They don’t make ’em like Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894 – 1961) anymore. A veteran of both world wars AND a Pinkerton Agent, Sam wrote what he knew. And what he knew was far more interesting than your average person.
A product of the D.M.V. (D.C., Maryland, Virginia NOT the Dept. of Motor Vehicles), Hammett was born in St. Mary’s County, Maryland but his childhood was primarily in Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Hammett left school when he was 13 years old, taking odd jobs here and there until he eventually joined the Pinkerton Detective Agency from 1915 to 1922. It was during that time that he took a leave of absence from the Pinks to fight in WWI, in the Army’s Motor Ambulance Corps. But most of his time during the first world war was in a hospital in Washington state far from the front lines due to his tuberculosis. Both Ernest Hemingway and Walt Disney also served as ambulance drivers during WWI, which I just find interesting and worth noting.
The Continental Op and Sam Spade
But it was his writing, not his sleuthing that he will forever be remembered for. The 1920’s was a time of change, where the verbose style of the Victorian era writers gave way to the concise writers of the 1920s like the aforementioned Ernest Hemingway. But, Dashiell Hammett arguably influenced Hemingway. It was Hammett’s first Continental Op story in October of 1923 in Black Mask, not Hemingway’s In Our Time that was published first.
Red Harvest his first novel has influenced more than just Papa Hemingway. The Coen brothers utilize not only Red Harvest but other story elements from Hammett novels and short stories in their films especially Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing.
Man, Miller’s Crossing‘s so good. “I’m sick of the high hat!” Rian Johnson’s Brick, was also very influenced by Hammett’s work.
In 1929 Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon which introduced Sam Spade to the world. Shamus Sam Spade was the ultimate private eye, and will forever be immortalized by Humphrey Bogart in his portrayal of Spade in the Film Noir, The Maltese Falcon (1941). If Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes will forever be synonymous with detectives, Hammett’s Spade is the American version. A tough, street-smart wise-ass who doesn’t care about the rules.
The Maltese Falcon was Hammett’s second novel and his most popular. He only wrote four others: the aforementioned Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), The Glass Key (1931) and The Thin Man (1934). The Thin Man featured Nick and Nora Charles, awesome characters who showcased Hammett’s comedic capabilities.
Here’s what his counterpart, Raymond Chandler said about Hammett:
Hammett was the ace performer… He is said to have lacked heart; yet the story he himself thought the most of, The Glass Key, is the record of a man’s devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.
– Raymond Chandler
Post World War II and the Blacklist
Samuel Hammett was also a political activist and in 1937 he joined the Communist party. This would eventually get him blacklisted during the Red Scare. But even though he was a known communist he was able to serve in World War II. Because of his name being Samuel not Dashiell, he was able to skirt around the fact that he was in the communist party. Dashiell was a communist, Sam was a patriot.
During World War II he edited an Army newspaper entitled The Adakian and served as a sergeant in the Aleutian Islands. After the war he was imprisoned for not helping out in the McCarthy witch hunt in the 1950s and it was during his imprisonment in West Virginia that his health deteriorated. When he was released from prison he worked in advertising in New York like Don Draper and like Draper his alcoholism and smoking got the better of him and exacerbated his tuberculosis.
Sadly the last few years of his life were that of a hermit. It’s sad how a guy who served his country in both World Wars could be deemed un-American by McCarthy. Especially when that veteran created the most American of characters, Sam Spade the unequivocal Private Eye.
But Sam lives on. Not only in his writing but as a historical figure in movies and books, you can’t have that interesting a life and not be fictionalized I guess. The 1977 film Julia has Jason Robards playing Hammett. He won an Oscar for that role. Jane Fonda played Lillian Helman, Hammett’s longtime partner whom he never married. The late great Sam Shepard also played him in the film Dash and Lilly in 1999. And of course, he was in The Fade Out by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips as well as colorist Elizabeth Breitweiser. Here’s the scene where he shares a drink and some knowledge at Musso and Franks with Gil a blacklisted Hollywood writer.
