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DASHIELL HAMMETT - MORE... NEW: Three heavyweight biographies were published in the early 1980's: Shadowman. The Life of
Dashiell Hammett Hammett. A Life at the
Edge The Life of Dashiell
Hammett There are two basic views of Hammett's life: as the struggling TB ridden writer/detective and as the worn out left wing intellectual. The standard opinion is that the Nolan book is the best general biography taking a balanced look at the whole life. The Layman book explores the early years well but is a little dry. The Johnson book is best on the later years which are covered in good detail. However given the choice we tend to the view that the Johnson book is the best of the three largely because Lillian Hellman frustrated the work of the earlier biographers and their books are the poorer for it - the Johnson book was written with her approval and she contributed much additional detail. That said all three books are a good read. Three biographies in three years seemed to have exhausted the genre but the 1990’s have seen some new publications with a new take: The excellent Dashiell
Hammett Tour by Don Herron (City Lights Books 1991)
includes a good biographical essay and many photographs from the San
Francisco period and although designed as a walking tour of San
Francisco has much of interest for the armchair reader. The recent title Hellman and Hammett : The Legendary Passion of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett by Joan Mellen (Harper Collins 1997) is presently unavailable. In the mid seventies Joe Gores
wrote Hammett which uses the writer as a
central character. Drawing heavily on what we know of Hammett's years in
San Francisco Gores creates a fictional case for the retired detective
to solve. It's fun separate fact from fiction and spot the bits of
dialogue that are snipped from Hammett's own work. The character of
Goodie Owen is drawn from Hellman's introduction to The Big
Knockover And Other Stories - She says to Hammett 'Tell me more
about the girl in San Francisco. The silly one who lived across the hall
in Pine Street'. Sharks Never
Sleep : A Novel Featuring the Black Mask Boys : Dashiell Hammett,
Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner (Black Mask
Mystery Series) by Hammett Biographer (and author of Logan's
Run) William F. Nolan, appears to be in a similar vein to the Gores
novel but at the time of posting we haven't read it. If enough people
buy books from amazon it will be our first purchase... And our second purchase
will be Beams Falling:The Art of Dashiell Hammett
by Peter Wolfe! FILMS: All of Hammett's novels have been
filmed - the most successful being John Huston's 1941 version of The
Maltese Falcon. There had been two previous versions based
on the story but Huston, directing his first film, realised that the
main strength of Hammett's novel was the dialogue, large chunks of which
were lifted straight off of the page and put into the screenplay.
Humphrey Bogart makes a superb Sam Spade even if he lacks the physical
characteristics of Hammett's original creation and the rest of the cast
put in towering performances - you'd almost have thought that Hammett had
Sydney Greensteet, Elisha Cook Jr., Peter Lorre and Mary Astor in mind
when he wrote the novel. The original film production of The
Thin Man (dir. Hunt Stromberg 1934) featuring William
Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles is another strong
interpretation of (an albeit weak) Hammett novel. In fact we think that
it makes a better movie than a book - MGM thought so too as they (and
Powell and Loy) made five sequels! MGM did quite well out of
Hammett's characters, not so Francis Coppola's Zoetrope Studios, who
hired German director Wim Wenders to make a movie based on the Joe Gores
novel Hammett (see above). The production
started in 1975 but was abandoned and later reshot in 1980 with
different actors. The film was finally released in 1982. If you consider
this is the same studio that made the hugely expensive One From The
Heart and Apocalypse Now it is easy to see how Zoetrope
ended up in bankruptcy! The film itself we recommend to the Hammett fan for the same reasons as the novel and actor Frederick Forrest does bear a startling physical resemblance to the writer. In some ways the studio bound production also pays homage to the movies of 30's and 40's although there is something initially disconcerting about watching a modern colour movie shot entirely on studio sets. Anyone interested in the strikebreaking issue would be
well served seeing John Sayle's excellent movie Matewan,
set in the Virginia coalfields of the 1920s. DOCUMENTARY An episode from the American Masters series features
Hammett: Dashiell Hammett: Detective Writer MUSIC English band The Mekons
are long time fans of the Pinkerton Man and have written a couple of songs drawing
on his work. Flitcraft from Fear And Whisky (now
seemingly retitled Original Sin) The late Irish guitarist Rory Gallagher wrote a song
dedicated to Dash called The Continental Op which is available on
his Defender CD. LINKS The State of Maryland (claiming one of their own) have an extensive electronic exhibit of book covers including those for the first editions of all of the novels and greater collection of Dell Mapbacks than ours. http://www.lib.umd.edu/UMCP/RARE/797hmpge.html Those wishing to pay their respects can visit Hammett's grave without leaving their desk at: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.com/shammett.htm For those truly interested in the Maltese Falcon (book and film) see the Maltese Falcon FAQ (the compiler notes that the F of FAQ doesn't really stand for frequently!) at: http://www.ejmd.mcmail.com/-1.htm Finally for a comprehensive bibliography visit: http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/biblio/hammett.html
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