Dashiell Hammett

by Cline, Sally; Penzler, Otto;

  They spent summers on Martha’s Vineyard, where they helped Cathy Kober, whose mother, Maggie, was dying. “Dash,” she said, “really knew what it was like to be a child, and I don’t think Lillian quite got it.” 7 Dash’s comforting letters to Maggie were filled with his own excitement about the robins, insects, and flowers crowding their country life.

  When Lily went fishing, Dash cleaned their house, mopped the floors, then sat in the sun reading theoretical physics and Stendhal’s The Green Huntsman.

  Their friends noticed how caring they were. Hammett had a new openness, a chaste, loving quality. Lily flourished on their passionate affection. Those were the best of times. Hammett attended meetings about a movie deal for The Fat Man; wrote a report for Bloomgarden on ways to stage Sean O’Casey’s Purple Dust; and hired an attractive, red-haired assistant, Muriel Alexander. He would write.

  Hammett knew the dangers of Hellman becoming a “known Red”: trials, imprisonment, bankruptcy, censorship, loss of earnings, and more. Nevertheless, he encouraged her to help organize the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace, along with leftists Shostakovich, Leonard Bernstein, Albert Einstein, Norman Mailer, Thomas Mann, and Arthur Miller. The conference was held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City in March 1949. Predictably, the California State Senate Committee on Un-American Activities labeled Hellman a Communist party-line disciple. National censorship followed fast. The Second Red Scare continued to whistle through America. 8

  Hellman was forced to sign a loyalty oath, which was required of all Dramatists League members. The American Legion categorized her as an Untouchable, one of 128 celebrities suspected of Communist leanings. Hammett, sober, not yet blacklisted, was briefly courted to write screenplays. But with Hellman increasingly blacklisted, their financial stability was rocked. They watched HUAC namings and blamings increase. Yet, despite economic danger, they felt unrealistically cocooned, even blessed, when Dash’s first grandchild, Ann (after Annie Bond Hammett), was born May 24, 1950, on Jo’s twenty-fourth birthday. Dash, almost fifty-six, visited two weeks later. “Papa was gaga about Ann . . . he held and looked at her as if she were the first baby he had ever seen.” 9

  Dash took Jo to a lavish baby boutique in Beverly Hills, bought Ann luxury clothes. Then they lunched at the Beverly Wilshire. Lillian was as keen as Dash to bring Ann to Hardscrabble. The following spring, 1951, Dash flew east with Ann, cared for her for ten days, and Jo followed to stay a further week. Dash and Lil behaved like elderly married parents. It was as if their own aborted baby had been restored. Lily fell deeply in love with Ann and almost bored Dash with baby stories. She also softened her attitude about Dash’s constant contact with Mary and Jose.

  In June 1949, sobriety had allowed Hammett to start writing a new novel entitled Man and Boy. Sadly, his words dried up, but he began another titled Look for Something to Look For. His talent was now for titles, not follow-ups. Movie producers, however, were still on his side. In January 1950, Dash was employed as a screenwriter for Paramount to write Sidney Kingsley’s Detective Story, directed by William Wyler. On arrival at the Beverly Wilshire in Hollywood, a loving letter from Lily awaited him. He hoped sobriety would make him write. Feeling claustrophobic, shut in with his typewriter, he told Lily he loved and missed her. His consolations were taking Jo to the Santa Anita races, seeing Lee Gershwin, which revived painful memories of George’s death, and visiting Maggie Kober, who was struggling with the final stages of multiple sclerosis. Many evenings, he shared virtually silent suppers with Pat Neal. He gazed at her, made occasional witty remarks, and ended the evenings with a chaste kiss. Despite missing Lily, he spent much of his time in Jose’s company at the house he had bought her in West LA. Jo believed that Jose was still devoted to him. Certainly, Dash found solace and quietude in her presence, even as he missed Lily’s vivacity. He was glad Lily no longer felt threatened by Jose, but he carefully downplayed his times with her and with Pat.

  After two months of working on Detective Story, Hammett felt that, realistically, there was no chance of completing the screenplay, so he returned the $10,000 advance. He left Hollywood for good in June 1950.

  Dash worked on Lillian’s next play, The Autumn Garden, which reflected their joint memories, hopes, and lost illusions. While he did so, Hammett tried to come to terms with what he had made or failed to make of his life. Lily’s play echoed this precisely in portraying lodgers in a Southern boarding house confronting their illusions. Dilettante artist Nick Denery, the Hammett figure, had not finished a portrait in twelve years, the exact length of time Hammett had not written a novel. Hammett’s verdict was that the play was the best written by any writer for years. But he believed one speech, delivered by a Major Griggs, whose life’s failure needed correcting, was inadequate. Hellman’s version was that Hammett alone rewrote the speech, so that it became the play’s symbolic highpoint.

  So at any given moment you’re only the sum of your life up to then. There are no big moments you can reach unless you’ve a pile of smaller moments to stand on. That big hour of decision, the turning point in your life, the someday you’ve counted on when you’d suddenly wipe out your past mistakes, do the work you’d never done, think the way you’d never thought, have what you’d never had—it just doesn’t come suddenly. You’ve trained yourself for it while you waited—or you’ve let it all run past you and frittered yourself away. I’ve frittered myself away . . .

  Hellman made much of Hammett’s brilliance in rewriting her mediocre speech. But I saw all Hellman’s working drafts, which show that Hammett edited but did not write it. Hellman did. Hammett reworked one of her drafts. 10

  Hellman’s generosity in publicly crediting Hammett with more than he merited and his acquiescence reveal the changed nature of their relationship. She dedicated “their” play “to Dash” for tirelessly preparing it for production. She made sure that he was financially well taken care of for doing so. On January 2, 1951, she confirmed their agreement that in return for his assistance he would receive for life 15 percent of her royalties, which were 10 percent of the weekly box office gross. Sometimes, Hellman generously paid him in advance.

  The FBI were about to remove their golden time, which would never return. In July 1951, agents invaded Hardscrabble Farm, acting on information from a “confidential source” that four Communist fugitives who had jumped bail might be on the premises. 11 The agents interrogated Hammett. They found no fugitives. They saw no incriminating evidence. Finally they left.

  Why did this happen?

  The government’s stance toward the American Communist Party had toughened. The Civil Rights Congress had come to the assistance of eleven Communists and sympathizers who had been convicted, under the repressive Smith Act, of criminal conspiracy to advocate the overthrow by violence of the government. The men were appealing their convictions, and the CRC had paid their bail, using $260,000 of a bail fund established several years earlier to aid defendants arrested for political reasons. Hammett was one of the five bail fund trustees and their chairman.

  On July 2, 1951, when all appeals were exhausted, four of the eleven jumped bail. The New York Southern District Court declared the $80,000 bail fund posted for the four forfeited, but to arrest the fugitives they had to establish their whereabouts. The trustees were subpoenaed. They were expected to be asked the names of contributors to the CRC bail fund, on the theory that fund contributors might be sheltering the fugitives. But the contributors’ names were considered privileged information by the CRC and the trustees.

  The night before Hammett’s court appearance, on Monday, July 9, Lillian asked him why he wouldn’t simply testify that he didn’t know the names. “I can’t say that.” Why? she asked. “I don’t know why. I guess it has something to do with keeping my word, but I don’t want to talk about that.”

  He assured her that nothing much would happen, though he thought he would go to jail for a while, but she was not to worry.

  “I hate this damn kind of
talk, but maybe I’d better tell you that if it were more than jail, if it were my life, I would give it for what I think democracy is, and I don’t let cops or judges tell me what I think democracy is.” 12

  Maybe he did say exactly those words. But he did not, in fact, go to jail for being heroic about democracy. He was imprisoned not so much for refusing to name the contributors, but because he refused to answer any questions except to identify himself. For that, he was found guilty of contempt of court.

  The court proceedings, powerful in their consequences on Hammett’s health, on the day were woefully humdrum. Hammett probably did not know the whereabouts of the four missing men. But Civil Rights Congress documents held by the court showed that as chairman of the trustees, he did have a role in formulating policy and therefore had greater responsibility to divulge information than other trustees. As evidence, the government had the Civil Rights Congress charter signed by Hammett; audits of the fund signed by Hammett; and bail fund meeting minutes initialed by Hammett. It was hardly surprising this celebrated writer was their star witness.

  The trustees’ attorneys, Mary M. Kaufman, who at only thirty-six had been a prosecutor at Nuremberg, and labor lawyer Victor Rabinowitz, argued that the court had no jurisdiction to inquire about the bail fund, that such questions were irrelevant to the fugitives’ locations. They encouraged the trustees to take the Fifth when questioned about the Civil Rights Congress. All trustees at some point used the Fifth to remain silent, but Hammett took it to extremes. He knew the likely outcome, because millionaire Communist supporter Frederick Vanderbilt Field, another trustee, had already testified, relied on the Fifth, and been sentenced to six months’ jail for contempt.

  Hammett testified to his full name then stopped cooperating. When asked questions about the Civil Rights Congress, he took the Fifth. When asked questions about the bail fund, he took the Fifth. When asked to identify his initials or signature on documents, he refused to reply on the grounds that the answer might tend to incriminate him.

  The court, faced with his total intransigence, judged him to be an uncooperative witness in criminal contempt. He was placed in the custody of a federal marshal until 7:30 p.m., when the court reconvened to sentence him. Judge Sylvester Ryan asked him if he had anything to say before being sentenced. “Not a thing,” Hammett said. Judge Ryan sentenced him to prison for six months or until he purged himself of contempt.

  Hammett was taken immediately to the Federal House of Detention, West Street, New York City. Judge Ryan denied Rabinowitz’s request “for the contemnor to be released in reasonable bail.” The judge’s decision was based “upon the entire conduct of the witness throughout his entire examination,” conduct described as “contumacious.” Initially, the judge had been inclined to “impose a longer sentence upon him,” because Hammett had seen what happened to cotrustee Field and because he was chairman. Ironically, Ryan said, “I feel that I have dealt with him extremely leniently.”

  Mary Kaufman asked the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to intervene. She argued that, pending appeal, Hammett’s case should be treated as an application for habeas corpus.

  On Thursday, July 12, 1951, Judge Learned Hand issued a temporary order for bail of $10,000. As efforts were made to raise that sum, Hammett learned that the Treasury Department had filed an income tax lien for $100,629.03 against him for failing to pay any taxes between 1942 and 1945.

  Hellman gave a face-saving inaccurate account to Diane Johnson of how hard she tried and failed to raise Hammett’s bail money. She even invented a fictitious note from Hammett: “Do not come into this courtroom. If you do I will say I do not know you. Get out of 82nd Street and Pleasantville. Take one of the trips to Europe that you love so much. You do not have to prove to me that you love me, at this late date. D. H.” 13

  No evidence bears out Hellman’s implausible tale of her money-raising efforts. Her 1951 diary shows she was not prepared to mortgage her 82nd Street house, and she took psychiatrist Zilboorg’s advice not to put up any bail money herself.

  What was true was she booked a passage to Europe.

  Jerome Weidman, Hammett’s friend, did offer to put up the $10,000, appalled that others were too scared to do so. Kober, Lily’s ex-husband and Dash’s close friend, told Jerome that he himself was steering clear of the situation and Lily was afraid to jeopardize her chance to write a War and Peace screenplay for Alexander Korda.

  Muriel Alexander, Hammett’s loyal secretary, went twice to the Federal Courthouse with $10,000 cash. A rich comrade had handed over the money but wished to remain anonymous. When Alexander was asked for the source, she said it was her own. When the court didn’t believe her, she refused to divulge the donor’s name. Fifty-six years later, she still refused. With no legal precedent, Judge Ryan ruled that money from the Civil Rights Congress was no longer acceptable. After Mary Kaufman’s objections were overruled, Muriel withdrew the offer. On July 17, Judge Hand, petitioned by federal attorney Irving Saypol, revoked his order. Bail was no longer allowed Hammett throughout his long appeals process.

  The shiftiest aspect of the case was the court’s refusal to accept the bail money, which was partly at the request of the prosecutor, Irving Saypol, the nation’s number one legal hunter of top Communists.

  At the West Street detention center, Hammett worked in the library and was pleased to find that they owned a copy of The Maltese Falcon. He received regular visits from Muriel, with mail and messages from Lillian, who did not once visit him, but who immediately fired both Kaufman and Rabinowitz, neither of whom charged Hammett a fee. Next, Lillian hired thirty-four-year-old Charles Haydon to file a brief for the Appeals Court, then on August 3, she left America and fled to Claridges in London.

  When prisoner number 8416AK was moved on September 28 from the West Street detention center to the Federal Correctional Institute near Ashland, Kentucky, he was allowed to send letters only to his family, and Jo was the main recipient of his correspondence. Hammett therefore asked Jo to ferry messages to Muriel and Lillian. “I could tell he was surprised and hurt [about Lillian]. But not angry,” Jo said later. Dash told Jo that he’d heard Lillian was having a pretty good time despite her anxiety. “I didn’t detect any . . . heavy-duty irony—only a kind of understanding wistfullness.”

  He stayed in Ashland until his release. He was sick, exhausted, and fainted in the food line. Recovery took weeks, and he did not write even to Jo until mid-October. “He had to nerve himself up to write me. Even when you know you’ve done the right thing, the only thing, it would be hard to write your child from prison.” 14

  Jose and Mary wrote regularly, and initially Muriel but not Lily was on his submission list of correspondents. After three months, Dash asked for Lily’s name to be added. The Bureau of Prisons director contacted the FBI for Hellman’s suitability as a prisoner’s correspondent. The FBI sent them a document filled with Hellman’s pro-Communist affiliations. In October, permission was refused. Jo alone was a go-between.

  The one message Jo found it hard to deliver was her father’s instruction to tell Pat Neal “sometimes I’ve found it awfully easy to be in love with her in jail.” 15 Jo admitted: “I felt sympathy for Lillian about Pat. He had never kept that attraction secret . . . it really hurt Lillian. . . . He shouldn’t have sent Pat messages through me in the same paragraph as an inquiry about Lillian. It seemed disloyal to the woman I thought of as my father’s wife.”

  Hammett’s response to prison was more like that of young men talking about survival in a tough football game. When prison was behind him, Hammett said it had felt like going home. Jo said some post-jail romanticism enveloped her father.

  “Maybe more like he was back in his Pinkerton days—locked up in a Butte jail cell with some Wobbly . . . rubbing shoulders with the same kind of rough guys the Anaconda miners had been—illiterate and stupid. . . . He didn’t look down on them, but he was not one of them either.” 16

  But in prison, Hammett found nothing r
omantic. It was claustrophobic and demeaning. Though few knew, he had suffered from lifetime claustrophobia. He was scared of elevators and small places. Jo hoped having prison bars to see through might help.

  Outside, Lily had such troubles with the Internal Revenue Service that she knew she would have to sell their farm. In September, during a HUAC hearing, Martin Berkeley denounced Hellman as being present at an organizing meeting of the Hollywood Communist Party. Her professional career was now blacklisted totally. Things were made worse for them all by Maggie’s death on May 16, and Dash and Lily, who could have used each other’s support, were forced to grieve separately.

  Hammett was released from prison on December 9, 1951, ten days before the United States District Court refused his second appeal to overthrow his conviction. He had served twenty-two weeks of his twenty-six-week sentence, gaining a reduction for good behavior. Having lost fifteen pounds in jail, Dash was very weak and needed to be escorted home from Kentucky. He had hoped, even expected, that Lillian would meet him; she had promised Jo she would fly to Ashland. Instead, Charles Haydon arrived holding two sets of clothes chosen by Rose Evans, with the news that Lily could not come on her lawyer’s advice, she said.

  Hammett reported to the warden’s office, receiving a Greyhound ticket and $50. At Charleston, he met an ex-convict and gave him the fifty. Then he boarded the plane to New York. When it landed in a snowstorm, he staggered out, swept by waves of nausea, then rushed to the men’s room to vomit. Lillian had arrived at La Guardia in a limousine. Dash said it must have been a bad hamburger. At 82nd Street, she had prepared oysters, quails, and sweetbreads, but he was too sick to eat.