The Glass Key

Last updated
The Glass Key
The Glass Key (1st ed cover).jpg
Cover of the first edition
Author Dashiell Hammett
LanguageEnglish
Genre Crime
Published1931 (Alfred A. Knopf)
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Pages214
Preceded by The Maltese Falcon  
Followed by The Thin Man  

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 (in London; the American edition followed 3 months later). 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.

Contents

There have been two US film adaptations (1935 and 1942) of the novel. A radio adaptation starring Orson Welles aired on March 10, 1939, as part of his Campbell Playhouse series. [1] The book was also a major influence on the Coen brothers' 1990 film Miller's Crossing , which features a similar scenario.

The Glass Key Award (in Swedish, Glasnyckeln), named after the novel, has been presented annually since 1992 for the best crime novel by a Scandinavian writer.

Plot summary

The story revolves around Ned Beaumont. Beaumont is best friend, confidant, and political advisor to the criminal political boss Paul Madvig. Ned finds the body of a senator's son on the street, and Madvig asks him to thwart the D.A.'s investigation, his motive being that he wants to back the corrupt senator in order to marry his daughter, Janet. Ned goes to New York searching for Bernie, a bookie who owes him a great deal of money from a gambling debt, but ends up getting beaten up.

Someone sends a series of letters to people close to the crime, hinting that Madvig was the murderer. Suspicion for this falls on Madvig's daughter Opal, the victim's girlfriend. Madvig's political base begins to crumble when he refuses to spring a follower's brother from jail. The follower goes to rival mob boss Shad O'Rory, who eliminates a witness to the brother's crime. Madvig then declares war on O'Rory, who offers to bribe Beaumont to expose Madvig in the newspaper. Beaumont refuses, is knocked unconscious and wakes captive in a dingy room where he is beaten daily.

Hospitalized after his escape, Beaumont tells Madvig and Janet that he was laying a trap for O'Rory; he then struggles out of bed to stop the newspaper from printing its expose. Beaumont confronts O'Rory, the publisher, and Madvig's daughter Opal. The publisher commits suicide after Beaumont seduces his wife.

Next Beaumont interviews Janet, discovering that she wrote the letters and that the Senator knew about the murder before Beaumont found the body. A new clue points to Madvig and when confronted he confesses but he cannot account for the victim's hat, a detail Beaumont pointedly repeats throughout the novel.

This impasse and Beaumont's growing interest in Janet, Madvig's love interest, cause a second rift between the men. Beaumont and Janet pair up to solve the murder. Beaumont uncovers evidence proving the senator killed his own son and turns him over to the police. Beaumont confronts Madvig with his new discovery, and the two depart, not enemies but no longer friends.

Characters

Themes

As noted by the literary critic James F. Maxfield, "Hammett employs an objective approach, merely reporting the conversations and describing the surface actions of his characters, never directly presenting their thoughts and feelings". [2] This leaves some ambiguity in the reasoning of Ned Beaumont's actions, such as his suspicions about Janet Henry's father. This makes it hard to determine the nature of Ned's relationship with Janet. [2] While there is disagreement about whether or not they are together at the end, the fact that there is a relationship at all is indicative of "a different kind of hero". [2]

Beaumont compared to other Hammett heroes

Ned Beaumont does not fit the popular, famous archetype of Jung, nor the weaker, less altruistic "hero" type of Hammett's other works, but is altogether different from either.

Hammett's detectives usually avoid relationships, but Ned is different. He does not possess the sort of "immunity" to emotional ties that the author's previous detectives had maintained, such as the Continental Op in Hammett's Red Harvest . Because of this supposed relationship between Ned and Janet, The Glass Key takes on a more traditional story line, that of the detective "hero" and his beautiful heroine, ending with a ride into the sunset of New York.

According to Maxfield, "Neither the Op nor [Hammett's detective character] Sam Spade would have gone off with Janet, for as detectives they both strove to be ruled as much as possible by reason. But Beaumont is a gambler instead of a detective, a man used to taking risks. Just as he continues to bet while he is on a losing streak, he is willing to make another kind of wager on Janet, despite the great odds of the relationship ending badly. Because he is willing to accept the risks that human commitments entail, Beaumont is, if not Hammett's ideal hero, his most completely human hero". [2]

The Great Depression, small-town morality, and "luck"

A more obvious theme in The Glass Key shows itself through the characters and their respective moralities. The novel is set in an unnamed city, a more unassuming place—a smaller, less sophisticated location—than his previous novels. It is thus a locale more obviously open to corruption. Here are elected officials, community figures, and the like who participate in conspiracies of a type more often considered endemic to the underworld. Because of this, the characters openly display more animalistic qualities than in Hammett's previous novels.

The characters, perhaps through the objectivity of the writing style, are portrayed as cutthroat and almost feral. One reason for their apparent slippage into violence is most likely related to the early onset of the Great Depression, as the novel was published in 1931. [3] The loss of "luck," as described in the novel ("What good am I if my luck’s gone?" He asks. "You might as well take your punishment and get it over with") is another deciding factor in the actions of the characters. [3] The novel is similar in that respect to later Depression-era novels, such as The Postman Always Rings Twice .

Writing style

Hammett's distinctive and groundbreaking style helped usher in the hardboiled genre. [4] The Glass Key, written in Hammett's later noir years, is a prime example of his stylistic power. [4] Raymond Chandler, a 20th-century author and critic, discussed Hammett's sense of the modern world in The Glass Key:

The realist in murder writes of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities, ... where no man can walk down a dark street in safety because law and order are things we talk about but refrain from practicing; ... It is not a fragrant world, but it is the world you live in, and certain writers with tough minds and a cool spirit of detachment can make very interesting and even amusing patterns out of it? [5]

William Kennedy, also a 20th-century author and book critic, explained what is so complex about Hammett's writing style: "Hammett's strategy is to show the process of detection as motivated by and affecting a friendship between two men. Out of these materials Hammett creates a dynamic structure of uncertain, constantly shifting human relationships." [5]

In The Glass Key, Hammett refuses to let the reader into the characters' minds. Perhaps Hammett felt all fiction should lack an inner monologue; in the real world people only understand actions and speech and that is all Hammett's characters give us. By keeping the readers in the dark of his characters true intentions, one analysis argues he intensifies the reader's sense of the ambiguous nature of reality. [5] That is to say, we never can trust if a character is doing what he is doing out of loyalty, or for selfish intentions. [5]

Reception

There is general agreement that The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key are Hammett's two finest books. [6] [7] With the passing years Hammett looked more and more harshly on his own fiction but conceded that The Glass Key was "not so bad". Its reception was even better than that of the previous novel, and so were sales, 20,000 copies having been sold eighteen months after publication. Some preferred the Falcon, others said simply that Hammett had written the three best detective stories of all time, and in the New Yorker Dorothy Parker screamed that "there is entirely too little screaming about the work of Dashiell Hammett".

Hammett felt that the finished book was his best work, nonetheless because "the clues were nicely placed... although nobody seemed to notice". Reviewers were less sanguine. David T. Bazelon, writing for Commentary, thought that Hammett had attempted a conventional novel, in which characters act for reasons of loyalty, passion or power. Even on those generous grounds, he found the novel unsatisfactory: "We never know whether [the] motive in solving the murder is loyalty, job-doing or love... this ambiguity reflects, I think, Hammett's difficulty in writing an unformularized novel-- one in which an analysis of motives is fundamental". Other critics wrote that the novel was "Hammett’s least satisfactory" and that the hero was "mechanical and his emotions were not there". Robert Edenbaum, for basically the same reasons, called The Glass Key Hammett's "least satisfactory novel... [in Hemingway] the mask is lifted every time the character is alone; he admits his misery to himself...exposes his inner life. The Hammett mask is never lifted; the Hammett character never lets you inside. Instead of the potential despair of Hemingway, Hammett gives you unimpaired control and machinelike efficiency".

Louis Untermeyer wrote, "Hammett has done something extraordinarily new to the murder and mystery story. He has made the reader as much interested in the relation of his individuals to each other as in the solution of the story". Somerset Maugham saw in Ned Beaumont "a curious, intriguing character whom any novelist would have been proud to conceive" And Raymond Chandler found "an effect of movement, intrigue, cross-purposes, and the gradual elucidation of character, which is all the detective story has any right to be about anyway. All the rest is spillikins in the parlor".

Legacy

Dashiell Hammett and The Glass Key have influenced many other hardboiled writers. Raymond Chandler wrote in his oft-cited essay "The Simple Art of Murder" that Hammett and other hardboiled writers created a style that removed the puzzle-game intrigues of typical detective novels and instead replaced it with realism: "Where murder is committed for reasons, and people talk and act as real people do". Chandler argued that it is due to these authors that this style was developed and raised from a generic form to a "new level of artistic substance".

Together with Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest, The Glass Key provided inspiration for the Coen brothers' 1990 film Miller's Crossing. [8]

The 1942 film adaptation appears briefly in the season 2 finale of the show Bosch during a conversation between Bosch and the detective on his mother's murder case.

The book is a major reference point in the 2017 film, Mercury in Retrograde, whose characters discuss it at length in a climactic book-club scene. [9]

Adaptations

Film

The novel was adapted for the 1935 film The Glass Key , directed by Frank Tuttle and produced by E. Lloyd Sheldon, with a screenplay by Kathryn Scola and Kubec Glasmon. It was distributed by Paramount Pictures. The lead characters were portrayed by George Raft as Ed [not Ned] Beaumont, Edward Arnold as Paul Madvig, and Claire Dodd as Janet Henry. [10] [ better source needed ]

Another film, also entitled The Glass Key , was released in 1942, directed by Stuart Heisler and produced by Buddy G. DeSylva, with a screenplay by Jonathan Latimer. It was also distributed by Paramount Pictures. [4] The film starred Alan Ladd as Ed [not Ned] Beaumont, Brian Donlevy as Paul Madvig, and Veronica Lake as Janet Henry. The Irish mobster Shad O'Rory, who played a major role in both the novel and the first film adaptation (in which he was portrayed by Robert Gleckler), was replaced in the second film by a Mediterranean mobster, Nick Varna, portrayed by the Maltese actor Joseph Calleia. [11]

Though not a direct adaptation, the Coen brothers' 1990 film Miller's Crossing features a similar premise and characters. [12] [13]

Radio

The Glass Key was adapted by Howard E. Koch for the March 10, 1939, episode of Orson Welles's CBS Radio series The Campbell Playhouse . The cast included Welles (Paul Madvig), Paul Stewart (Ned Beaumont), Ray Collins (Shad O'Rory), Myron McCormick (Senator Henry), Effie Palmer (Mrs. Madvig), Elspeth Eric (Opal Madvig), Elizabeth Morgan (telephone operator), Everett Sloane (Farr), Howard Smith (Jeff), Laura Baxter (Janet Henry) and Edgar Barrier (Rusty). [14] : 351  [15] [16]

Another adaptation, by Robert Cenedella, was presented on Hour of Mystery on ABC on July 7, 1946. Kenneth Webb was the director, and Edwin Marshall was the producer. [17]

On July 22, 1946, The Lady Esther Screen Guild Theatre presented yet another adaptation by Harry Cronman starring Alan Ladd, Marjorie Reynolds, Ward Bond. Bill Lawrence was both the director and producer.

Television

The Glass Key was adapted as part of the Westinghouse Studio One television series by screenwriter Worthington Miner and director George Zachary. [18] [ better source needed ] TV version starred Donald Briggs, Lawrence Fletcher and Jean Carson and was originally broadcast May 11, 1949. [19] [20]

Related Research Articles

<i>Millers Crossing</i> 1990 film by the Coen brothers

Miller's Crossing is a 1990 American neo-noir gangster film written, directed and produced by Joel and Ethan Coen, and starring Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro, Jon Polito, J. E. Freeman, and Albert Finney. The plot concerns a power struggle between two rival gangs and how the protagonist, Tom Reagan (Byrne), plays both sides against each other.

<i>The Maltese Falcon</i> (novel) 1930 novel by Dashiell Hammett

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.

<i>The Thin Man</i> (film) 1934 film by W. S. Van Dyke

The Thin Man is a 1934 American pre-Code comedy-mystery film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and based on the 1934 novel by Dashiell Hammett. The film stars William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, a leisure-class couple who enjoy copious drinking and flirtatious banter. Nick is a retired private detective who left his very successful career when he married Nora, a wealthy heiress accustomed to high society. Their wire-haired fox terrier Asta was played by canine actor Skippy. In 1997, the film was added to the United States National Film Registry having been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dashiell Hammett</span> American writer (1894–1961)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nick and Nora Charles</span> Fictional characters by Dashiell Hammett

Nick and Nora Charles are fictional characters created by Dashiell Hammett in his novel The Thin Man. The characters were later adapted for film in a series of films between 1934 and 1947; for radio from 1941 to 1950; for television from 1957 through 1959; as a Broadway musical in 1991; and as a stage play in 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ellery Queen</span> Detective fiction writer (joint pseudonym)

Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1928 by the American detective fiction writers Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred Bennington Lee (1905–1971). It is also the name of their main fictional detective, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murder cases. From 1929 to 1971, Dannay and Lee wrote around forty novels and short story collections in which Ellery Queen appears as a character.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mystery fiction</span> Fiction genre involving characters investigating and solving a mystery

Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective, who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.

<i>Red Harvest</i> 1929 novel by Dashiell Hammett

Red Harvest (1929) is a novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett. The story is narrated by the Continental Op, a frequent character in Hammett's fiction, much of which is drawn from his own experiences as an operative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The plot follows the Op's investigation of several murders amid a labor dispute in a corrupt Montana mining town. Some of the novel was inspired by the Anaconda Road massacre, a 1920 labor dispute in the mining town of Butte, Montana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Continental Op</span> Fictional character created by Dashiell Hammett

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.

Hardboiled fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction. The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that has become as corrupt as the organized crime itself. Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are often antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Dick Tracy, Philip Marlowe, Nick Charles, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Slam Bradley, and The Continental Op.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noir fiction</span> Subgenre of crime fiction

Noir fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction.

Lew Archer is a fictional character created by American-Canadian writer Ross Macdonald. Archer is a private detective working in Southern California. Between the late 1940s and the early '70s, the character appeared in 18 novels and a handful of shorter works as well as several film and television adaptations. Macdonald's Archer novels have been praised for building on the foundations of hardboiled fiction by introducing more literary themes and psychological depth to the genre. Critic John Leonard declared that Macdonald had surpassed the limits of crime fiction to become "a major American novelist" while author Eudora Welty was a fan of the series and carried on a lengthy correspondence with Macdonald. The editors of Thrilling Detective wrote: "The greatest P.I. series ever written? Probably."

<i>The Maltese Falcon</i> (1941 film) 1941 film by John Huston

The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 American film noir written and directed by John Huston in his directorial debut. Based on the 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, this remakes the 1931 film of the same name.

<i>The Thin Man</i> 1934 detective novel by Dashiell Hammett

The Thin Man (1934) is a detective novel by Dashiell Hammett, originally published in a condensed version in the December 1933 issue of Redbook. It appeared in book form the following month. A film series followed, featuring the main characters Nick and Nora Charles, and Hammett was hired to provide scripts for the first two.

<i>The Glass Key</i> (1935 film) 1935 film by Frank Tuttle

The Glass Key is a 1935 American crime drama film directed by Frank Tuttle starring George Raft, Edward Arnold, Claire Dodd, Guinn "Big Boy" Williams and Ray Milland. Ann Sheridan has a brief speaking role as Raft's character's nurse in their first film together. Produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures, it was based upon the 1931 suspense novel The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett,

Carroll John Daly (1889–1958) was a writer of crime fiction. One of the earliest writers of hard-boiled fiction, he is best known for his detective character Race Williams, who appeared in a number of stories for Black Mask magazine in the 1920s.

<i>The Glass Key</i> (1942 film) 1942 film by Stuart Heisler

The Glass Key is a 1942 American film noir based on the 1931 novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett. The picture was directed by Stuart Heisler starring Brian Donlevy, Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd. A successful earlier film version starring George Raft in Ladd's role had been released in 1935. The 1942 version's supporting cast features William Bendix, Bonita Granville, Richard Denning and Joseph Calleia.

George Caryl Sims, better known by his pen names Paul Cain and Peter Ruric, was an American pulp fiction author and screenwriter. He is best known for his novel Fast One, which is considered to be a landmark of the pulp fiction genre and was called the "high point in the ultra hard-boiled manner" by Raymond Chandler. Lee Server, author of the Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers, called Fast One "a cold-hearted, machine-gun-paced masterwork" and his other writings "gemlike, stoic and merciless vignettes that seemed to come direct from the bootlegging front lines."

Raoul Whitfield was an American writer of adventure, aviation, and hardboiled crime fiction. During his writing career, from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s, Whitfield published over 300 short stories and serials in pulp magazines, as well as nine books, including Green Ice (1930) and Death in a Bowl (1931). For his novels and contributions to the Black Mask, Whitfield is considered one of the original members of the hard-boiled school of American detective fiction and has been referred as "the Black Mask's forgotten man".

<i>It Couldnt Matter Less</i> 1941 novel

It Couldn't Matter Less is a 1941 thriller novel by the British writer Peter Cheyney. It is the fourth in a series of novels featuring the London-based private detective Slim Callaghan who enjoyed a series of dangerous adventures similar in style to the hardboiled American detectives created by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. It was published in the United States as Set-Up for Murder.

References

  1. ↑ The Mercury Theatre on the Air
  2. 1 2 3 4 Maxfield, James F. (1985). "Hard-Boiled Dicks and Dangerous Females: Sex and Love in the Detective Fiction of Dashiell Hammett." Clues 6.1: 107–123. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 Dec. 2012.
  3. 1 2 Hammett, Dashiell. The Glass Key. 3rd ed. N.p.: Vintage, 1989. Print.
  4. 1 2 3 Layman, Richard. "Chapter 17." Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981. 183. Print.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Thompson, George, J. (2007). Hammett's Moral Vision: The Most Influential Full-length Investigation of Dashiell Hammett's Novels Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key and The Thin Man. San Francisco, California: Vince Emery.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. ↑ Marling, William (1983). Dashiell Hammett. Boston: Twayne.
  7. ↑ Nolan, William F. (1969). Dashiell Hammett: A Casebook. Santa Barbara, California: McNally & Loftin.
  8. ↑ Patell, Cyrus R.K. (1994). "Screen Memory: Happy Birthday, Hammett". Harvard Review, no. 6 (Spring 1994), pp. 20–23.
  9. ↑ Outlook, Indie (2017-09-14). "Roxane Mesquida, Najarra Townsend, Kevin Wehby, Jack C. Newell, Shane Simmons and Michael Glover Smith on "Mercury in Retrograde"". Indie Outlook. Retrieved 2021-05-08.
  10. ↑ "The Glass Key." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2012. <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034798/>.
  11. ↑ "The Glass Key". AFI Catalog of Feature Films . Retrieved 2014-12-19.
  12. ↑ Coughlin, Paul (14 December 2017). "Miller's Crossing, The Glass Key and Dashiell Hammett – Senses of Cinema" . Retrieved 2021-07-10.
  13. ↑ Orr, Christopher (2014-09-10). ""Miller's Crossing" Is a Perfect Movie, Except for These 3 Flaws". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2021-07-10.
  14. ↑ Welles, Orson; Bogdanovich, Peter; Rosenbaum, Jonathan (1992). This Is Orson Welles . New York: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN   0-06-016616-9.
  15. ↑ "The Campbell Playhouse". RadioGOLDINdex. Retrieved 2014-12-19.
  16. ↑ "The Campbell Playhouse: The Glass Key". Orson Welles on the Air, 1938–1946. Indiana University Bloomington. March 10, 1939. Retrieved 2018-07-30.
  17. ↑ "'Hour of Mystery' presents 'The Glass Key'". The Times. Louisiana, Shreveport. July 7, 1946. p. 21. Retrieved March 11, 2020– via Newspapers.com.
  18. ↑ ""Studio One" the Glass Key (TV Episode 1949) - IMDb". IMDb .
  19. ↑ List of Westinghouse Studio One episodes#Season 1
  20. ↑ Loman, Pasi. "Best Nordic Crime Novel." Vikings of Brazil. Vikings of Brazil, n.d. Web. 4 Dec. 2012. <http://www.vikingsbr.com.br/en/?p=409
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.