"The Falcon" is one of Hammett's Sam Spade novels come to life on the big screen starring Humphrey Bogart in the leading role. Bogart had made a career of playing hard boiled gangsters, the hard nosed detective, Spade, and later in his career the hard luck Captain Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny" The Spade character has been portrayed in mirthful parody over the years in films by everyone from the cerebral Woody Allen to the best portrayal by the visceral Peter Falk in Murder by Death and The Cheap Detective.
The supporting cast of “Falcon” is nothing less than brilliant, to match Times Square at night blazing with neon, featuring Sydney Greenstreet in his film debut as Kasper Guttman, the Fatman ( a similar role he would play in Casablanca, also with Bogart)
It was Sydney's screen debut and he was nervous as hell. In a magazine interview with Mary Astor about "Falcon" she said that Sydney was so petrified when the camera's started rolling that she would give his hand a loving squeeze before the director called, "ACTION" and he would calm down and at the end of his scenes, he would break out into a sweat.
"Falcon" also stars the incomparable Peter Lorre who's film career was well underway after his start in German expressionist films. You know, those dark moody, mad cap False Maria cabaret Fritz Lang days of German filmmaking. Peter eventually went to England and appeared in Alfred Hitchcock mysteries before Hitch and Lorre made the Transatlantic crossing to the land of cinematic milk and honey.
Lorre's film career includes numerous cult classics such as "The Best With Five Fingers" where a macabre hand is the star of the show much as Thing was on the Addams Family, but, not as forgiving! He would also appear in "Casablanca" with Bogart and Bergman, and his old friend Greenstreet, with Lorre reprising his role as a nefarious sleezeball you love to hate, but on the side of caution, you also hate to love him..but, what the hell, It's Lorre! You gotta love him! Another Lorre classic is the film, "Arsenic and Old Lace" as the plastic surgeon whose credentials are somewhat in question, as his "patient" a psychopath played by Raymond Massey is a disfigured comic character straight out of Frankenstein, or Robert DiNiro's Max Cady in "Cape Fear" as he is drowning in the Cape spouting Biblical gibberish speaking in tongues after being burned by lighter fluid!
Lorre is Joel Cairo the effeminate but deadly mercenary who hangs his hat on Guttmans hat rack anticipating riches beyond his wildest dreams, but always those riches were beyond his grasp. Elisha Cook, Jr.(probably best known as the deranged paranoid narrator in "The House on Haunted Hill" plays the role of Wilmer, a bungling triggerman and body guard who suffers from an inferiority complex that is only deepened with each run in with Spade. Last, but certainly not least, the femme fatale, played excitingly by Mary Astor, whose real life wild Hollywood romps under the covers and lifestyle would make for a titillating tale of it's own rife with sexual abuse, a ménage or two, and heaping helpings of adultery.
Directed by John Huston, one of the true Hollywood bad asses and a man's man for all seasons, as long as they are hunting and hard drinking seasons, Falcon was guided with his genius to become one of the top 100 films of all time according to the Film Institute. One of the other Falcon "mysteries" is that of Walter Huston, John's father and legendary actor, in the uncredited role as Captain Jacobi. Other principles in the film include Ward Bond, who later will emerge as wagon master on televisions "Wagon Train" and Barton Maclane who made a career of playing "heavies" in numerous films.
So just who the hell is Sam Spade and why do the women fall in love with him, the bad guys fear him, and audiences feel they know him, and guys want to be him? (Must be the women!) To understand Spade, you have to know Dashiell Hammett, (who also created Nick and Nora Charles and the Thin Man series) himself a rare commodity these days. A man's man, a woman's man, who worked as a detective and could pump out pulp fiction novels faster than a Tommy gun can pump lead and draw blood.
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was Sam Spade! Born in 1894, he worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency until he became disillusioned. He relished he aspects of fighting crime and solving cases, but he drew the line when the Pinkertons were used as goon squads to break up union strikes, and usually with violent means. He began to become aware politically and devoted his life to left wing activism, including joining the American Communist Party in 1937 and was elected president of the League of American Writers, lefties all. His passion for rights for all citizens led to his election as President of the Civil Rights Congress in 1946 and the group and Hammett were declared subversives by President Harry S. Truman of atomic bomb fame.
Hammett was called up to the senate hearings to testify and name names, he refused and was sent to Federal Prison in W. Virginia. and later released. In the 1950's he was called again to testify before the senate during the McCarthy Era..the closest thing to Stalinist terror this country has ever had, except for the George W. Bush years and the implementation of the Patriot Act. (Under the Act George Washington would have been arrested for "terrorist" activities. Even old Joe McCarthy couldn't get Dashiell to talk. This time he wasn't jailed and it wasn't long until Edward R. Morrow brought the right wing beast down with few media salvo's powered by truth.
It was at this point Dashiell became a recluse and eventually died of lung cancer in 1961 and left us a literary and silver screen legacy of the things that dreams are made of such as equal justice for all, the balls to stand up to the government, and one hell of Falcon!!
There were three radio adaptations of "Falcon," One of them featured Edward G. Robinson as Sam Spade. Interestingly, though there are three versions of the film "Falcon" The first was in 1931 called simply enough, "The Maltese Falcon" starring Bebe Daniels and Ricardo Cortez. Then in 1936 a thinly disguised version called "Satan Met A Lady" starring Bette Davis and William Warren, but the classic that lives on and will in the hearts of film noir fans everywhere is the 1941 version where it proves..there is only one Sam Spade and only one Dashiell Hammet, together they, along with the stellar cast of characters, and superb direction by John Huston gave us not only a film classic..but one that is the stuff that Hollywood dreams are made of.