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DASHIELL HAMMETT BIOGRAPHY Because the basic detail of his life is so fascinating we certainly recommend a full biography as essential reading. BIRTH AND STUFF Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born on May 27, 1894 in a small town in Maryland, the son of Richard Hammett a farmer and local politician with a reputation for enjoying wine and women - traits which his son would inherit. Around the turn of century Richard Hammett made an injudicious switch of allegiance from Democrat to Republican in an attempt to run for public office, a move so disastrously unpopular that he was forced to sell the farm and leave town. After a short stay in Philadelphia the Hammetts settled in Baltimore where Richard Hammett worked as a sales representative. His mother Annie encouraged his literacy and Samuel became a voracious reader - an activity he pursued throughout his life. By 1908 Richard Hammett was too ill to work and the 14 year old Samuel was forced to leave school to start paid employment. A succession of manual labouring and clerking jobs followed until, in 1915 he took up a position as clerk at the Baltimore office of Pinkertons Detective Agency THE PINKERTON OPERATIVE The Pinkerton job was probably the most important influence on Hammett’s life and it is not an overstatement to suggest that these were the years that made him; as he progressed from clerk to operative he acquired the material he would use for his best work; his eyes were opened to some of the injustices of the world - experiences which would later inform his political beliefs; and he devised an informal but rigid code that would underlie his actions until his death. His health too deteriorated to such a degree that he developed a profound sense of his own mortality - the net result: a superhuman thirst for life. As a Pinkerton Operative, Hammett travelled the country, tailing suspects, collecting evidence and preventing crimes. He would have filed case reports on fraud, robbery and increasingly, on his role as a strike-breaker (Hammett even suggested that he was in Butte, Montana in 1917 when the International Workers of the World representative Frank Little was lynched). In the year following the United States entry into the First World War, Hammett became swayed by the patriotic publicity seeking new recruits and signed up for the Army: a decision that had disastrous repercussions on his health as on the back of the world-wide flu epidemic of 1918 Hammett caught TB. The next few years were blighted by a continual cycle of hospitalisation, recuperation and relapse. He earned a disability pension from the Veterans Bureau on his discharge and when his health permitted tried to resume his work with Pinkerton’s. During one long spell in hospital in late 1920 he began a relationship with a nurse, Jose Dolan, which led to pregnancy. They married and settled in San Francisco in July 1921, where the child, Mary was born three months later. SAN FRANCISCO Initially Hammett tried to continue detecting work with the local Pinkerton Office (and during this spell was believed to have worked on the Fatty Arbuckle rape trial) but by early 1922 his continual battle with TB became too much and a he resigned for the last time. Sponsored by the Veterans Bureau he signed up for a writing course and in a short space of time began a long campaign of magazine submissions. He targeted both society papers and the pulps - cleverly making a study of each genre to guarantee success. From October 1922 and slowly thereafter pieces were taken up and his work began to be published. Because of his background with Pinkertons the pulp detective fiction genre interested him - and annoyed him: he felt that the stories at that time lacked any kind of realism (in describing pre-Hammett crime fiction, Raymond Chandler famously referred to murder ‘with hand wrought dueling pistons, curare and tropical fish’). In October 1923 Black Mask magazine accepted Arson Plus, his first Continental Op story. Still, Hammett aspired to be a ‘serious’ writer and continued to be published in society magazines but his work for the pulps, particularly those featuring the Op began to get a devoted following. In late 1925 financial pressures began to mount - Jose became pregnant again and the Veterans Bureau had been reeling in their payments. Hammett started to supplement his writing income with work producing advertising copy for his friend, a San Francisco jeweler, Albert Samuels. His second child Josephine was born in May 1926 but soon after his health became so dire that he was forced to take up a separate residence to avoid endangering his child’s life. For Hammett this gave him greater freedom to write, but always popular with women and fond of a drink it also bought additional freedoms and although he continued his visits to his wife and children and rejoined them for a period between 1927 and 1929, this marked the beginning of a separation which would become permanent. THE WRITER By 1927 the TB had gone - for good, and with renewed energy Hammett began the period when the best of the Op stories were published in Black Mask. His career as a novelist began in February 1929 when Knopf published Red Harvest - originally serialised in Black Mask. The novel form bought a respectable audience and soon positive reviews were being written and Hammett began to acquire a new, devoted audience. The following three novels were published in the same way: a Black Mask serialisation, which was then collected and edited for publication by Knopf. The Dain Curse was published in July 1929; The Maltese Falcon in February 1930 and The Glass Key in January 1931. 1927 to 1930 was a frantic period during which Hammett wrote his best work. With his head down and supreme focus he produced four novels. When he finally put down his pencil to take a break the lapse in concentration which followed became more or less permanent and aside from the indifferent The Thin Man, he did not produce another serious novel during the rest of his life. THE SUCCESS The Glass Key was completed in New York - in late 1929. The now highly fashionable author had left his wife and family on the West Coast and with the TB in regression Hammett could set about wrecking his health all over again. He attended parties and met celebrity writers like S.J. Perelman and Dorothy Parker and began a drinking campaign that would become legendary. In the summer of 1930 and enticed by a big salary Hammett moved to Hollywood where he joined the mass of successful writers taking the big studio dollar. He installed his family in a separate residence in LA and began a relationship with Lillian Hellman, who under Hammett's tutelage would become a successful playwright. In his relationships with women Hammett ignored any claims on his fidelity and particularly during this period spent much of his energy and money on perusing elegant (and some not so elegant) women. It is difficult to imagine how much money he disposed of during this period, the movie rights to The Glass Key alone sold for $25,000 for example, but a succession of expensive hotel residences and subsequently a house in Bel Air together with gambling, parties, prostitutes and gifts for his latest love interest soon devoured the income. Hellman found much of this difficult to take but the two had established a genuine bond - which finally lapsed into a loving friendship which would last until Hammetts death. The contract with MGM resulted in a screenplay for the movie City Streets but the numerous distractions of Hollywood life took their toll and Hammett began to spend less and less time at work. He did however manage to complete some short stories including Woman in the Dark and in 1933 his fifth and last novel The Thin Man which was turned into a successful series of movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy. Despite the debauchery Hammett's stock was still very high and (for a considerable sum of money) William Randalph Hearst’s King Features Syndicate hired him to write dialogue for a new comic strip Dashiell Hammett's Secret Agent X-9, a deal which lasted less than a year as Hammett lost interest and became later and later against his deadlines. POLITICS AND WAR Hammett began to potter around with journalism and review work and continued to run through large sums of money. In 1937 he sold the complete rights to all the Thin Man characters for US$40,000. From time to time some of this would filter down to his wife and children in the form of presents but Jose would receive little financial help over the years. Hammett followed the events of the Spanish Civil war and in Nazi Germany and began to write articles and give support to anti-fascist groups. Some years previously he had been involved in setting up the Screen Writers Guild and the League of American Writers and since his early experiences with Pinkertons had leaned to the left in his political views. Despite many promises to his publishers, Hammett still hadn’t written a novel since The Thin Man and recognising that his lifestyle certainly was not helping matters he gave up drinking for a long period between 1937 and 1938 but instead of work came depression and finally he gave up and returned to the bottle. The ferocious binge that followed resulted in breakdown and hospitalisation and then a period of recuperation on the east coast with Hellman. Hammett was initially opposed to the US involvement in the Second World War but following the US entry in 1941 he changed his mind and tried to sign up. Unsurprisingly the Army did not really want an alcoholic lunger of 47 so he was turned down. On his third application in September 1942 he was accepted (the admissions doctor being a fan probably had something to do with it) and he started Army life as a private for a second time. Based first in New York and then on other bases in the US he was engaged in training work and was soon promoted to corporal. Finally in 1943 he was posted to a remote location in Alaska: the Aleutian Islands. Hammett actually enjoyed the life of routine broken only by letter writing and reading. He was made sergeant and asked to produce a newspaper for the soldiers based in the Aleutians (something which would have horrified the FBI who had kept tabs on his activities up until his enlistment when they lost track of him). The paper: The Arkadian, was a huge success and later in 1944 he also co wrote a history called The Battle of The Aleutians which received commendations. PEACE After the war Hammett soon slipped back into his old ways. During the 1940's, a number of Mystery Radio Plays had sprung up featuring the Thin Man and Sam Spade characters providing some additional income. His daughter Mary, who had grown up pretty wild, joined him on the east coast. Hellman did not like her and this together with the drinking, which had turned nasty, forced her to tell Hammett that she had had enough and did not want to see him again. She did: when Hammett suffered a collapse at the end of the year and having been advised by his doctors that death was close if he didn’t, he finally gave up - for good. Relations with Hellman improved and the next few years were spent reading and on small writing and political assignments. One of Hammett's political duties was as trustee for a bail fund for communists convicted pending appeal of ‘Un-American Activities’. In July 1951 four communists skipped bail and the trustees of the fund came under scrutiny. Hellman’s house was raided by the FBI and later Hammett was invited to appear before a US District Court to be questioned on both his role as trustee and on who the subscribers to the fund were. Hammett took the fifth and was bundled smartly off to jail. When he emerged six months later he was a much diminished man. THE END The final years of Hammett’s life were somewhat quieter. His health was poor on his release from prison and his spirits weren’t raised when the Internal Revenue Service presented him with a bill for $100,000 and seized all his income. He took charity with good grace and moved to the gatehouse of a friend in upstate New York. In 1953 Hammett appeared before Senator McCarthy (he was asked whether his books should reside in Public Libraries!) once again taking the fifth on several occasions. He had a last serious attempt at writing - the unfinished semi-autobiographical piece ‘Tulip’. In 1955 he suffered a heart attack and from then on became very frail. He spent his remaining time fishing, reading and talking with Hellman. He died on 13th January 1961 and taking up his right as a veteran of the US Army was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Hammett's death forced a re-evaluation of his career and commencing with a complimentary editorial in the New York Times he became a respectable figure and his influence on the Detective Fiction genre began to be appreciated. home | biography
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