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THE MALTESE  FALCON

CONTINUED (click here for part one)

PART TWO: THE FALCON ON FILM

Most everyone has heard of The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart as detective Sam Spade.  Directed by John Huston, it was released by Warner Brothers in 1941, and went on to be named one of the 100 best American movies of all time by the American Film Institute. But only the most hardcore film buff would be aware that Warner Brothers had already made two unsuccessful versions of Falcon, both of which are virtually unknown today.

DANGEROUS FEMALE (1931)

Oringinally called The Maltese Falcon, but later retitled for TV reruns.  Ricardo Cortez plays Spade as a smooth-talking ladies' man in the first film version. Follows the plot of the novel fairly closely, but does not use much of Hammett's crisp dialogue.  Some interesting innovations:  Miles Archer was aware of Spade's ongoing affair with Mrs. Archer.  Spade produces a witness who actually saw "Miss Wonderly" gun down Archer.  And cracking the case results in Spade being hired by the district attorney's office!  For more details, click here.

SATAN MET A LADY (1936)

Intended as a “madcap romp” (or something), the plot is stripped to bare bones, with all characters reworked and renamed.  Even the falcon itself has transmorphed into a bejeweled horn.  Bette Davis called this film the “biggest dog” of her career.  For more details, click here.

THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)

Three different posters for John Huston's Falcon.  Note the typical Hollywood hype:  "A story as EXPLOSIVE as his BLAZING automatics!"  "He's a KILLER when he HATES!"  In actual fact, only a single shot is fired on camera, and it wasn't Spade holding the gun.

Seldom has a movie so perfectly captured the feeling of a book.  Brigid O'Shaugnessy, Caspar Gutman and Joel Cairo were so smoothly translated to the screen that some people must've assumed the book was written after the movie. And even though the novel's Spade was tall, blond and built like a bear, Humphrey Bogart made the role his own.  It's not impossible to read the novel without hearing Bogart's voice... but it's pretty darn hard!  For more details, click here.

THE MOVIE IN VARIOUS FORMATS

1) Super-8 film with sound 2) Record album of dialogue from the soundtrack

3) Cartrivision (an obscure early-1970s format) 4) Laserdisk

5) RCA SelectaVision videodisk 6) VHS videocassette 7) a different VHS videocassette 8) UK videocassette in PAL format

9) Video CD 10) DVD 11) Korean DVD

"FLITCRAFT"

While the 1941 film follows Hammett’s novel closely, there are some differences.  One is the ending: nowhere in the book does Spade comment that the falcon is “the stuff that dreams are made of.”  Hammett’s ending is more downbeat, showing an emotionally exhausted Spade returning to his familiar office and secretary, to continue the same life he had before he encountered Brigid O’Shaughnessy.  He may have toyed briefly with the idea of running off with Brigid (and a pile of money), but now he is back to reality as he knows it. Another difference was the omission of the "Flitcraft" story.  In chapter seven of the novel, Spade tells Brigid of a seemingly unrelated case from earler in his career.  Charles Flitcraft, a successful Tacoma business owner and family man, had disappeared, following a near-death experience: a beam falling from a construction site had impacted the sidewalk mere inches from him.  He could easily have been killed, but random chance dealt him nothing more than a scraped cheek.  Shaken, Flitcraft rethought his entire life, and decided to drop out of sight and roam the world as a free spirit.  This lasted for a few years, but eventually he drifted back to Washington state, not far from Tacoma.  He remarried, started a new business, and apparently never noticed that his “new” life strongly resembled his old one. Bottom line: Flitcraft couldn’t change who he fundamentally was, any more than Spade could.

BOOKS ABOUT THE MALTESE FALCON

1) John Huston's The Maltese Falcon, by Richard J. Arnobile, 1974 2) The Maltese Falcon, John Huston, Director, edited by William Luhr, 1995 3) Monarch Notes: Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, by Walter James Miller, 1988 4) Hollywood Classics: The Maltese Falcon, by Marie Cahill, 1991

5) Literary Masterpieces, Volume 3, by Richard Layman, 2000 6) Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 280, by Richard Layman, 2003 7) Discovering The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade, by Richard Layman, 2005

MOVIE SPOOFS

The Maltese Bippy (1969): Except for the title, this film has nothing whatsoever to do with The Maltese Falcon; it's one of those 1960s “family comedies” with the required sniggering innuendo.  Rowan & Martin (of TV’s Laugh-In) spend the night in a gothic mansion, where strange (if not particularly funny) things happen. The Black Bird (1975): In this comedy, George Segal plays Sam Spade Jr, working out of the same office that his legendary father once occupied.  Effie Perine is still the secretary, again played by a now-much-older Lee Patrick.  Elisha Cook Jr, another member of the original cast, is also on hand. The Cheap Detective (1978): Peter Falk delivers a hilarious Bogie impression, while blending the plots of Falcon, The Big Sleep  and Casablanca. A sequel-of-sorts to 1976’s Murder by Death (where Falk played a similar role), both films were written by Neil Simon.

A PART OF THE AMERICAN PSYCHE

1) Maltese Falcon cigars 2) Pop art print by artist Es Qui (2002) 3) 1984 heavy metal album 4) "Maltese Falcon" Daylily

5) Bar glass from John's Grill 6) Sam Spade alarm clock, apparently designed by George Jetson 7) "Host A Murder"-type role-playing game 8) 1994 calendar

9) 1946 comic book 10) Album of the movie's musical score 11) Maltese Falcon jewelry 12) Advertisment featuring a Bogart look-alike 13) Recording of a 1943 radio production of Falcon, starring... Edward G. Robinson??

14) Maltese Falcon trading card (1970s) 15) 1984 Japanese rock album 16) Here's an oddball item:  Obviously an American bald eagle, the words "Maltese Falcon" are painted along the bottom.  Even stranger:  it was made in Malta!

THE MALTESE FALCON SOCIETY

The Maltese Falcon Society was a San Francisco-based organization that existed off and on from 1977 through the 1980s.  It served as a forum for fans of Dashiell Hammett in particular and hard-boiled detective fiction in general. Meeting at John’s Grill on Ellis Street (where Sam Spade dined on chops, baked potato and sliced tomatoes in Chapter XVII of Falcon), the Society had a variety of guest speakers, including hard-boiled novelist Charles Willeford.  The Society folded for good in the late 1980s. The Society may be gone, but  John's Grill is still "The Home of the Maltese Falcon."  Their second floor dining room is a practically a Falcon museum, with many large blow-ups of scenes from the film adorning the walls.  A replica of the black bird itself is displayed prominently, along with a selection of Hammett's books.

SAM SPADE AFTER THE FALCON

Even though a Falcon sequel never materialized (either in novel or movie form), Sam Spade carried on.  Hammett revived the character in the 1930s for three short stories, and during the 1940s, The Adventures of Sam Spade was a popular radio show, starring Howard Duff.

LINKS TO OTHER FALCON-RELATED SITES CAN BE FOUND ON MY LINKS PAGE!