remains one of the true classics of the genre, a vastly-influential piece of work, featuring one of the very first P.I.s "with his own private, unorthodox, but absolutely inviolable code of ethics," according to William DeAndrea, in his Encyclopedia Mysteriosa. But it's biggest impact was undoubtedly in another medium. The Maltese Falcon may have left its stamp on literature, but it also became one of the most popular and important films in history. Mind you, it took awhile. It was filmed twice before rookie director John Huston finally released the definitive version in 1941.

The first attempt, starring Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade was a solid, if unspectacular film. Cortez played Spade as a smirking womanizer, too smug to possibly be taken seriously. But the women in it were well cast, and easy on the eyes. The film was flawed by an anti-climatic jailhouse ending that merely reinforced the notion of Spade as something of a shit. The worst thing about the 1931 version is the awful anti-climatic last scene in the prison. But there was a lot I liked about this version. I liked the guy who played Archer --his being much older than Iva made sense. And I did like the fact Spade at least appeared to have a sex drive (which made him even more credible as a shit to Iva than Bogart was). I thought the women on the whole were more believable (and a whole lot sexier) and the exposition a lot clearer (even if some of the book was MIA). But what struck me the most was how much Huston's version followed this one. The identical camera angles, the set-ups, the framing of shots -- even the way the lines were read are often exactly the same. And the 1941 cast looks like it was chosen for its resemblance to the 1931 originals. It's like they filmed the rehearsal and ten years later Huston tidied up the rough edges.

I'm beginning to think the whole story about Huston handing his secretary Hammett's book, and telling her to type up just the dialogue is a crock. I think possibly he gave her the earlier script, and told her to put his name on it. then he went back and put in some of the missing scenes.

The second version, Satan Met a Lady (Warner Bros., 1936), seemed "incapable of deciding whether to be a screwball comedy or a murder mystery" Many changes were made to the original plot, the characters, even the title. None were for the better.

Sam Spade is now Ted Shane, the Fat Man is now the Fat Lady, Bette Davis is lack lustre as Miss Wonderly, and the Black Bird is now a ram's horn. Generally considered poorly acted, forced and dull. Intended, perhaps, as a spoof, but of what? Warren William as Spade had possibly the biggest head in Hollywood, but so what? At the end of the film, having finally grabbed the bejewelled horn, he gives it a tentative toot. "Honey, it blows," he informs Miss Wonderly. I know how he feels.

The third time was the charm. The Maltese Falcon, released in 1941 by Warner Brothers, written and directed by John Huston, and starring Humphrey Bogart as Spade was an amazing, powerful piece of work. Okay, Bogey didn't match the description of Spade in the book. He was too small and too dark, but can anyone ever picture anyone else ever playing Spade? In fact, Bogart was so good as Spade, that his later appearance as Chandler's Philip Marlowe never seemed right to me. Add a memorable cast of colourful characters (with Mary Astor as Bridgid O'Shaugnessy, Lee Patrick as Effie Perine, Sydney Greenstreet as Casper Gutman, Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo and Elisha Cook Jr. as Wilmer Cook) and a taut moody screenplay that was essentially the novel itself, and you've got the making of the archetypical private eye film. Decades later, film makers are still trying to crawl out from its shadow.

The film proved to be such a success that Sam Spade started showing up all over. Three short stories written by Hammett and published back in the early thirties (all pretty weak, compared to The Maltese Falcon), were collected and published in book form.

There was even a plan to do a sequel with Bogart and the rest, but it nevercame to fruition. A comic sequel, The Black Bird, with George Segal as Sam Spade's son, spoofed the original in the early '70s.

In 1946, The Maltese Falcon was presented in comic book form, adapted by Rodlow Williard, published by David McKay, as Feature Book #48, The adaptation was supposedly quite well-done, very faithful to both the book and the film.

And in the forties, Spade was a staple of the airwaves, thanks to The Adventures of Sam Spade, a popular radio show, featuring Howard Duff in the lead role, and sponsored by Wildroot Hair Oil. In fact, a series of single-page comic strip/hair tonic ads appeared in magazines, newspapers and comic books, featuring Spade shilling for Wildroot Hair Oil. (The ads were drawn by Golden Age artist Lou Fine, who later went on to do the Peter Scratch comic strip.)

In fact, the only real sequel to The Maltese Falcon was not produced for either prose or film, though, but for radio. Both The Adventures of Sam Spade and the great mystery anthology show Suspense were both produced by the same man, William Speir. During the first year or two that Sam Spade was on the air, Suspense was an hour show, hosted by Robert Montgomery. To get fans of Suspense listening to Sam Spade, Speir produced a special one-hour Spade episode called "The Khandi Tooth Caper" and aired it on Suspense.

The episode is a direct sequel to The Maltese Falcon, with Spade once again meeting Gutman, Cairo, and another "gunsel." It explains what happened to the real Falcon, alludes to Brigid O'Shaugnessy's fate, and sets Spade and the bad guys at odds as they again contend in the search for another quest object, the fabled Khandi Tooth. As an inside joke, host Montgomery, who played Philip Marlowe in the screen version of The Lady in the Lake made a cameo appearance as Marlowe in the episode. Later, the episode was presented as a two-parter on Sam Spade's own series. It's available from various radio nostalgia dealers if you're interested in hearing it.

When Hammett and his political views fell out of favor and landed him in hot water during the McCarthy witchhunts in the fifties, the radio show promptly pretended Hammett didn't exist. Sam Spade was now Charlie Wild, the show was retitled Charlie Wild, Private Eye (to cash in on Wildroots commercial slogan: "Get Wildroot Cream Oil, Charlie") and all connections to Hammett were dropped. But it was the same cast, the same characters (with different names), the same hair tonic sponsor, etc. And it was Charlie Wild, not Sam Spade, who eventually made the jump to television.

Hammett's one of the seminal creators in detective fiction. As if writing The Maltese Falcon wasn't enough, he was also responsible for The Continental Op and The Thin Man , the novel that introduced husband and wife sleuths Nick and Nora Charles to the world, and became the basis for a string of popular movies.

Hammett also created and wrote (or at least lent his name to) Brad Runyon, The Fat Man for radio.

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Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Jim Doherty for the scoop on the Maltese Falcon radio sequel, Steve Tussel, who runs Detective Fiction on Stamps for (what else?) the stamp of approval, Matthew Hirsch for letting me in on whodun it and Norma Cooper for not letting me get lost in the Sea of Cortez.

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