The Maltese Falcon, first published as a serial in the pulp magazine Black Mask, is the only full-length novel by Hammett in which Spade appears. The character, however, is widely cited as a crystallizing figure in the development of hard-boiled private detective fiction—Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, for instance, was strongly influenced by Spade.
Spade was a departure from Hammett's nameless and less-than-glamorous detective, The Continental Op. Spade combined several features of previous detectives, most notably his detached demeanor, keen eye for detail, and unflinching determination to achieve his own justice.
Portrayals
Spade was a new character created specifically by Hammett for The Maltese Falcon; he had not appeared in any of Hammett's previous stories.[3] Hammett says about him:
Spade has no original. He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and in their cockier moments thought they approached. For your private detective does not—or did not ten years ago when he was my colleague—want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent by-stander or client.[4]
Screen
From the 1940s onward, the character became closely associated with actor Humphrey Bogart, who played Spade in the third and best-known film version of The Maltese Falcon.[5] Though Bogart's slight frame, dark features and no-nonsense depiction contrasted with Hammett's vision of Spade (blond, well-built and mischievous), his sardonic portrayal was well-received, and is generally regarded as an influence on both film noir and the genre's archetypal private detective.
Spade was played by Ricardo Cortez in the first film version in 1931. Despite being a critical and commercial success, an attempt to re-release the film in 1936 was denied approval by the Production Code Office due to the film's lewd content. Since Warner Bros. could not re-release the film, a second version was made. For the comedy Satan Met a Lady (1936), the central character was renamed Ted Shane and was played by Warren William. The film was a box-office failure.
George Segal played Sam Spade, Jr., son of the original, in the film spoof, The Black Bird (1975). The Black Bird was panned by critics. Peter Falk delivered a more successful spoof the following year as Sam Diamond in Neil Simon's Murder by Death. This was preceded by the spoof character Sam Diamond in The Addams Family episode "Thing Is Missing" (1965) portrayed by Tommy Farrell.
The 1946-1951 radio show The Adventures of Sam Spade (on ABC, CBS, and NBC) starred Howard Duff (and later Steve Dunne) as Sam Spade and Lurene Tuttle as Spade's devoted secretary Effie Perrine, and took a considerably more tongue-in-cheek approach to the character.
In 2009, with the approval of the estate of Dashiell Hammett, the veteran detective-story writer Joe Gores published Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON with Alfred A. Knopf, the original publisher of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.
Books
The Maltese Falcon (1930)
Serialized in five parts, in the September 1929 to January 1930 issues of Black Mask
Satan Met a Lady (1936, Warner Bros.) (based on The Maltese Falcon, with the character names and the object of their search changed), starring Warren William in the lead role
The Adventures of Sam Spade (1946–1949, CBS): 157 30-minute episodes, starring Howard Duff
The Adventures of Sam Spade (1949–1950, NBC): 51 30-minute episodes, starring Howard Duff
The Adventures of Sam Spade (1950–1951, NBC): 24 30-minute episodes, starring Steve Dunne
Suspense: "The House in Cypress Canyon" (December 5, 1946, CBS): 30 minutes, featuring Howard Duff
Suspense: "The Kandy Tooth Caper" (January 10, 1948, CBS): 60 minutes, starring Howard Duff
Maxwell House Coffee Time (aka The Burns And Allen Show): "Gracie Sends Sam Spade to Jail" (February 10, 1949 NBC) a 30-minute episode starring Howard Duff—both as himself and as Sam Spade.[8]
The Adventures of Babe Lincoln (circa 1950, CBS): unaired, starring Howard Duff
Single-page comic strips, appeared in newspapers, magazines, comic books. Tie-in with radio show The Adventures of Sam Spade, which Wildroot also sponsored. Artist: Lou Fine.
Spade was highlighted in volume 21 of the Detective Conan manga's edition of "Gosho Aoyama's Mystery Library", in the section (usually the last page) where the author introduces a different detective (or occasionally, a villain) from mystery literature, television, or other media.
The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 detective novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett, originally serialized in the magazine Black Mask beginning with the September 1929 issue. The story is told entirely in external third-person narrative; there is no description whatsoever of any character's thoughts or feelings, only what they say and do, and how they look. The novel has been adapted several times for the cinema.
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the characters he created are Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, The Continental Op and the comic strip character Secret Agent X-9.
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler who was characteristic of the hardboiled crime fiction genre. The genre originated in the 1920s, notably in Black Mask magazine, in which Dashiell Hammett's The Continental Op and Sam Spade first appeared. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep, published in 1939. Chandler's early short stories, published in pulp magazines such as Black Mask and Dime Detective, featured similar characters with names like "Carmady" and "John Dalmas", starting in 1933.
Black Mask was a pulp magazine first published in April 1920 by the journalist H. L. Mencken and the drama critic George Jean Nathan. It is most well-known today for launching the hardboiled crime subgenre of mystery fiction, publishing now-classic works by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, Cornell Woolrich, Paul Cain, Carroll John Daly, and others.
The Continental Op is a fictional character created by Dashiell Hammett. He is a private investigator employed as an operative of the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco office. The stories are all told in the first person and his name is never given.
The Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective was a radio series based loosely on the private detective character Sam Spade, created by writer Dashiell Hammett for The Maltese Falcon. The show ran for 13 episodes on ABC in 1946, for 157 episodes on CBS in 1946–1949, and finally for 75 episodes on NBC in 1949–1951. The series starred Howard Duff as Sam Spade and Lurene Tuttle as his secretary Effie, and took a considerably more tongue-in-cheek approach to the character than the novel or movie. The announcer was Dick Joy.
The Glass Key is a novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett. First published as a serial in Black Mask magazine in 1930, it then was collected in 1931. It tells the story of a gambler and racketeer, Ned Beaumont, whose devotion to Paul Madvig, a crooked political boss, leads him to investigate the murder of a local senator's son as a potential gang war brews. Hammett dedicated the novel to his onetime lover Nell Martin.
Howard Green Duff was an American actor.
Garfield's Babes and Bullets is a 1989 animated television special directed by Phil Roman, based on a short story of the same name by Ron Tuthill in the book Garfield: His 9 Lives. It features Lorenzo Music as the voice of Garfield, the house cat, re-imagined as a private detective named Sam Spayed attempting to solve a murder mystery.
Satan Met a Lady is a 1936 American detective film directed by William Dieterle and starring Bette Davis and Warren William.
The Maltese Falcon is a 1931 American pre-Code crime film based on the 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett and directed by Roy Del Ruth. The film stars Ricardo Cortez as private detective Sam Spade and Bebe Daniels as femme fatale Ruth Wonderly. The supporting cast features Dudley Digges, Thelma Todd, Walter Long, Una Merkel, and Dwight Frye. Maude Fulton and Brown Holmes wrote the screenplay; one contemporaneous report said that Lucien Hubbard was assisting them.
The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 American film noir in which a San Francisco private detective deals with three unscrupulous adventurers, all seeking a jewel-encrusted falcon statuette. Written and directed by John Huston in his directorial debut, the film was based on the 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett and is a remake of the 1931 film of the same name. It stars Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade, Mary Astor as his femme fatale client, and as villains Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet.
The Maltese Falcon may refer to:
Special Agent Samantha "Sam" Spade is a fictional character portrayed by actress Poppy Montgomery on the CBS television drama Without a Trace.
Dopey Dicks is a 1950 detective film short subject directed by Edward Bernds starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges. It is the 122nd entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring the comedians, who released 190 shorts for the studio between 1934 and 1959.
William Hannan Spier was an American writer, producer, and director for television and radio. He is best known for his radio work, notably Suspense and The Adventures of Sam Spade.
Getting Even (1971) is Woody Allen's first collection of humorous stories, essays, and one short play. Most pieces were first published in The New Yorker between 1966 and 1971.
Mister Dynamite is a 1935 American action film directed by Alan Crosland and written by Doris Malloy and Harry Clork. The film stars Edmund Lowe, Jean Dixon, Victor Varconi, Esther Ralston, Verna Hillie and Minor Watson. The film was released on April 22, 1935, by Universal Pictures.
Charlie Wild, Private Detective is an American old-time radio detective mystery drama. It was broadcast on NBC September 24, 1950 - December 17, 1950, and on CBS January 7, 1951 - July 1, 1951. The episodes broadcast on CBS were also carried on six stations of the Alaska Broadcasting System.
Monsieur Spade is an American neo-noir television miniseries created by Scott Frank and Tom Fontana, and starring Clive Owen as Dashiell Hammett's fictional private detective Sam Spade.
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