The Continental Op
Created by Dashiell Hammett (AKA Peter Collinson)

Often mistakenly billed as "the first private eye", (that honour goes to John Daly Carroll's Three Gun Terry)...but, for all intents and purposes, Dashiell Hammett's nameless detective for The Continental Detective Agency, popularly known as THE CONTINENTAL OP, is THE MAN! Sure, Carroll's Race Williams, a contemporary, was more popular, but he was always a bit of a cartoon. No, if we want to pin down the reason the P.I. genre even existed as something more than a few pulp tales with some urban Tarzans and their death-spitting roscoes, we'll have to place the blame directly on Mr. Hammett and his creation. Without the Op, it's likely nothing else, not Chandler or Macdonald, Parker or Grafton, would be quite the same.

In the forties, Hammett dusted off the Continental Op character, tinkered with him a bit, bulked him up, gave him a name and a secretary and put out a radio show, Brad Runyon, The Fat Man.

Hammett, of course, also gave us Nick and Nora Charles and Sam Spade.

UNDER OATH

• "Hammett was spare, hard-boiled, but he did over and over what only the best writers can ever do. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before." 
  (Raymond Chandler)

NOVELS

• Red Harvest (1929)...Buy this book
• The Dain Curse (1929)...Buy this book

COLLECTIONS

• The Big Knockover: Selected Stories and Short Novels (1966)...Buy this book
• The Continental Op (1974)...Buy this book
• Nightmare Town (1999)..Buy this book .

SHORT STORIES

• "Arson Plus" (October 1, 1923, Black Mask; as Peter Collinson)
• "Slippery Fingers" (October 15, 1923, Black Mask; as Peter Collinson)
• "Crooked Souls" (October 15, 1923, Black Mask)
• "It" (November 1, 1923, Black Mask; AKA The Black Hat That Wasn't There)
• "Bodies Piled Up" (December 1, 1923, Black Mask; AKA The House Dick)
• "The Gatewood Caper" (1923, The Big Knockover)
• "The Tenth Clew" (January 1, 1924, Black Mask)
• "Night Shots" (February 1, 1924, Black Mask)
• "Zigzags of Treachery" (March 1, 1924, Black Mask)
• "One Hour" (April 1, 1924, Black Mask)
• "The House on Turk Street" (April 15, 1924, Black Mask)
• "The Girl With Silver Eyes" (June 1924, Black Mask)
• "Women, Politics and Murder" (September 1924, Black Mask; AKA Death on Pine Street)
• "The Golden Horseshoe" (November 1924, Black Mask)
• "Who Killed Bob Teal?" (1924, currently out of print)
• "Mike or Alec or Rufus" (January 1925, Black Mask; AKA Tom, Dick or Harry)
• "The Whosis Kid" (March 1925, Black Mask)
• "The Scorched Face" (May 1925,, Black Mask)
• "Corkscrew" (September 1925, Black Mask)
• "Dead Yellow Women" (November 1925, Black Mask)
• "The Gutting of Couffignal" (December 1925, Black Mask)
• "Creeping Siamese" (March 1926, Black Mask)
• "This King Business" (1927, The Big Knockover)
• "The Big Knockover" (February 1927, Black Mask)
• "$106,000 Blood Money" (May 1927, Black Mask)
• "The Main Death" (June 1927, Black Mask)
• "The Cleansing of Poisonville" (November 1927, Black Mask)
• "Crime Wanted--Male or Female" (December 1927, Black Mask)
• "Dynamite" (January 1928, Black Mask)
• "The 19th Murder" (February 1928, Black Mask)
• "Black Lives" (November 1928, Black Mask)
• "The Hollow Temple" (December 1928, Black Mask)
• "Black Honeymoon" (January 1929, Black Mask)
• "Black Riddle" (February 1929, Black Mask)
• "Fly Paper" (August 1929, Black Mask)
• "The Farewell Murder" (February 1930, Black Mask)
• "Death and Company" (November 1930, Black Mask)

FILMS

• ROADHOUSE NIGHTS
  (AKA The River Inn)
  (1930, Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation)
  68 minutes
  Black & White
  Screenplay by Garrett Fort
  Story by Ben Hecht
  Based on the novel Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
  Director: Hobart Henley
  Produced by Walter Wanger
  Music: Sammy Fain and Jay Gorney
  Lyrics: E.Y. Harburg and Irving Kahal
  Starring Helen Morgan, Charles Ruggles, Fred Kohler, Jimmy Durante, Leo Donnelly, Tammany Young, Joe King, Lou Clayton, Eddie Jackson
  Evidently this has very little to do with Hammett's novel, and instead concerns reporters trying to get the goods on a gangster.
  .
• THE HOUSE ON TURK STREET ..Buy the video ..Buy the DVD
  AKA "No Good Deed"
  (2002, Seven Arts Pictures)
  Shooting Began: July 17, 2001 in Montreal
  Based on the short story "House on Turk Street by Dashiell Hammett
  Adapted by Christopher Canaan and Steve Barancik
  Directed by Bob Rafelson
  Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Milla Jovovich, Stellan Skarsgard, Doug Hutchison
  Another blown opportunity. In this one, Jackson is a San Francisco cop (not a private eye), long overdue for a vacation, who tries to help a friend find his missing daughter. But no good deed goes unpunished, and he's soon up against an international ring of bond thieves, led by Jovovich and Skarsgard. A cat and mouse game ensues. There's some talent at work here. Director Bob Rafelson did The Postman Always Rings Twice, Black Widow, Blood and Wine and Five Easy Pieces, and Steve Barancik did The Last Seduction. And Jackson was in Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and, uh, Shaft. So why is this so bad?

TELEVISION

• THE DAIN CURSE ..Buy the video..Buy the DVD
  (1978)
  6-hour serialized TV movie, later released as a two-hour version
  Teleplay by Robert Lenski
  Based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett
  Directed by E.W. Swackhamer
  Starring James Coburn as HAMILTON NASH (The Continental Op in the book)
  Also starring Hector Elizondo, Jason Miller, Jean Simmons, Paul Stewart , Beatrice Straight, Nancy Addison, Tom Bower, David Canary, Beeson Carroll, Martin Cassidy, Brian Davies
  "Except for the fact that the setting was changed from San Francisco to Baltimore (Hammett's birthplace), this was very faithful to the book. It even won an Edgar for Best Mystery Teleplay Special. Coburn's performance as the Op was very good. However, there were changes. The Op was given a name, Hamilton Nash, which is Dashiell Hammett spelled sideways. Sort of. And the tall, mustachioed, sliver-haired Coburn was obviously cast less for his physical resemblance to Hammett's character than to Hammett himself. I didn't regard this as an invalid interpretation, however, since it always seemed to me that the Op was Hammett's fictional alter ego, anyway. Interestingly, the more Hammett removed himself from his lead character (i.e. the Op is a first-person narrator; Spade and Beaumont are observed from a very objective third person viewpoint), the closer the character came to resembling Hammett physically. A very condensed version of the 6-hour miniseries was later released on video." (Jim Doherty)
  
  
• "FLY PAPER"
  (1994, Showtime)
  An episode of Showtime anthology, Fallen Angels, originally broadcast sometime in 1993-94.
  Based on the short story by Dashiell Hammett
  Screenplay by Donald Westlake
  Starring Christopher Lloyd as THE CONTINENTAL OP
  and Darren McGavin as The Old Man
  "Tonight's double-helping of Fallen Angels brought a Hammett and a Woolrich story. The Hammett was 'Fly Paper', which was, imo, v. well done (though theaction, I think, was shifted from SF to LA). Screenplay by Donald Westlake, and the Op was played by Jim from Taxi!! The twist (not the wandering daughter, but the moll) was quite well played too, but maybe because Hammett gave her some good lines." (EddieDugan)
  .
  "Don Westlake wrote the script, which was fine. But they cast Christopher Lloyd as The Op and Darren McGavin as the old man when, obviously, they should have ignored their ages and reversed the roles. (Dick Lochte)

OPERA
(No, really!)

• RED HARVEST: THE OPERA
  (2000)
  Based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett
  Music and libretto by Sean Carson
  Believe it or not, Sean Carson, a grad student in music composition at NYU, and a lifelong Dashiell Hammett fan, wrote (or is writing) an opera based on Hammett's Red Harvest. One scene (based on the chapter called "Laudanum") has already been presented in workshop form in New York City. The full-length version, when it's completed, should be about an hour and 15 minutes, scored for 7 instruments, with 6 singing roles.
  .
  According to Sean, "One of the things that bugs me about a lot of opera is that it has a lot of emotion, but not much plot. That's one of the reasons I thought Hammett would be a good choice. Emotion is important to a certain point -- it's part of the drama -- but one reason that operas are boring for so many folks is that relatively little happens over a couple of hours. In fact, Hammett's flat, terse style is one of the things that attracted me musically. It's rhythmic and abrupt, rather than mellifluous. It's descriptive, rather than sentimental. All these things make it perfect for an American opera (at least from my perspective) - we're a "get to the point" kind of people. Also, I think that music can provide whatever emotional and character-related themes are necessary to illustrate what's happening below the surface of the novel."
  .
  I guess it won't be over until the Fat Man sings... For continually updated info about the opera, and even some sound clips, check out the web site.

RELATED LINKS

• Fast Eddie's Continental Op HomePage
  .
• The Continental Op
  A song dedicated to Hammett. Words and music by Irish blues/rock guitarist Rory Gallagher.
  .
• The Continental Op Page
  Canadian site dedicated to the " nameless, somewhat overweight, slightly balding forty-something sleuth.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.