ON THE TRAIL OF THE MALTESE FALCON

San Francisco has always been a place of both economic and social innovation. Included on the long list of the city’s gifts to the world is the hardboiled, Noir detective story. This genre lives on today in books, movies and on television. Did you see “Bosch” on Amazon?

We can all thank one man, Dashiell Hammett for starting this style and sharing it with us. Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in Maryland in 1894. He passed in 1961 in New York City. In between there’s San Francisco.

Following World War I, Hammett worked for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. It was his job with Pinkerton that brought him to San Francisco in June of 1921. Within a year he decided it was time for a career change. He wanted to be a writer so he took a typing class and was off and running. His stories and novels, mostly written in San Francisco, made him the pioneer of a new American-style of crime and murder fiction.

Hammett’s stay in San Francisco was both short and productive. He moved to Los Angeles in October 1929 after just 8 years. During that time he lived in seven different apartments. His most famous novels The Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon were born in the City by the Bay. After Hammett quit Pinkerton he supported himself by writing advertising copy for Samuels Jewelers and short stories for “The Black Mask” magazine. From these we were give such wonderful characters as The Continental Op, Nick and Nora Charles and, of course, Sam Spade.

Part of Hammett’s street cred is the fact that he was the first American mystery writer who had been a real detective. Many cases from his Pinkerton days acted as fuel for his imagination and the origin of his Falcon characters. Let’s start with Sam Spade.  The detective was a brand new character who first appeared in The Maltese Falcon.  

Some years after the book was published, Hammett said, “Spade has no original. He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and in their cockier moments thought they approached. For your private detective does not — or did not ten years ago when he was my colleague — want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent by-stander or client.”

And what about the name? Well, Hammett’s first name was Samuel, Sam to his wife and family. The last name comes from a fellow Pinkerton Detective, Spayde, that Hammett worked with during his gumshoe days.

Casper Gutman, the fat man, started as a real-life suspected German spy Hammett wasassigned to follow around Washington, D.C. In his report, Hammett said that he “was not a secret agent but the single most boring suspect he ever had to tail.”

Perfumed Joel Cairo comes out of a case Hammett worked in the southern Washington town of Pasco. He was said to be “an oily little guy” arrested for check forgery.

Sam Spade’s loyal secretary with keen women’s intuition, Effie Perrine, started as a woman Hammett met in San Diego. She tried to talk him into becoming her partner in a drug smuggling business.  

Dispatched by Pinkerton to Stockton to investigate a gas station robbery, Hammett took up the case of the “Midget Bandit”. After the robbery, the gas station owner described the criminal “a runt”. The local papers took this and ran with it and dubbed the robber with his tiny moniker. The thief had escaped safely to Los Angeles but became so obsessed with his description in numerous newspaper articles that he returned to Stockton to prove the gas station owner wrong. Hammett saw him on the street and grabbed him up. This criminal with a chip on his shoulder became Casper Gutman’s gunsel, Wilmer Cook.

To celebrate the first Noir detective, the next HEAD Trip is scheduled for Saturday, February 28. We’ll meet at the Starbucks at 52 California Street. It’s across from the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Gather there at 12:30pm. Yes, I know it’s not a bar but don’t worry. We’ll find one along the way.

Wear your walking shoes. The whole trek will be around five miles with a hill or two. It’s San Francisco after all. Our adventure will include a cable car ride so bring $6 cash or your Clipper Card.

We’ll stop for a late lunch at John’s Grill. This city eatery opened in 1908 and has fully embraced its Falcon heritage. In the book, Sam Spade “…went into John’s Grill, asked the waiter to hurry his order of chops, baked potato, and sliced tomatoes…” They even have one of the movie Falcons on display. Check out their menu at http://johnsgrill.com/ .

We’re going to make lunch reservations, so please RSVP to your HEAD Planning Team asap!

See you on Saturday!