An Earful of Spade

Being a resolute fan of the 1941 film version of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, I always think of that as the definitive big-screen presentation. But of course, there were two previous cinematic interpretations: one that came out in 1931, under Hammett’s title, and the other released in 1936 as Satan Met a Lady.

In addition, that memorable story of greed and gumshoeing was adapted more than once for radio. As Evan Lewis reminds us today in his blog, Davy Crockett’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure, and the Wild West, Hollywood luminary Edward G. Robinson played San Francisco private eye Sam Spade in an hour-long, Lux Radio Theatre production of Hammett’s yarn that aired on February 8, 1943. Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre—all of whom had starred in 1941’s The Maltese Falcon—reprised their roles in an abbreviated, 30-minute adaptation of the movie from September 1943. I also find on YouTube a slightly different, and shorter version—also starring Bogart—that was reportedly broadcast in July 1946.

I must now resist the compulsion to spend the remainder of this afternoon listening to each one of those, back to back.

Brigid Loves Birdie

Let’s cut to the chase: Today marks 80 years since the premiere showing, in New York City, of Humphrey Bogart’s The Maltese Falcon, the third adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s marvelous 1930 novel introducing San Francisco private eye Sam Spade. (It had previously been shot in 1931, also under the book’s title, and in 1936 as Satan Met a Lady.) It’s a film I first watched—rapt by its noirish atmosphere and punchy parlays—in a Portland, Oregon, theater that specialized in classic pictures, but have seen more than a dozen times since. I may even screen it again this evening, to commemorate its birthday.

The story has just about everything going for it: a case filled with misdirection; a loner gumshoe, tough-talking but surprisingly sensitive at times, who won’t be anyone’s chump; a femme fatale of outstanding dimensions; a calculating, smooth-talking chief villain; and of course, a long-lost, mysterious McGuffin. At this late date, it hardly seems necessary to spell out the plot, but here it is anyway, borrowed from an essay about the 1941, John Huston-directed movie published earlier this year on—of all things—the World Socialist Web Site:

The Huston film is conspicuously faithful to the Hammett book. Virtually every line of dialogue is borrowed from the original source. In San Francisco, private investigator Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) becomes involved with a group of devious and scheming adventurers in pursuit of a solid gold, jewel-encrusted statuette allegedly worth a king’s ransom.

The series of events, which ultimately leads to the killing of three men (four in the novel), begins with a visit by a Miss Wonderly (Mary Astor) to the offices of Spade and his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan). She claims to be looking for her wayward younger sister, who is keeping company with a roughneck, Floyd Thursby. Spade and Archer (who personally volunteers to follow Wonderly that evening) agree to take the case.

The same night, Archer turns up dead, shot at close-range. Only a half-hour later, Thursby is also murdered. The police come knocking at Spade’s door, hinting that he might have killed Thursby in revenge for his partner’s being knocked off. Spade angrily rejects the imputation, and also protects the identity of his client.

In any event, everything that “Miss Wonderly” told Spade and Archer was untrue, starting with her name, which is actually Brigid O’Shaughnessy. However, when Spade tracks her down, she still refuses to explain what she is up to. Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) soon arrives at Spade’s office and offers the private eye $5,000 if he can help locate a mysterious “black figure of a bird.” Later, Spade encounters Kasper Gutman (Sidney Greenstreet), and his hired thug, Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr.). Cairo, O’Shaughnessy and Gutman, the latter of whom fills in the details about the object of their collective desire, have been pursuing the figurine, which supposedly dates from the 16th century, all across the globe.

In the end, no one ends up with the supposedly priceless gold bird, several people are dead and others on their way to prison.

Hammett never penned another Spade novel, though he did later produce three short stories featuring the character. Still, that P.I. went on to become a radio-drama star in the 1940s and early ’50s, portrayed most memorably by Howard Duff. In 1946, The Maltese Falcon was adapted into comic-book form, with artwork by Rodlow Willard. George Segal starred as “Sammy” Spade Jr. in a comedy sequel of sorts, 1975’s The Black Bird. And kind of making up for Hammett’s failure to deliver another Sam Spade book, in 2009 veteran crime-fictionist Joe Gores published a prequel to Falcon, titled Spade & Archer.

I’ve written many times on this page about The Maltese Falcon, occasionally including video clips from the flick. But with today being its 80th anniversary and all, I’ve decided enough is never enough. So below you’ll find two treasures: the original Warner Bros. trailer, and the scene in which Brigid O’Shaughnessy—anxious to escape police pursuit and solicit Spade’s assistance in securing the infamous black bird for herself—pleads for the shamus’ sympathy, knowing from the outset, no doubt, that she hasn’t a hope in hell of winning it.





READ MORE: “The Maltese Falcon 80 Years On,” by John Harvey (Some Days You Do …); “Why Writers Are Always in Pursuit of the Maltese Falcon,” by Gordon McAlpine (CrimeReads); “Regarding the Real-Life Mystery of the Maltese Falcon, a Famous Movie Prop Lost for Decades” (SFist); “The Maltese Falcon: The Best Covers, Ranked” (CrimeReads).

Bullet Points: Back from Vacation Edition

I spent last week in Minneapolis, Minnesota, visiting my best friend from college, Byron Rice. The break from work was much appreciated. Beyond sampling a new restaurant or two, imbibing some novel local beers, and engaging in a bit of birdwatching, we also did touristy things, such as visiting George Floyd Square, the memorial created at the intersection of East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, where in the spring of 2020, a white cop knelt fatally upon the neck of a 46-year-old hip hop artist and mentor, setting off social-justice protests worldwide. (See the photo above; that’s yours truly on the left.) We paid an extended call on Once Upon a Crime, a fine indie bookshop in the Whittier neighborhood, specializing in mystery fiction, where—among other things—I procured a couple of William Campbell Gault books not already in my collection. And we swung by Magers & Quinn Booksellers, on Hennepin Avenue, to browse its broader array of works.

Oh, and of course, we spent a lot of time reading out in Byron’s backyard—in shade whenever possible, as temperatures ranged from the high-80s to the mid-90s. I made my way through four books: The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer, by Dean Jobb (Algonquin); People of Abandoned Character, by Clare Whitfield (Head of Zeus); The Killing Hills, by Chris Offutt (Grove Press); and Ridley’s War (FriesenPress), the second novel by sometime Rap Sheet contributor Jim Napier. I might have read more, but I felt the need periodically to toss tennis balls around with Byron’s dog, Shiloh—an endeavor that resulted in my sailing a couple over the back fence, never to be seen again. (Whoops!)

One weird thing happened on the flight back to Seattle. About half an hour before we landed, cabin attendants were summoned to assist a guy—maybe in his 40s—who was seated at the window two rows forward of me and on the left. He seemed to have stopped breathing, and a quick call was put out to anyone aboard with medical training. An evidently experienced older doctor and several younger men and women rushed to help, moving the patient out into the aisle at my feet, where they began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The patient was eventually relocated to the rear galley, where there was supposed to be more room. When we landed, emergency personnel rushed onto the plane and carried the man into the airport terminal. The rest of us were kept onboard for most of the next hour, and eventually off-loaded down a movable staircase onto the tarmac. We never did hear what had happened to the man, though I caught the end of a comment from one of the flight attendants, who said something about how it had been “too late by the time we got to him.”

Since my return home, I’ve searched for news online about this incident, but have come up with absolutely nothing.

I have, however, turned up a number of recent crime-fiction-related stories. In the absence of more information about that man on the plane, I’ll share some of those leads and tidbits here.

• A month after announcing its four shortlisted nominees—and sooner than the July 1 deadline previously set—Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association has declared a winner in the 2021 Margery Allingham Short Story Mystery Competition. She’s Netherlands resident and novelist Camilla Macpherson, whose tale “Heartbridge Homicides” was judged to fit Allingham’s definition of what makes a great story: “The Mystery remains box-shaped, at once a prison and a refuge. Its four walls are, roughly, a Crime, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an Element of Satisfaction in it.” As this year’s victor, Macpherson will receive £500 as well as a pair of passes to CrimeFest 2022.

• Meanwhile, independent-press-oriented Foreword Reviews has made known the recipents of its 2021 INDIES Book of the Year Awards, in multiple categories. As far as Thriller/Suspense works go, Kevin Doherty’s The Leonardo Gulag is the Gold Winner, with Michael Pronko’s Tokyo Traffic being the Silver Winner, Michael Bradley’s Dead Air being the Bronze Winner, and Honorable Mention going to The Spiderling, by Marcia Preston. Mystery category champs are: A Child Lost, by Michelle Cox (Gold); The Burn Patient, by Sue Hinkin (Silver); Glass Eels, Shattered Sea, by Charlene D’Avanzo (Bronze); and Honorable Mention given to Andrew Nance’s Red Canvas. UPDATE: I neglected to mention, additionally, that Ann Parker’s seventh Silver Rush mystery, Mortal Music, was the Bronze winner in the INDIES’ Historical Adult Fiction category.

• Steve Aldous, author of The World of Shaft (2015), notes in his blog that June 23 marked the 50th anniversary of Richard Roundtree’s debut as New York City private eye John Shaft, in the 1971 movie Shaft. “Whilst by no means perfect,” Aldous remarks, “the film (based on Ernest Tidyman’s novel published the previous year) is rightly regarded as a landmark in cinema history. Shaft opened Hollywood up to black filmmakers, actors and technicians, and an explosion of ‘Blaxpolitation’ movies dominated cinema for the next two or three years. … Shaft was recognised at the 1972 Academy Awards, with Isaac Hayes’ theme winning the Oscar for Best Song and his soundtrack also nominated. In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.’” Aldous adds, “Here in the UK, the 50th anniversary is being celebrated by screenings of Shaft at a number of Everyman theatres across the country on Monday 28 June at 8.45 p.m.” If it has been some time since you last saw Shaft, maybe it’s time you watched it again yourself.

• After being brought down weeks ago by computer hackers, the Web site Shots appears to be back up and running.

• Speaking of Shots, its affiliated blog carries word of the four rookie novelists best-seller Val McDermid will showcase during her “New Blood” panel discussion at this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (July 22-25). Her choices:

— Greg Buchanan, Sixteen Horses (Mantle)
— Lara Thompson, One Night, New York (Virago)
— Patricia Marques, The Colours of Death (Hodder)
— Anna Bailey, Tall Bones (Doubleday)

“The unveiling of McDermid’s selection has become one of the most anticipated moments of the publishing calendar,” says Shotsmag Confidential, “with readers on the lookout to uncover their new favourite author and add the ‘next big thing’ to their bookshelves.”

• Making a welcome comeback, as well, is The Columbophile, whose unnamed author had been offline for months, due to a health crisis involving his/her young daughter. While I was away in the Midwest, though, what should appear but a piece about the Season 10 Columbo episode “Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health” (1991). Guest-starring George Hamilton, it’s described as “a tale of resentment, blackmail, pornography and murder set against the backdrop of hit network TV crime show Crime Alert.”

• Did you know director John Huston’s 1941 big-screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon was, at one time, slated to be retitled as The Gent from Frisco? Blogger Evan Lewis has the newspaper clippings to prove it.

• As In Reference to Murder reported last week, “On June 8, mystery pioneer Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame in a ceremony that included an appearance by Rebecca Crozier, Green’s great-great granddaughter. Green’s The Leavenworth Case is one of the first mysteries penned by an American woman, and she is credited with developing the series detective in the form of Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police Force (although in three novels he is assisted by the nosy society spinster, Amelia Butterworth, the prototype for Miss Marple).” Video footage from those festivities can be enjoyed here.

• From that same blog comes this brief update to a story we posted here in March: “Harry Melling, best known as Dudley from the Harry Potter franchise, is set to play a young Edgar Allan Poe in the Netflix/Scott Cooper-directed murder mystery, The Pale Blue Eye. The film is a passion project of Cooper, who has tried making it for more then a decade, and also stars Christian Bale as a veteran detective tasked with solving a series of murders that took place in 1830 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Bale’s detective partners with a detail-oriented young cadet (Melling), who will later become the world-famous author we all know today.”

• It looks like the ITV/BBC crime drama Shetland is back in business. According to The Killing Times, the sixth and seventh series of that show, based on novels by Ann Cleeves, “were due to film in 2020 and 2021 in locations on the Shetland Isles and around Scotland, and will again feature six hour-long episodes each. However, it looks as though production was halted due to the COVID pandemic.” No word yet on when Shetland might return to the airwaves.

• Earlier this month, CrimeReads carried a piece about vintage Shadow films that’s well worth finding. Penned by Hector DeJean, associate director of publicity at Minotaur Books, it begins:

The crimefighter known as the Shadow was a pop-culture sensation who arrived on the detective fiction scene before Perry Mason, Nero Wolfe, and Philip Marlowe, and whose extravagant war on evildoers predated those of Superman, Batman, the Lone Ranger, and Doc Savage. Americans during the Great Depression got regular doses of the Shadow via the radio and pulp magazines, and his adventures continue to this day in comic book form. Oddly, the character was never a big hit with movie audiences, despite decades of films that create an occasionally compelling but ultimately confusing portrait of the clever, menacing protagonist. Amazon Prime subscribers can check out some of these early attempts for free, and while none of the films are astounding, there are enjoyable elements sprinkled throughout, and none demand more than roughly an hour of one’s attention.

• Finnish author Juri Nummelin, who’s composing a book about American sleaze paperback writers, has assembled a list of their works that deserve consideration as crime fiction, too.

• The Rap Sheet already presented an extensive rundown of new crime, mystery, and thriller works due for publication this season. But now comes Janet Rudolph with her own lengthy inventory of older mysteries set during the warmer summer months.

• I read and enjoyed both Come Spy With Me and Live Fast, Spy Hard, Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens’ initial two John Sand espionage novels, though I haven’t yet had a chance to write about them. And now the pressure to do so is even greater: Collins writes in his blog that the series’ third installment, To Live and Spy in Berlin, is due out on July 14, from Wolfpack. That makes three fast-paced, James Bond-ish adventures published in just nine months! No wonder I can't keep up. “Will there be more John Sand books?” Collins asks. “That’s up to you. We have left something of an incredible effing cliffhanger [in book three] that needs resolving, so it’s on your conscience not ours if sales don’t justify that resolution.”

• Asks Literary Hub: “Which writers have the best tombstone inscriptions?” I’m going to go here with Billy Wilder.

• This may be just what you need: The organization Sisters in Crime has announced it “will award researchers grants of $500 for the purchase of books to support research projects that contribute to our understanding of the role of women or underrepresented groups in the crime-fiction genre. This may include but is not limited to research on women mystery writers, on the position of women writers in the crime fiction marketplace, or on gender, race, or ethnicity as an aspect of crime fiction.” The deadline for applications is July 15, 2021.

• Here’s something to look forward to. From a news release:

Titan Comics and Hard Case Crime are excited to announce Gun Honey, a new 4-part crime comic series written by Charles Ardai, the Edgar and Shamus award winner and co-founder of Hard Case Crime, with art by Ang Hor Kheng. Issue #1 launches September 15, 2021, with covers by superstar artist Bill Sienkiewicz and legendary movie poster artist Robert McGinnis.

Praised by comic creators Max Allan Collins (Ms. Tree), Ed Brubaker (Captain America) and Duane Swierczynski (Birds of Prey), Gun Honey is a story about weapons supplier Joanna Tan, the best in the world at providing the perfect weapon at the perfect moment. But when a gun she smuggles into a high-security prison leads to the escape of a brutal criminal, the U.S. government gives her an ultimatum: track him down or spend the rest of her life in a cell. …

“Gun Honey is a project I’ve been working on ever since we launched Hard Case Crime Comics five years ago, and I’m thrilled to finally get to share it with readers,” said Charles Ardai. “Anyone who loves Modesty Blaise or Alias or Uma Thurman in Tarantino’s Kill Bill will be drawn to Joanna Tan’s story the same way I was, and anyone who loves great comic book art will be floored by Ang Hor Kheng’s stunning debut.”

• A Shroud of Thoughts brings word that California-born actress Joanne Linville, “who guest starred on such classic TV shows as Studio One, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Columbo, died on June 20, 2021, at the age of 93.” I remember Linville best for her performance as a duped Romulan Commander in the third-season Star Trek episode “The Enterprise Incident.” However, her credits also include appearances on The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen, Have Gun—Will Travel, The Defenders, The Fugitive, Hawaii Five-O, Switch, Barnaby Jones, and L.A. Law. “Joanne Linville played a wide variety of roles throughout her career,” observes Terence Towles Canote, “and she gave a good performance nearly every time.”

• Finally, a few author interviews deserving of attention: Virginia writer S.A. Cosby chats with Do Some Damage’s Angel Luis Colón about his soon-forthcoming novel, Razorblade Tears; Texas’ Murder by the Book YouTube page hosts an entertaining conversation between Gytha Lodge (Lie Beside Me) and Chris Whitaker (We Begin at the End); former President Bill Clinton and James Patterson speak with Lee Child about their second joint thriller, The President’s Daughter; and if you’re a Twitter user, you can watch a recent CBS This Morning segment about Laura Lippman and her new standalone, Dream Girl.

Bullet Points: From All Corners Edition

(Above) J. Robert Janes signs his books at Bouchercon 2014.

• Canadian novelist J. Robert Janes has long ranked among my favorite historical crime-fictionists. His 16-volume, World War II-set series starring Jean-Louis St-Cyr, a chief inspector with the French Sûreté, and his unlikely investigative partner, Detektiv Inspektor Hermann Kohler of the Nazi Gestapo, began with 1992’s Mayhem (aka Mirage) and continued through 2015’s Clandestine. Naturally, I have devoured the whole lot, plus Jones standalones such as The Hunting Ground (2013) and The Sleeper (2015). I had the delightful opportunity a decade ago to interview Janes for Kirkus Reviews and The Rap Sheet, and I finally met him at the 2014 Bouchercon convention in Long Beach, California. Back then, he said he was busy composing more novels, and in fact his old Web site proclaimed that a 17th St-Cyr/Kohler novel, Timeweaver, “now awaits a final read. The 18th St-Cyr and Kohler may well conclude the series, but that remains to be seen.” So whatever happened to those promised installments? I recently e-mailed Janes—who lives near Toronto, Ontario, and will turn 86 years old on May 23—to see how he’s doing. His response:

At my age now I’m lucky to be able to manage 18 blocks with my push chair. There are fortunately two little book kiosks en route, so I am able to get a few books now and then, and that kind of keeps me going. As to writing anything more, that’s really hard work and I’m totally retired, and reading the work of others finally, after all these years! You see, when I was writing I didn’t read other fiction because one can pick things up so easily and not even know they’ve done so. Therefore, I was just being careful. As for anybody at my age, my medical conditions are a real damper to doing a lot, and I’m very content just to go for my walks, read fiction books by others, and settle down with a cup of tea.

Janes’ wife of 64 years, Gracia, subsequently sent me an e-mail message, explaining that her husband’s health is fragile, that he suffers from “cancer and congenital heart failure.” She added, “He has retired knowing that he has published 34 books in four different genres (i.e., geology texts for elementary through university levels, children’s fiction, thrillers, and the 16-book St Cyr and Kohler series, and three other co-published books). All the words he has ever written are housed in over 140 boxes in the McMaster University Archives,” in Hamilton, Ontario. As to the existence of that 17th St-Cyr/Kohler novel? Well, Gracia says, “Timeweaver presents a puzzle”—and perhaps one that her husband cannot help solve. “Bob has a reluctance to talk about his books,” she confides, “as it saddens him that he is no longer able to write,” after more than three decades spent behind a keyboard, pounding out stories. She suggests the manuscript may be in the McMaster archives, “but not catalogued yet.” She continues to look. I’ll provide any updates Gracia shoots my way.

• Whenever a writer publishes a list purporting to name the “best” of anything, he or she becomes an immediate target of criticism. So it’s no surprise that this recent selection of “the 30 greatest literary detectives of all time,” by ShortList’s Marc Chacksfield, has attracted detractors. Among the sleuths included in Chacksfield’s tally: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe, Inspector Morse, Lew Archer, and Father Brown. Single-appearance players such as William of Baskerville (from Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose), Inspector Bucket (from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House), and Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen (the star of Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow) also scored spots on the list, which has predictably stirred questions about why figures such as Ellery Queen, Lord Peter Wimsey, Miss Maud Silver, and—for goodness sakes!—Nero Wolfe didn’t make the cut.

• The Sisters in Crime organization has launched its new Pride Award for Emerging LGBTQIA+ Crime Writers. As Oline H. Cogdill explains in the Mystery Scene blog, “A $2,000 grant will be awarded to an up-and-coming writer who identifies as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. … Candidates must apply by March 15, 2021. The winner will be announced in April, 2021.” Registration information is available here.

• With the 80th anniversary of the release of director John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon coming in October 2021, David Walsh, arts editor of the World Socialist Web Site, has posted this excellent assessment of the movie’s history and importance, its messages, and how its development fit into Huston’s filmmaking evolution.

• The Guardian’s Guy Lodge takes advantage of 2021 being the 100th anniversary of author Patricia Highsmith’s birth by highlighting the best film adaptations of her work. He reminds us, too, that “A glossy new Ben Affleck-starring film of her novel Deep Water, the first film from Adrian Lyne in 19 years, is scheduled for August, while a TV version of Ripley, starring Andrew Scott as her most adaptable character, is in the pipeline.”

• Like so many other literary festivals, Granite Noir is moving online this year. According to Shotsmag Confidential, Aberdeen, Scotland’s fifth annual celebration of homegrown and international crime writing will be streamed on the Aberdeen Performing Arts site from Friday, February 19, through Sunday the 21st. Ian Rankin, Camilla Läckberg, Stuart MacBride, Peter May, Jo Nesbø, Attica Locke, and David Baldacci are among the writers scheduled to participate. Click here to find a PDF containing the full roster of events.

• Then on Saturday, March 20, Hull Noir will return as a day-long festival based in the English port city of Kingston upon Hull. This year’s guests includes Mark Billingham, Laura Shepherd-Robinson, “Alex North” (aka Steve Mosby), and Hull-born Ian McGuire. The event will recognize, as well, this year’s “50th anniversary of the British crime [film] classic, Get Carter—adapted from Ted Lewis’s seminal crime novel Jack’s Return Home. For Lewis, who studied at Hull Art School in the late 1950s and whose novels reference the city and its hinterland, the towns on the south bank of the Humber, and the bleak Lincolnshire coast, 2021 is also the 50th anniversary of his novel Plender, this year’s festival read.” As Shotsmag Confidential notes, “There’ll be no charge for tickets, which will be available from Sunday 21 February along with the full festival lineup. Follow the Hull Noir Facebook and Twitter (@hullnoir) for all the most up to date information.”

• Here’s something I didn’t know: James Hong is a phenomenally prolific American actor, born to Hong Kongese parents, whose performance credits include roles in everything from Richard Diamond, Private Eye and Hawaii Five-O to Kung Fu, The Rockford Files, Switch, and the 1974 film Chinatown. He is also, according to blogger Lou Armagno, “the last living actor to portray a son (or daughter) of the fictional detective [Charlie Chan] in either a television series or film.” Hong was cast as “Number One Son” Barry Chan in the 1957-1958 TV drama The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, starring J. Carrol Naish. Hong will welcome his 92nd birthday this coming February 22nd.

• After applauding Robert McGinnis’ 93rd birthday two years ago in this longish piece for CrimeReads, I somehow managed to forget the artist’s 95th birthday this last Thursday, February 3. Fortunately, Deuce Richardson stepped up with a proper tribute in the DMR Books blog. After acknowledging McGinnis as “a national treasure,” Richardson reminds us that “He’s painted iconic characters ranging from James Bond to Barbarella to Captain America. He’s done covers for authors such as Rafael Sabatini, Neil Gaiman, John Jakes, Gardner F. Fox, Donald Westlake and Ian Fleming … and he’s still at it.” The DMR piece comes with a dozen beautiful examples of McGinnis’ work.



• By the way, whilst prowling around the Web early last week, I stumbled across a fake book front for Twilight Gal, created in imitation of one of McGinnis’ most famous covers, from the 1960 Dell paperback edition of Kill Now, Pay Later, by Robert Kyle. The artist here identifies him- or herself only as “astoralexander,” but explains that Twilight Gal re-imagines the video game The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess “as a hard-boiled crime novel.” Both McGinnis’ cover and astroalexander’s respectful knock-off are above.

• My wife and I are currently in the midst of watching the first five episodes of Netflix’s French mystery thriller, Lupin. So I was interested to read, in B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder, that the show “is returning to Netflix for its second half of season one this summer. The series has become a surprising hit for the streamer, with 70M households projected to watch since its launch on January 8, making it easily Netflix’s biggest French original. The project is a contemporary adaptation of the novels penned by French writer Maurice Leblanc and stars Omar Sy as Assane Diop, who uses the world-famous gentleman thief and master of disguise, Arsène Lupin, as his inspiration as he tries to get revenge on those responsible for his father’s death.”

• While we’re on the subject of Netflix, let me point you to this piece in The Killing Times, containing the first trailer for Behind Her Eyes, a six-part TV adaptation of Sarah Pinborough’s 2017 novel of that same name. The KT’s Paul Hirons says this program “stars Eve Hewson, Simona Brown, Tom Bateman and Robert Aramayo, and tells the story of a single mother, whose world is thrown off kilter when she begins an affair with her new boss David and matters take an even stranger turn when she’s drawn into an unlikely friendship with his wife Adele. What starts as an unconventional love triangle soon becomes a dark, psychological tale of suspense and twisted revelations, as Louise finds herself caught in a dangerous web of secrets where nothing and no-one is what they seem.” Behind Her Eyes drops on February 17.

• Another promising trailer is that of Bloodlands, a BBC One mini-series starring “James Nesbitt as a Northern Irish detective on the hunt for a serial killer known as Goliath ...,” explains Radio Times. “In the 40-second trailer we meet detective Tom Brannick (Nesbitt) as he picks up a 20-year-old investigation into [the] ‘possible assassin’ they called Goliath and reveals to his team that the killer at large murdered his wife.” There doesn’t appear to be a set premiere date yet for Bloodlands; Radio Times says to expect it “later in the year.”

• John Porter reports in The Verge that delays in releasing No Time to Die, the 25th James Bond film (currently slated to reach theaters on October 8) are “causing problems for its marketing deals, with advertisers concerned that the film may end up featuring outdated product placements.” He says “the movie could face reshoots to hide its outdated products, and … some scenes may be ‘carefully edited.’”

• So that’s what happened to Steve Hamilton. The last book published under his sole moniker, An Honorable Assassin (his third Nick Mason thriller), saw print in 2019. But next month, he will return as the co-author, with Janet Evanovich, of The Bounty, book seven in a series about FBI agent Kate O’Hare and con man Nicholas Fox, originally co-written with Lee Goldberg. The Real Book Spy tells more.

• Max Allan Collins revealed in a recent interview by Publishers Weekly that, with 2022 marking the 75th anniversary of private eye Mike Hammer’s debut, in I, the Jury, “I’ll be doing a biography of [Spillane] with James Traylor for Otto Penzler at Mysterious Press.” It was just two years ago that Collins commemorated the author’s 100th birthday with a blitz of special publications.

• After having picked up Jeff Vorzimmer’s The Best of Manhunt (2019) and last year’s The Best of Manhunt 2, you can bet I’m looking forward to the March 26 release of The Manhunt Companion, also from Stark House Press and co-edited by Peter Enfantino. In his blog Rough Edges, James Reasoner writes: “This book contains a history of the magazine, indexes of authors and stories that Manhunt published, plus reviews of every story from every issue. I’m not sure anything like this has ever been attempted before, let alone pulled off in such great style.” Click here to learn more about Manhunt (1952-1967).

• Washington Post book critic Ron Charles includes this smile-inducing tidbit in his latest newsletter:

After two weeks in office, Vice President Kamala Harris has already improved the economy of some yearbook owners. Used and rare bookseller AbeBooks reports that a set of three Howard University yearbooks—1984, 1985 and 1986—recently sold for $1,500. Those volumes include pictures of Harris, who graduated from the historically black university in D.C. in 1986. A photo of Howard’s Economics Society shows sophomore Harris with her fellow students and sponsor Joseph Houchins, who was once a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Federal Council of Negro Affairs.

• George Easter, the editor of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, has posted two pieces recently that are of likely interest to Rap Sheet readers. The first collects 39 vintage paperback fronts, each of which features one or more things we don’t see around much anymore. The challenge is to identify each of those anachronisms. The answers are all available at the post’s end.

• In this second piece, Easter showcases a splendid variety of “girl with a gun”-themed covers—one of which featured in Killer Covers’ not-long-ago-concluded 12th-anniversary celebration.

• Did you know that you can watch the entire run of Columbia Pictures’ 1943 Batman serial on YouTube? The 15 installments, starring Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft, and J. Carrol Naish, begin here with a chapter titled “The Electric Brain.”

• Gothic-style lettering makes a comeback amid our modern plague.

• Mystery & Suspense finally gets around to reviewing The Devil and the Dark Water, by British wordsmith Stuart Turton—one of my favorite mysteries of 2020—and pronounces it “clever and fun. Addictively page-turning. And so very, very entertaining.”

• I don’t relish penning obituaries, yet it seems I must do so regularly. Hal Holbrook, for instance, cannot leave this world without fit acclamation. The Ohio-born theater, film, and TV performer died on January 23 at age 95. Although many younger people know him—if only vaguely—as the guy who won a Tony Award for his stage portrayal of Mark Twain, Holbrook began his movie career in 1966, being cast in Sidney Lumet's The Group. He went on to portray then-unidentified Watergate scandal source “Deep Throat” in All the President’s Men (1976) and appeared in other movies such as Wall Street (1987), The Firm (1993), and Lincoln (2012). On the small screen, Holbrook won parts in the series Coronet Blue, The F.B.I., The Name of the Game, Designing Women (featuring his wife, Dixie Carter), Evening Shade, and The West Wing, and in teleflicks on the order That Certain Summer (1972, written by Richard Levinson and William Link) and Pueblo (1973). He starred in The Senator, a much-lauded but sadly short-lived and sometimes-controversial, 1970-1971 NBC “wheel series” drama—part of the Bold Ones rotation—playing Hays Stowe, a progressive and highly principled member of the U.S. Senate. Holbrook later led the cast of three Perry Mason TV movies (following Raymond Burr’s death in 1993), filling the boots of William “Wild Bill” McKenzie, a hotshot attorney and Utah rancher. One of my fondest memories of this actor had him playing a solely vocal part, his craggy voice narrating the 1997 Ken Burns TV documentary, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery. The New York Times says Holbrook died at his home in Beverly Hills, California; he was buried at a cemetery in Tennessee, alongside Dixie Carter, who met her own end a decade ago, in 2010.

• Last August, I mentioned on this page that Paul Green, a self-described “biographer specializing in film and television history,” had let it be known he was entering hospice care. The author of books about Roy Huggins, Pete Duel, Jeffrey Hunter, and others, Green told me in an e-mail message, “I suffer from stage 4 prostate cancer that has spread to my bones. I have been under treatment for three years.” Now Ed Robertson, host of the radio talk show TV Confidential, brings the sad news that Green passed away on Sunday, January 17, at age 65. “He was a gifted artist, a skilled biographer, and a good friend,” Robertson wrote on Facebook. “Paul and I last spoke about two months ago, at which time he informed me of his prognosis. He was in good spirits, all things considered, and we had a nice visit. It is hard for me to pick a favorite among his books. We met because of his biography of Pete Duel, did a couple of programs about his book on The Virginian, and had memorable conversations about his biographies of Jennifer Jones, Jeffrey Hunter, and Roy Huggins. He brought all of those figures to life and gave us each an understanding of who they were as people. Rest in peace, Paul … and thank you.”

• Finally, we must say good-bye to television producer and screenwriter Cy Chermak, who apparently perished from natural causes on January 29 in Hawaii. Born in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1929 as Seymour Albert Chermak, he went on to develop scripts for Beverly Garland’s Decoy, Cheyenne, the 1977 TV movie Murder at the World Series, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Additionally, he produced such shows as Ironside, Amy Prentiss, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Barbary Coast, and CHiPS. Chermak was 91.

• Speaking of obits, I tried to do justice to 81-year-old author John Lutz, who breathed his last on January 9. But his friend Francis M. Nevins does a far superior job of recounting Lutz’s illustrious career in this new Mystery*File piece. He also offers this poignant closing:

The last time I saw [Lutz] was in March 2020, shortly before COVID-19 dominated the world. He said nothing, needed a walker to get around, had lost a lot of weight, but he could still function. That soon changed. He deteriorated over the rest of last year and died a little more than a week into this one.

The only other writers with whom I had such a close and rich relationship were Fred Dannay and Ed Hoch, both of them now long dead. Is it any wonder that as the years pass I feel empty and alone more and more often?

• You may not be aware of this, but frequent Rap Sheet contributor also hosts Poets of the Tabloid Murder, a mystery-fiction author interview show heard on the Public Radio Exchange (PRX). That show was off the air for awhile, but it returned to production last August. Since then, Nester has interviewed such authors as J. Todd Scott (Lost River), T. Jefferson Parker (Then She Vanished), S..A. Cosby (Blacktop Wasteland), and most recently, Nick Petrie (The Breaker). I’ve added a link to the index of Nester’s broadcasts to the “Crime/Mystery Podcasts” list in this blog’s right-hand column.

• Promoting his new spy novel, The Mercenary—not to be confused this “orgy of death” Cold War thriller—Paul Vidich submits to an interview with Mystery Tribune, and contributes a piece to CrimeReads about the role imposters play in our literary tradition.

​• Four other CrimeReads posts to read: Vince Keenan’s look back at the never-produced Orson Welles picture The Smiler with a Knife, based on a novel by Nicholas Blake and casting Lucille Ball as its female lead; an interview with David Brawn, the publishing director for the Collins Crime Club, which recently reissued The Conjure-Man Dies, a 1932 work described as “the first detective novel by an African-American author”; Michael Kaufman’s analysis of where police procedurals stand in the age of Black Lives Matter and the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump-backing domestic terrorists; and editor in chief Dwyer Murphy’s eulogy for John D. MacDonald’s Point Crisp home in Sarasota, Florida, razed to make room for the sort of “enormous mansions that JDM railed against.”

• And we’ve heard much about small-business closings over these trying last 12 months. However, the British Web site inews.co.uk reports that independent bookshops in the UK have “managed not only to withstand the myriad difficulties thrown at them by the COVID-19 pandemic … but actually increased their numbers.”

(J. Robert Janes photo © 2014 by Ali Karim.)

Second Helpings

You might have presumed that yesterday’s huge “Bullet Points” post exhausted my current stock of links to crime-fiction news and information of interest. But you would be wrong.

• There are certain historical crimes that are of perpetual interest to me. One of those is the 1906 Madison Square Garden murder of Stanford White. I have more than a couple of books about that scandalous Manhattan homicide, which found Pittsburgh railroad heir Harry K. Thaw shooting the prominent but randy architect thrice in full public view, ostensibly because he had raped Thaw’s wife—actress and artist’s model Evelyn Nesbit—back when she was a teenager. Another book about White’s slaying and the twisted legal case that ensued from it, Simon Baatz’s The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Mulholland), was recently released, and provoked a Web site called The Crime Report to interview the author. That intriguing exchange is here.

• Let us turn now from historical misdeeds to Victorian-era mystery fiction, in order that I may direct you to Laura Purcell’s survey of gaslight Gothic tales and imaginary 19th-century sleuths.

• The Westlake Review presents a missive written, in 1941, by American film censor Joseph I. Breen to Warner Bros. Studios chief Jack L. Warner. It informs the latter of all the reasons why John Huston’s script for a big-screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart, was not appropriate for audience viewing. Clearly (and thank goodness!), director Huston decided to ignore Breen’s prissy complaints.

• In a pretty snappy piece for Criminal Element, author Thomas Pluck (Bad Boy Boogie) offers a variety of reasons why folks should be watching the Sundance-TV series Hap and Leonard, the third season of which premiered on March 7. It begins:

Because it’s Joe Fucking Lansdale.

That really should be the end of this article. If you don’t know the work of Joe R. Lansdale, Hap & Leonard is a wonderful introduction to his most popular books. If you already enjoy his work, watching the series on Sundance is like reading the books for the first time again. They capture the tone and spirit perfectly and bring the characters to life, right down to Hap’s hippie soul and Leonard’s irascible, rugged individualism (and Nilla wafers). Which is quite a feat because, while Joe is a champion storyteller, his voice is a large part of what makes his work so enjoyable. Like Robert Parker, Walter Mosley, and Laura Lippman, he can write about something mundane and make it as gripping as a thriller, because he writes with a voice that we follow like the little bouncing red ball over song lyrics, if you’re old enough to remember those.

• Although it’s been part of this page’s blogroll for awhile, only recently—and in association with my writing about the 50th anniversary of Lieutenant Columbo’s first TV appearance—did I rediscover The Columbophile. Naturally, I have been investigating that site ever since. Three posts to share from my browsing: this one about an evidently “official Columbo YouTube channel”; this list of the unnamed site manager’s 10 favorite Columbo episodes (to which I would definitely add 1973’s “Any Old Port in a Storm,” guest-starring Donald Pleasence and Julie Harris); and this recent piece addressing the matter of Columbo’s first name (a subject I’ve also tackled). I look forward to seeing what The Columbophile can come up with next.

• Here’s a book I missed when it was released last summer: I Watched Them Eat Me Alive: Killer Creatures in Men’s Adventure Magazines, edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle (New Texture). Thankfully, Frank Campbell—the guy behind a blog carrying the rather ponderous name Frank the Movie Watcher, Book Lover, Pop Culture Fan—finally brought it to my attention in a new, quite complimentary post. “All in all,” Campbell opines, “I Watched Them Eat Me Alive just goes to prove the old adage about explosives coming in small packages. This one brings the dynamite in two fists along with a testosterone fuse of sweaty, desperate thrills as men battle killer animals to the death. Trust me, it doesn’t get any better than this.” Folks who follow Deis’ Men’s Pulp Mags should probably look up this slim, digest-size volume.

• I must confess that, despite my growth of interest in the book following Kelli Stanley’s promotion of it in The Rap Sheet, I still haven’t gotten around to reading William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel, Nightmare Alley. But it’s jumped back on my radar, thanks to Andrew Nette recapping its virtues in CrimeReads. “Gresham’s book,” Nette enthuses, “is a masterful story about the art of the grift and the best fictional depiction of the carny (slang for the traveling carnival employee). But most of all, it is a stone-cold classic piece of low-life noir fiction, dark, visceral, surprisingly sex-drenched for its time, and utterly devoid of redemption.”

• The latest issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection is out.

• Three more author interviews worth your time: Walter Mosley chats with BookPage about Down the River Unto the Sea, which introduces private eye Joe King Oliver; Lee Goldberg discusses True Fiction with Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare; and J. Todd Scott answers questions from The Real Book Spy about High White Sun, the sequel to his 2016 border-crimes thriller, The Far Empty.

• Finally, when I wrote back in 2010 about Gavilan, Robert Urich’s 1982-1983 NBC-TV crime-cum-espionage series, I never thought I would have another opportunity to watch that show. However, I recently stumbled across three of Gavilan’s 10 episodes on YouTube—here, here, and here. The picture quality isn’t anything to write home about, but the sheer improbability of seeing Urich’s Magnum, P.I. knockoff makes up for such deficiencies.

A Hasty News Break

The last couple of weeks have been so busy here at The Rap Sheet, I haven’t had a chance to put together any of my signature “Bullet Points” news briefings. I am still pretty jammed up with work, but I want to mention at least a few things of interest.

• Not everyone remembers this, but the first big-screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon, was made in 1931—10 years before the better-known version starring Humphrey Bogart as San Francisco private investigator Sam Spade. “This first adaptation,” writes Mystery*File’s Steve Lewis, “as I’ve just discovered, follows the story line of the book just about as closely as the Bogart one. In my opinion, though, while very good, if not excellent, it isn’t nearly as good as the later one, in spite of the semi-risque bits it gets away with, having been made before the Movie Code [went] into effect. (I suspect that I’m not saying anything new here.)

• Speaking of Falcon, the blog Down These Mean Streets has posted an abbreviated, but nonetheless dramatic, 1946 radio adaptation of that tale, starring Bogart, Mary Astor, and Sydney Greenstreet.

• The latest update of Kevin Burton Smith’s The Thrilling Detective Web Site is now available for your perusal. Among the subjects of its new or updated files: TV Guide’s private eye covers; Mitch Roberts, “one of the best P.I. series you never heard of”; Ray Bradbury’s Elmo Crumley novels; Brian Vaughan’s Patrick “P.I.” Immelmann comic books; and a catalogue of “Private Eyes Who Won’t Stay Dead.”

• Apparently, Larry Harnisch, the historian and retired Los Angeles Times copy editor who has been quite critical of Piu Eatwell’s latest work, Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America’s Greatest Unsolved Murder, has been laboring since 1997 on his own book about the 1947 slaying of Elizabeth Short, the waitress and would-be starlet best remembered as “The Black Dahlia.” He writes this week in his blog, The Daily Mirror:

To those who might ask “Is there really anything left to research after 21 years?” the answer is “absolutely.”

Since 1996, the doors have swung open on many resources that were restricted or unknown when I began. Not long ago, I received material that would have required a court order to obtain in the 1990s, or so I was told at the time. Some questions can only be answered with painstaking research and analysis at the molecular level. A few months ago, I spent the better part of a week building a spreadsheet from the FBI’s uniform crime reports from 1940 to 1949 to determine Los Angeles’ ranking among the deadliest American cities. All for one or two sentences—an amazing amount of work that will invisible to readers.

I, for one, look forward to reading Harnisch’s completed text—whenever it’s finally published.

• Phoef Sutton (Colorado Boulevard) is Nancie Clare’s latest guest on her Speaking of Mysteries podcast. Listen to that show here.

• As we near the close of 2017, there are still more “best books of the year” posts popping up around the Web. Sons of Spade blogger Jochem Vandersteen has chosen his favorite P.I. novels of the last 12 months. Benoit Lelievre names his “top 10 favorite reads of the year” in Dead End Follies. Scottsdale, Arizona’s renowned Poisoned Pen Bookstore recently asked a number of well-known crime- and mystery-fiction authors to identify the best crime novels they’ve tackled since January 2017; the results of that survey can be found here. Crime Fiction Lover singles out its “Top 10 Nordic Noir Novels of 2017.” Literary Hub offers up a rundown of the best-reviewed mystery and crime novels of the year. If you’re curious to know Crimespree editor Jon Jordan’s five preferred crime novels, click here. And David Nemeth, after declaring that “best lists are bunk,” then proceeds to list his own idiosyncratic picks in Unlawful Acts.

• And sad to say, the group blog Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Living Room will be shutting down at the end of this month after a decade in the business. I don’t see any mention of whether the site will remain online in archive status … but I also have not heard it’s disappearing in 2018, either. Hope for the best.

“I Won’t Play the Sap for You”

In addition to today being the 50th anniversary of The Dick Van Dyke Show’s debut, it’s the 70th anniversary of the date on which the best-known movie adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s novel, The Maltese Falcon (1930), had its New York City premiere. That version, of course, starred Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor, and was directed by John Huston. It’s not only an incredibly popular picture, but has been named one of the greatest films of all time.

Rather than go on at length about the attractions of 1941’s The Maltese Falcon, I shall simply embed a brief clip from that motion picture. Below, Bogie, portraying San Francisco private eye Sam Spade, confronts his alternately seductive and scheming client, Ruth Wonderly/Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Astor), about her role in the shooting death of his business partner, Miles Archer. It’s a powerful scene, based closely on the book’s denouement, that loses none of its impact with repeat viewings.



Thank you, Mr. Hammett, for penning The Maltese Falcon, one of my favorite private-eye novels. And thank you, Mr. Bogart and Mr. Huston, for bringing that story so vividly to the big screen.

READ MORE: “The Maltese Falcon,” by Tim Dirks (AMC Filmsite); “Ten of the Best Fat Men in Literature,” by John Mullan (The Guardian).

Birds of a Feather Plot Together

This is a big year for fans of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. At least for fans of the motion pictures adapted from that best-selling, milestone 1930 detective yarn. Two of those films celebrate notable anniversaries in 2011.

Over a decade-long period in the early 20th century, three black-and-white motion pictures were released, all based on Hammett’s only novel about San Francisco private eye Sam Spade: The Maltese Falcon (1931), Satan Met a Lady (1936), and the best-known of this lot, the John Huston-directed Humphrey Bogart film, The Maltese Falcon (1941). On the Spade page of his excellent Thrilling Detective Web Site, Kevin Burton Smith supplies this background:

The first attempt, starring Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade, was a solid, if unspectacular film. Cortez played Spade as a smirking womanizer, too smug to possibly be taken seriously. But the women in it were well cast, and easy on the eyes. The film was flawed by an anti-climactic jailhouse ending that merely reinforced the notion of Spade as something of a shit. ... But there was a lot I liked about this version. I liked the guy who played [Miles] Archer--his being much older than [his wife] Iva made sense. And I did like the fact Spade at least appeared to have a sex drive (which made him even more credible as a shit to Iva than Bogart was). I thought the women on the whole were more believable (and a whole lot sexier) and the exposition a lot clearer (even if some of the book was MIA). But what struck me the most was how much Huston’s version followed this one. The identical camera angles, the set-ups, the framing of shots--even the way the lines were read are often exactly the same. And the 1941 cast looks like it was chosen for its resemblance to the 1931 originals. It’s like they filmed the rehearsal and ten years later Huston tidied up the rough edges. ...

The second version, Satan Met a Lady ..., seemed “incapable of deciding whether to be a screwball comedy or a murder mystery.” Many changes were made to the original plot, the characters, even the title. None were for the better.

Sam Spade is now Ted Shane, the Fat Man is now the Fat Lady, Bette Davis is lackluster as Miss Wonderly [renamed Valerie Purvis], and the Black Bird is now a ram’s horn. Generally considered poorly acted, forced and dull. Intended, perhaps, as a spoof, but of what? Warren William as Spade had possibly the biggest head in Hollywood, but so what? At the end of the film, having finally grabbed the bejeweled horn, he gives it a tentative toot. “Honey, it blows,” he informs Miss Wonderly. I know how he feels.

The third time was the charm. The Maltese Falcon, released in 1941 by Warner Bros., written and directed by John Huston, and starring Humphrey Bogart as Spade was an amazing, powerful piece of work. Okay, Bogey didn’t match the description of Spade in the book. He was too small and too dark, but can anyone ever picture anyone else ever playing Spade? In fact, Bogart was so good as Spade, that his later appearance as Chandler’s Philip Marlowe never seemed right to me. Add a memorable cast of colorful characters (with Mary Astor as Brigid O’Shaugnessy, Lee Patrick as Effie Perine, Sydney Greenstreet as Caspar Gutman, Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo and Elisha Cook Jr. as Wilmer Cook) and a taut moody screenplay that was essentially the novel itself, and you’ve got the making of the archetypal private-eye film. Decades later, filmmakers are still trying to crawl out from its shadow.

The film proved to be such a success that Sam Spade started showing up all over. Three short stories written by Hammett and published back in the early thirties (all pretty weak, compared to The Maltese Falcon), were collected and published in book form.

There was even a plan to do a sequel with Bogart and the rest, but it never came to fruition.

The first Maltese Falcon film debuted in theaters on June 13, 1931--80 years ago last month. Bogart’s version was released on October 3, 1941, which means its 70th anniversary is coming up in just three months. To celebrate these occasions, we are embedding below their respective dramatizations of one of the most familiar scenes from Hammett’s novel, the one in which Spade negotiates with the mysterious criminal, Gutman, for a “fall guy,” somebody to take the blame for a couple of murders. Roy Del Ruth, who directed the 1931 flick, and John Huston handled this episode quite differently, though as you’ll see below, much of the tone and success of the scene depends on the actors involved.

From 1931’s The Maltese Falcon:



From 1941’s The Maltese Falcon:



Without question, Bogart took command of this scene in a way that Cortez, as Spade, never did. And actor Greenstreet, portraying Gutman, is more credible and far less of a ham than was Dudley Digges in the same role. If you have a chance, watch these two films back to back (and throw in Satan Met a Lady, if you’re a Bette Davis enthusiast). But note that there are good reasons why the 1941 version is considered a classic, and its decade-older predecessor isn’t seen much nowadays.

My, You’ve Aged Well, Sir

In addition to this being Christmas Day, it’s also what would have been the 110th birthday of American actor Humphrey Bogart. (He died in January 1957.) There are any number of movie clips I might have chosen to celebrate his career, but since I recently had the opportunity to write an essay about Dashiell Hammett and his 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon, I decided to embed a scene here from the 1941, John Huston-directed film version of Falcon. In it, we see Bogart, portraying hard-boiled San Francisco private investigator Sam Spade, meeting the wily Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) for the first time. A reminder of Bogey’s performance in this classic picture qualifies as a gift in my book.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

A Gumshoe’s Multiple Guises

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up on a meme started at the Web site Weekly Geeks that asked bloggers to search out multiple covers for a particular book, those that have appeared on that work over time. I targeted covers from Turn on the Heat, the second installment in the classic Bertha Cool and Donald Lam detective series, written by novelist Erle Stanley Gardner under the pseudonym “A.A. Fair.”

Well, with all the recent hoopla surrounding the publication of Joe Gores’ Spade & Archer--an accomplished, if not perfect prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon--I decided to engage in a bit more sleuthing, this time searching out old Falcon jackets. In addition to the front of the September 1929 edition of Black Mask magazine (shown at left), in which the first part of Hammett’s original Sam Spade yarn was published, I tracked down 10 different covers from the United States and Britain, as well as (third row) Germany, and Italy:








Personally, I like the 1930 Alfred A. Knopf hardcover edition (top row, left) the best. However, the two covers in the fifth row down are definite rivals. My own library features the 1972 Vintage paperback shown in the fourth row, on the left. And the one just to the right of that (published in 1975 by Pan Books), which features a hand reaching for a falcon statue behind corrugated glass, boasts considerable style, too. The others--including the 1945 Pocket edition, with femme fatale Brigid O’Shaughnessy seen waiting behind a curtain, while Spade searches her clothing--are merely passable.

But wouldn’t you know it: Shortly after I finished compiling this collection of handsome covers, I discovered a page of Mike Humbert’s excellent The Dashiell Hammett Web Site where an abundance of other Maltese Falcon covers can be found.