Dashiell Hammett and the Movies

By William H. Mooney

Rutgers University Press

As the father of the hardboiled detective genre, Dashiell Hammett had a huge influence on Hollywood. Yet, it is easy to forget how adaptable Hammett’s work was, fitting into a variety of genres and inspiring generations of filmmakers.

Dashiell Hammett and the Movies offers the first comprehensive look at Hammett’s broad oeuvre and how it was adapted into films from the 1930s all the way into the 1990s. Film scholar William H. Mooney reveals the wide range of films crafted from the same Hammett novels, as when The Maltese Falcon was filmed first as a pre-Code sexploitation movie, then as a Bette Davis screwball comedy, and finally as the Humphrey Bogart classic. He also considers how Hammett rose to Hollywood fame not through the genre most associated with him, but through a much fizzier concoction, the witty murder mystery The Thin Man. To demonstrate the hold Hammett still has over contemporary filmmakers, the book culminates in an examination of the Coen brothers’ pastiche Miller’s Crossing.

Mooney not only provides us with an in-depth analysis of Hammett adaptations, he also chronicles how Hollywood enabled the author’s own rise to stardom, complete with a celebrity romance and a carefully crafted public persona. Giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the complex power relationships, cultural contexts, and production concerns involved in bringing Hammett’s work from the page to the screen, Dashiell Hammett and the Movies offers a fresh take on a literary titan.

In this ambitious book, Mooney seeks to give a broad-based sense of the influence of Dashiell Hammett’s writings on Hollywood film, demonstrating both great knowledge of and enthusiasm for Hammett’s work. William Luhr, Saint Peter's University

William Mooney's comprehensive survey of Dashiell Hammett's afterlife in the movies combines a logical core Sam Spade would admire with a story that moves as fast as the Continental Op. Thomas Leitch, author of Film Adaptation and Its Discontents

In this ambitious book, Mooney seeks to give a broad-based sense of the influence of Dashiell Hammett’s writings on Hollywood film, demonstrating both great knowledge of and enthusiasm for Hammett’s work. William Luhr, Saint Peter's University

William Mooney's comprehensive survey of Dashiell Hammett's afterlife in the movies combines a logical core Sam Spade would admire with a story that moves as fast as the Continental Op. Thomas Leitch, author of Film Adaptation and Its Discontents

WILLIAM H. MOONEY is a professor of English and Coordinator of Film and Media at the Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Three Early Films: Roadhouse Nights (1930), City Streets (1931), and Mister Dynamite (1935)

2 The Thin Man (1934)

3 After The Thin Man: From Sequel to Series

4 Woman in the Dark (1934) and Watch on the Rhine (1943)

5 The Maltese Falcon (1931), Satan Met a Lady (1936), andThe Maltese Falcon (1941)

6 The Glass Key (1935 and 1942)

7 Hammett in Retrospect: Miller’s Crossing

Conclusion

Notes