Dashiell Hammett Took Crime From Street To Paper: My Washington Times 'On Crime' Column On The Late, Great Crime Writer

The Washington Times published my On Crime column on the late, great crime writer Dashiell Hammett.

I’ve been following the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse trial in New York and I was interested particularly in the testimony of a private investigator named Sam Anson.

Sam Anson was called to the stand last month by the state to testify about Harvey Weinstein’s offer to hire the private detective to investigate people the Hollywood producer believed were contacting journalists and talking about his sexual activities with women. Sam Anson did not take the case.    

The testimony of this modern-day private investigator made me think of two other private detectives named Sam. One was Samuel Dashiell Hammett, a former Pinkerton detective, and the other was Hammett’s popular literary creation, private eye Sam Spade.   

As a crime aficionado since my early teens, I’ve read and re-read the crime stories of Dashiell Hammett over the years. One of the first books in my now-extensive library was a collection of his classic crime novels, which included “Red Harvest,” “The Dain Curse,” “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Glass Key” and “The Thin Man.”

The first character in his short stories was a nameless detective known only as the “Continental Op.” His first two novels, “Red Harvest” and “The Dain Curse,” both published in 1929, featured the Continental Op as the narrator.

Although the Continental Op stories were written in the first person, the short and fat veteran detective was clearly not based on the author. Some have said that the Continental Op was based on James Wright, an old-time detective and Hammett’s boss at the Pinkerton’s Baltimore office.

The author said Sam Spade, described as a “blonde Satan” in his 1930 novel “The Maltese Falcon,” was also not based on himself, but Diane Johnson, the author of “Dashiell Hammett: A Life,” noted that Hammett gave Spade his first name, a close physical description, and he subtly identified with him.

When asked where his characters in “The Maltese Falcon” came from, Diane Johnson wrote that Hammett replied, “I followed Gutman’s original in Washington, and I never remember shadowing a man who bored me so much. He was not after a jeweled falcon, of course; but he was suspected of being a German spy … I worked with Dundy’s prototype in a North Carolina railroad yard. The Cairo character I picked up on a forgery charge in 1920. Effie, the good girl, once asked me to go into the narcotic smuggling business with her in San Diego.

You can read the rest of the column:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/5/how-dashiell-hammett-put-true-crime-to-paper/

You can also read my Washington Times review of The Big Book of the Continental Op via the below link:

www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2018/05/the-gritty-early-stories-of.html

Late, Great Crime Writer Dashiell Hammett's Papers Aquired By University Of South Carolina

 

The Washington Times offers a piece on the papers of the late, great crime writer Dashiell Hammett.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - A major collection of letters, photos and publications of the late crime fiction author Dashiell Hammett has been acquired by the University of South Carolina and will be made available to students and scholars within the coming year.

Hammett was a high-school dropout who created such iconic American characters as the gritty gumshoe Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon,” and the witty and worldly couple Nick and Nora Charles in “The Thin Man.”

University officials spoke with The Associated Press about the acquisition prior to its announcement, which is scheduled for Wednesday in Columbia at the Thomas Cooper Library.

Dean of Libraries Tom McNally said the collection includes hundreds of family letters, photographs, personal effects and documents from Hammett’s daughter Josephine, 89, and two of his grandchildren. It is bolstered by more than 300 Hammett books and rare first editions, as well as dozens of screenplays, files, documents and serialized magazines compiled by Hammett biographer and Columbia publisher Richard Layman.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/24/crime-caper-kingpin-dashiell-hammett-papers-home-a/

The Tough Guy Screen Detectives of the 1930s and 1940s Are Back

Bruce Chadwick at historynewsnetwork.org offers a look back at the movies based on Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler's private detectives.

There is trouble in the world today? Serial killers? Arsonists? The thugs of ISIS? Don’t bother with the CIA, FBI, Interpol or the NYPD. Get Sam Spade!

Spade was one of the famous tough guy detectives in literature and film, created by Dashiell Hammett back in the Great Depression era. He was tougher than tough; he ate nails for breakfast. He and the other great film noir sleuths comprised a genre of books and movies that have thrilled Americans since the 1930s.

Now the heroic private investigators are back in Chandler, Hammett, Woolrich & Cain, a film series at the Film Forum in New York, December 12 – 24. They arrived there directly from any television network you can think of, where they have solved crimes and beat up criminals for decades.

The Film Forum festival will open Friday with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep. The festival will show two versions, the pre-release cut and the regular feature.

Other films, shown singly or on double bills, will be Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Obssessione, Phantom Lady, Black Angel, The Window, Deadline at Dawn, City Streets, Streets of Chance, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, Rear Window, Strangers on a Train, Mildred Pierce, Murder My Sweet, The Long Goodbye, The Bride Wore Black, The Thin Man and After the Thin Man.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157819

The Guardian's 100 Best Novels: No 54 - "The Maltese Falcon" By Dashiell Hammett (1929)

Robert McCrum at the British newspaper the Guardian offers a piece on Dashiell Hammett's classic crime novel The Maltese Falcon, which comes in at number 54 in the newspaper's 100 Best Novels series.

Raymond Chandler, who has yet to appear in this series, once said: “Hammett is all right. I give him everything. There were a lot of things he could not do, but what he did, he did superbly.” He added, in a summary that helps define Hammett’s achievement: “He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.” He also gave his characters a distinctive language and convincing motivations in a genre that had grown stereotyped, flaccid and uninvolving.

The Maltese Falcon is the Hammett novel that jumps from the pages of its genre and into literature. It’s the book that introduces Sam Spade, the private detective who seduced a generation of readers, leading directly to Philip Marlowe. Dorothy Parker, never a pushover, confessed herself “in a daze of love” such as she had not known in literature “since I encountered Sir Lancelot” and claimed to have read the novel some 30 or 40 times.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/29/100-best-novels-the-maltese-falcon-dashiell-hammett-sam-spade-raymond-chandler  

You can check out the Guardian's list of 100 Best Novels via the below link:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/series/the-100-best-novels

Literary Legend Sam Spade Coming Back To San Francisco

Mike Aldax at the San Francisco Examiner offers a piece on a Dashiell Hammett event in San Francisco. 

You’d have to be a glutton for jail food to commit a crime in Union Square tonight.

At 6 p.m., a gaggle of brawny coppers plans to attend a private party at John’s Grill, the century-old Ellis Street restaurant, on the rumor that the “blonde satan” himself — Detective Sam Spade — has returned to The City.

But you won’t get the whole yarn.

Spade, the fictional private dick made famous by legendary San Francisco writer Dashiell Hammett, is reappearing in American literature in an unfinished story that appears in a new collection of Hammett works, some previously unpublished.

Tonight’s event at John’s Grill, a restaurant Hammett frequented in the 1920s, is a book launch for “The Hunter and Other Stories.” Attendees are expected to include current and former San Francisco cops and also “a whole paddy wagon full of reporters looking for the free cocktails and lamb chops,” said publicist Lee Housekeeper.

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/literary-legend-sam-spade-coming-back-to-san-francisco/Content?oid=2626411