Dashiell Hammett and Sam Spade: the Character is the Man

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life. Oscar Wilde

Write what you know, that is what all young writers are told to do; for Samuel Dashiell Hammett, he wrote what he lived. Knowing that Hammett lived the life of a detective brings a more poignant sense of realism to The Maltese Falcon. From 1915 to 1921 Hammett worked on and off as an operative for the Pinkerton detective agency, serving on the scandalous Fatty Arbuckle rape case and on the 1920-1921 Anaconda copper mine strike. Hammett's Pinkerton tenure (would) provide the material for much of his fiction. (2) From the way he lived his life to the places he chose to live, Hammett peppered his writings with the story of his own life. Spade is the first of a new breed of detectives: rough, street-wise, wise-talking, chain smoking, hard drinking men who use women to gain their own means to an end. Sam Spade is the mirror mental image of his creator. Sam Spade is Dashiell Hammett.

Hammett spent sixteen years of his life living in San Francisco a fact reflected in his writing and which serves as the setting in the book The Maltese Falcon. For several of these years, he shared an apartment there with his first wife, Josephine Dolan. We see his knowledge of the city throughout the book. "Where Bush Street roofed Stockton before slipping downhill to Chinatown, Spade paid his fare and left the taxicab. San Francisco's night-fog, thin, clammy, and penetrant blurred the street" (4). Though most people know that San Francisco is foggy they couldn't tell you exactly how the streets are intersected or what they overlook without actually going there. Pull out a map and you can pinpoint most of the streets mentioned in the book. The "home of Dashiell Hammett and Sam Spade" in San Francisco is listed as "891 Post Street" (5) and is registered as a literary landmark by the Associates of Library Trustees, Advocates and Friends Foundation. Dashiell Hammett lived in this building from 1926 until 1929 when he wrote his first three novels: Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), and The Maltese Falcon (1930). Sam Spade's apartment in The Maltese Falcon is modeled on Hammett's, which was on the northwest corner of the fourth floor. (5)

By the time that The Maltese Falcon went to print in 1930 Dashiell Hammett was in the throes of an affair with Nell Martin: he was still married to Josephine Dolan. Soon after The Maltese Falcon was released Dashiell was to meet his lover Lillian Hellman, the woman he would live with on and off for the next thirty years. However, she was not his only lover as he was a lover of many women. "Women in life were drawn to the silent, sensual Hammett too, seemingly so kindly and chivalrous. He never overtly asked anything of people, which made them all the more eager to please him, pursue him, and seek his approval. He made it clear that he was sexually available. It was apparent that he liked women, liked sex. But coupled with his sexiness was an aura announcing that he could not be possessed." (3) Sam Spade had that same allure to women and was equally attracted to them; he soon shows that he only uses these women to get what he wants. Spade was having an affair with his partner's wife Iva. Iva believed that Spade killed her husband to be with her and when she thinks he has rejected her she reacts by sending the police after him. Iva calls the police and tells them that they will find out more about her husband's death if they speak to Spade.

Later in the story he sleeps with his client Brigid O'Shaughnessy. Brigid believes that Sam will protect her from jail because he loves her and is surprised when he says he won't. "She took long trembling breath. 'You've been playing with me? Only pretending you cared – to trap me like this? You didn't – care at all? You didn't – don't – l-love me?' 'I think I do,' Spade said. 'What of it?' The muscles holding his smile in place stood out like wales. 'I'm not Thursby. I'm not Jacobi. I won't play the sap for you.'"(4) And in the end all Spade has left is his faithful secretary Effie Perrine the only woman he hasn't appeared to have charmed into his bed. Spade, like Hammett has no moral compass when it comes to women. "Hammett remained very much a loner all of his life and lived apart from Hellman much more than with her." (2)

At this time in America men were expected to be tough; being sensitive was considered unmanly. "Men who were men drank, chain-smoked, ignored pain, and allowed nothing to come between them and their principles."(3) ""Dashiell was a wild one," his sister Reba was to remember. Men smoked cigarettes, one after another. They drank. Dash smoked and he drank."(3) In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade smoked approximately twenty-four cigarettes and two cigars sometimes one after another. "He dropped what was left of his cigarette into the brass tray and began to roll another."(4) Spade was also a drinker. He kept a bottle in his desk in the office, shared drinks with the police officers who came to his home and was drugged when sharing drinks with Cairo. The only time it appeared to affect him was when he was drugged and even then it took a while for him to go down. "Throughout his life Hammett was to be plagued by poor health, aggravated no doubt by his heavy drinking and smoking."(2) A fate, which most likely, would have caught up to Sam Spade as well.

The only difference between Hammett and Spade are their actual physical appearance. Dashiell Hammett is described as: "a leanly handsome bone-thin man over six feet tall, with a surprising shock of white hair framing an angular face and muddy-brown eyes."(3) "Only the flatness of his chest hinted at any constitutional weakness."(3) Whereas Sam Spade is said to have "the physical appearance of the Devil—a heavily muscled blond satan." (1) "The smooth thickness of his arms, legs, and body, the sag of his big round shoulders, made his body like a bear's." (4) Is Hammett attempting to compensate for his lack of physical health? It is quite possible and definitely plausible. Who wouldn't want to be the picture of health?

Sam Spade is Dashiell Hammett; a man with flaws, a man with character. Sam Spade is a man's man, a ladies man, a man to whom the common man can relate. In writing the Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett has written a biography of himself without overstating the facts of his own life. By drawing upon his own experiences Hammett created a caricature of himself that would last through the ages.

Sources:

1. Tough Guy; the Mystery of Dashiell Hammett.

Student Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2008.

2. Hammett, Dashiell (1894-1961).

Encyclopedia of World Biography. Ed. Suzanne M. Bourgoin. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.

3. Hellman and Hammett: The Legendary Passion of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett. Joan Mellen, New York, HarperCollins, 1996

4. The Maltese Falcon. Dashiell Hammett, New York, Vintage Books, 1929

5. American Library Association. ALTAFF, Association of Library Trustees, Advocates, Friends and Foundations, 2011. Web. Nov.30, 2011. .org