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Antoinette May
ATOUGH JOB, AND DASHIELL
HAMMETT DID IT
She went down on her knees before him, crying: “I haven’t lived a good life. I’ve been bad—worse than you could know—but I’m not all bad. Look at me, Mr. Spade. You know I’m not all bad, don’t you?” Now, how can you resist a babe like that? Especially when she’s tall and pliantly slender with dark auburn hair and full, bright, red lips. Those lips trembled, pleaded. Sam’s a tough guy, see. But he’s also a sucker for a good lookin’ dame. . . Private investigator Sam Spade was a man of his time; and, more important, of his place. San Francisco was wicked in the 1920s. Speakeasies were jammed. There were tong wars in Chinatown, rum running in Sausalito. Prize fights were rigged. City officials from the mayor down bragged of being on the take. Crime novelist, Dashiell Hammett learned the hard way what it meant to be a San Francisco detective. As a Pinkerton man working out of offices in the Flood Building, Hammett saw the dark side close up. Once he fell off a taxi during a car chase, another time was hit on the head with a brick. Years later his celebrated mistress, Lillian Hellman would write of the scars and bumps she found on his body. “Maybe man hunting isn’t the nicest trade in the world,” a Hammett character says, “but it’s all the trade I’ve got.” The author sought other options and found them. On his travels Hammett met the beautiful Josephine Dolan—more than a passing fancy. Five months pregnant, she joined him in San Francisco. Suddenly circumspect, he established her at the Golden West Hotel while remaining in his rooming house. A few days later they were married at St Mary’s Cathedral on Van Ness and moved to a two-room apartment on Eddy. Only four blocks away was the Main Library where Hammett fled to escape the baby’s wails and acquire his “college education.” |
He read Henry James and Flaubert, Shakespeare and Dickens. He also read lots of pulp detective stories. At some point Hammett set down a magazine and said, “I can do better.” His first literary invention, a character known as the Continental Op (op meaning operative) turned crime fiction on its ear. Over night the dumpy, middle-aged dick who “got the job done” had replaced the suave, gentleman detective who’d been the stock and trade of detective writing.
Op—drawn from a Pinkerton mentor—enjoyed a long run, skewering the seamy side of San Francisco in the imaginations of countless thousands. Then came Hammett’s masterwork, The Maltese Falcon. Its anti-hero protagonist, Sam Spade of the “satanic” look, the “wolfish” smile, became an icon, the romantic embodiment of the private detective’s code. Sam Spade slept with his partner’s wife and showed no reluctance to do the same with clients, yet remained as honest as a man could be and still live in the available world. Again the setting is San Francisco, a made to order backdrop for the brutally staged melodrama of the lethal falcon. The characters in Hammett’s novel and the subsequent movie are unforgettable. Red-haired Brigid (Mary Austen), the lying temptress; Caspar Gutman (SidneyGreenstreet), the florid fat man seeking the elusive statue; Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) , the soft-voiced, perfumed accomplice; Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook, Jr), the baby-faced killer—and, of course, Sam Spade, the disillusioned survivor forever (Humphrey Bogart.) They all seek an antique statue—a falcon encrusted with priceless jewels. Their obsession results in three deaths and a possible hanging. Upon the Falcon’s completion, Hammett left San Francisco. In the glamorous Hollywood of the 1930s, he would meet the brilliant, boozy playwright, Lillian Hellman said to have inspired his next heroine, Nora Charles, co-star of the Thin Man series. With The Thin Man, Hammett introduced the adventures of a retired detective, Nick Charles, and his elegant, impetuous wife. |
He based them in his favorite city, San Francisco. This month marks the 75th anniversary of the Falcon’s publication. Seventy-five years is a long time. You might think the trail’s gone cold, but all it takes is a little Spade work. The great stone library that once fed Hammett’s mind and spirit is now the Asian Museum, but an extensive collection of memorabilia as been assembled by Hammett’s granddaughter ,Julie Rivett, and his biographer, Richard Layman, to be displayed in the new Main Library through March 31. The Golden West Hotel where Hammett’s bride-elect stayed is now the Hotel Union Square, at114 Powell. Still existing but no longer accessible is an underground passageway that links the hotel’s bar to John’s Grill at 63 Ellis. John’s, where Sam (and probably Hammett) ate his “chops, baked potato and sliced tomato,” has a museum upstairs devoted to the author and creations. Nearby is the Flood Building, corner of Powell and Market, where the Pinkerton Detective Agency had its office in room 314. The classic revival structure, with its high ceilings, marble hallways and iron-railed stairways looks now as it must have then. The apartment building at 891 Post will soon be declared a Literary Landmark for it was here that that the Maltese Falcon was written. The most poignant memorial is the one on Burritt Street, an alley off Bush, where a brass plaque bears the legend: On approximately this spot Miles Archer, Partner of Sam Spade Was done in by Brigid O’Shaugnessy
That these fictional characters have taken on a life of their own is a poignant tribute to the enduring power of Dashiell Hammett’s imagination.
Historian Don Herron has been
conducting a walking tour of
Hammett’s haunts for nearly 30 years.
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