Hammett died virtually penniless. For years, his sole income had been his veteran’s pension: $131.10 monthly. On his death, there were liens against his estate, mostly for back taxes of more than $220,000. His only assets were his five novels, his many short stories, and the Tulip fragment.
On Thursday, January 12, at 4:00 p.m., there was a funeral and memorial. Funeral costs of $931.90 were divided between his estate, which paid $399.37, and the Veterans Administration, which paid $532.53. Dash was dressed in the tuxedo he wore for Toys. There were three hundred mourners, but not Jose, Jo, or Mary. Jose wanted to go. “I’m the wife,” she said. Her children stopped her, because they could not imagine her sharing a car with Lillian. As Jose cried alone, Lillian’s eulogy praised a man who believed in the right to dignity and never played anyone’s game but his own. He did not always think well of the society he lived in, but when it punished him, he made no complaint.
On January 13, Dashiell Hammett, veteran of two wars, was buried, as he wished, at Arlington National Cemetery.
In her eulogy there, Hellman said those who leave good work behind would be blessed. Hammett did, and Hammett was. Suddenly, the sun came out. His fiction was reprinted in the United States and kept in print. Tulip (as far as he had written it) was between hard covers. Europe discovered Hammett. One hundred and eighty separate translations were published between his death and 1975. In 2013, all his works are in print.
In 1928, young Hammett told Blanche Knopf that his hope was to elevate the mystery genre to literary excellence.
International acclaim today suggests that his hope has been realized.
NOTES
The following abbreviations have been used in the notes:
AK
Arthur Kober
DH
Dashiell Hammett
DJ
Diane Johnson
HRHRC
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
JD
Josephine Dolan (Hammett)
JHM
Jo Hammett Marshall
LH
Lillian Hellman
PF
Peter Feibleman
SC
Sally Cline
SL
Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett 1921–1960, ed. Richard Layman with Julie M. Rivett (Counterpoint, 2001)
Unless otherwise indicated, information about DH family history throughout this book is largely based on SC’s interviews and conversations with JHM, 2004–6.
CHAPTER 1
1 See Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Mencken: The American Iconoclast (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 190.
2 Rodgers, Mencken, 16–18.
3 Dashiell Family Records, Baltimore; also St. Mary’s County Historical Society.
4 DH, The Maltese Falcon, in The Four Great Novels (London: Picador,1982), 429.
5 JHM, Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers, ed. Richard Layman with Julie M. Rivett (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001), 101.
CHAPTER 2
1 Annie Bond Dashiell, born June 3, 1864, daughter of Anne R. Evans and John V. Dashiell; married May 18, 1892; died Baltimore August 3, 1922.
2 DH, “The Gutting of Couffignal,” in The Big Knockover, ed. with intro. by LH (New York: Vintage, 1989), 33.
3 DH to editor, Black Mask, March 1, 1924, SL, 25.
4 DH to editor, Black Mask, November 1924, SL, 27.
CHAPTER 3
1 Cushman was US Public Health Hospital No 59. DH admitted November 6, 1920; transferred February 21, 1921, to Camp Kearney until May 15, 1921.
2 David Fechheimer to SC, 2005. He interviewed the Hammetts October 12, 1975.
3 Fechheimer to SC.
4 Fechheimer to SC; JHM to SC.
5 Richard Layman and Julie Rivett, the editors of The Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett, wrote “February” in brackets because they believed Hammett had written the wrong date when he wrote “Sept.” Their evidence was that Hammett was transferred to Camp Kearney from Cushman Hospital on February 21. This letter obviously was written just after he arrived. Other bracketed dates have the same source.
6 DH to JD, September 27 [i.e., February] 1921; Friday [probably March 4, 1921]; March 9, 1921; March 13, 1921; March 21, 1921; Friday [March 1921]; SL, 8–15.
7 DH, “Seven Pages,” unpublished MS, HRHRC.
8 Unpublished MS, HRHRC. JHM refuted the idea that this story was based on a detailed description of Jose, as her mother never used strong language.
9 DH, Tulip, in The Big Knockover, 333.
10 DH to JD, Friday [March 1921], SL, 15.
11 For the next eight years, he lived in seven different San Francisco apartments, which offered him material for fiction.
12 April 24, 1921, SL, 17. JD and DH were married by Father Maurice J. O’Keefe before two witnesses.
13 Joan Mellen is the sole biographer who suggests that Mary was not DH’s daughter. There is no evidence from family, interviews, or documents that JD slept with another man.
14 The dates of DH’s employment with Samuels are in doubt. DJ suggests he answered a Samuels newspaper advertisement in 1921, may have worked there part-time. SC’s evidence from her HRHRC research shows DH worked part-time from 1923, with breaks for sickness, then full-time in 1926.
CHAPTER 4
1 William F. Nolan, Hammett: A Life at the Edge (London: Arthur Barker, 1983), 62–63.
2 DH to JD, October 4, 1926, SL, 30–32.
3 DH to JD, November? 1926, SL, 36.
CHAPTER 5
1 The Thin Man’s context, however, is 1932.
2 SC is indebted to Sinda Gregory for this idea.
3 DH to Editorial Department, Alfred A. Knopf, February 11, 1928, HRHRC.
4 DJ, Dashiell Hammett: A Life (New York: Random House, 1983), 70.
5 Sinda Gregory, Private Investigations: The Novels of Dashiell Hammett (Carbondale & Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), 33.
6 DH to Blanche Knopf, March 20, 1928, and April 9, 1928, HRHRC.
7 Richard Layman, Dashiell Hammett, Literary Masters, vol. 3 (Detroit: Gale Group, 2000), 26; André Gide, Journals, vol. 4: 1939–1949 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 191.
8 Samuels revealed (interview with William Nolan, 1930) that DH borrowed several employees’ names for his characters. Leggett was the switchboard operator. Employee David Riese became a fictional doctor, and even Mrs. Priestly in silverware appeared as a character.
9 DH, The Dain Curse, in Four Great Novels, 244.
CHAPTER 6
1 DH to Block, June 16, 1929, July 14, 1929, HRHRC.
2 DH quoted in Don Freeman, “Sam Spade’s San Francisco (Seeing the City Through the Author’s Eyes),” Saturday Evening Post, March 1, 1992.
3 DH, Maltese Falcon, in Four Great Novels, 401.
4 See Dennis Dooley, Dashiell Hammett (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1984).
5 DH, Maltese Falcon, in Four Great Novels, 404, 569.
6 In 1930, the population of the United States was 122,775,046 (Fifteenth United States Census, conducted April 1930).
7 Franklin Pierce Adams, The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys, vol. 2 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1935), 961.
8 Blurb about The Maltese Falcon on dust jacket of The Glass Key (New York: Knopf, 1931).
9 DH to Herbert Asbury, February 6, 1930, HRHRC.
CHAPTER 7
1 The Glass Key was serialized in Black Mask in four parts: “The Glass Key,” March 1930; “The Cyclone Shot,” April 1930; “Dagger Point,” May 1930; “The Shattered Key,” June 1930.
2 DH to Knopfs, July 19, 1930, August 14, 1930, HRHRC.
3 Richard Layman, Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1981), 133; Dashiell Hammett, 28.
4 DJ to SC.
CHAPTER 8
1 DH to LH, March 4, 1931, late April 1931, HRHRC.
2 LH, An Unfinished Woman (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 15–16.<
br />
3 Emily Hahn interviewed by Joan Mellen, 1993.
4 DJ to SC.
5 DH to LH, April 30, 1931, HRHRC.
6 PF to SC.
7 DH to Knopfs, April 17, 1931, HRHRC.
8 JD to Alfred A. Knopf [probably 1932], HRHRC.
9 AK to his mother, 1932, Wisconsin.
10 AK, “Having Terrible Time,” unpublished autobiography, Wisconsin.
CHAPTER 9
1 JHM, Dashiell Hammett, 79–80.
2 LH, An Unfinished Woman (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), 270.
3 DH, The Thin Man (New York: Knopf, 1934), 192; (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1935), 188–90.
4 DH to JD, January 22, 1934, SL, 82.
CHAPTER 10
1 LH, Introduction, Four Plays (New York: Random House, 1942), xiii.
2 DH to LH, about September 17, 1935, HRHRC.
3 “Closed Doors; or The Great Drumsheugh Case,” in William Roughead, Bad Companions (New York: Duffield & Green, 1931).
4 Quoted in T. Nagamani, The Plays of Lillian Hellman: A Critical Study (New Delhi: Prestige, 2001), 43.
5 Until now, no biographer has looked at the strong literary connections and the coincidental themes and patterns between Hellman’s play and Hall’s novel, but they merit attention, which I gave in my unpublished manuscript “Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett: Memories or Myths,” chapter 16: “The Lesbian Hour and Radclyffe Hall.” I gave a full analysis of the themes and subject matter in both the play and the book.
Both The Well and The Children’s Hour hold indisputable positions in the history of literary censorship. When the book was published and when the play opened, each was labeled by hostile critics as “melodramatic”; each was banned as obscene (the Well ban lasting from 1928 to 1948); yet each has a moral tone, a high-mindedness, and a sense of honor that make nonsense of such judgments. These trials and bans, however, had implications for the artistic merit of each work, which might otherwise have won literary prizes.
6 Irving Drutman, “Miss Hellman and Her First Screen Venture,” 1941 clipping, HRHRC.
7 Marilyn Berger, “Profile: Lillian Hellman” (April 1981), in Conversations with Lillian Hellman, ed. Jackson R. Bryer (Jackson, Mississippi, and London: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), 240.
8 DH to LH, November 26, 1934, SL, 92; October 29, 1934, HRHRC.
9 LH, Pentimento (London: Macmillan,1974), 154, 156–7.
10 See DJ, Dashiell Hammett, 114–17.
11 DH to LH, 5 November 1934, HRHRC.
12 DH to Knopf, June 4, 1935, HRHRC.
13 DJ to SC.
14 DH to Knopf, September 24, 1935, October 28, 1935, HRHRC.
15 New York Herald Tribune, December 14, 1952.
16 Pauline Kael, For Keeps: Thirty Years at the Movies (New York: Dutton, 1994), 252.
CHAPTER 11
1 Ed Rosenberg and LH, both quoted in DJ, Dashiell Hammett, 125.
2 LH, Pentimento, 170–1.
3 DH to Mary Hammett, postmarked January 16?, 1936; to JHM, postmarked January 20, 1936, SL, 97.
CHAPTER 12
1 DH to LH, February 1937, SL, 116–17.
2 JHM confirmed Hammett went to Jose’s house and talked privately to her in the kitchen.
3 DH to LH, September 7, 1937 (telegram); September 9, 1937; December 26, 1937; January 15, 1938; SL, 120–1, 127–8, 129.
4 Quoted in Mary Cantwell, “Comparative: Lillian Hellman, J. D. Salinger,” Vogue, October 1998, 214.
5 Margaret Case Harriman, “Miss Lily of New Orleans,” New Yorker, November 8, 1941.
6 Dotson Rader, Cry of the Heart: An Intimate Memoir of Tennessee Williams (New York: New American Library, 1985), 243.
7 Bennett Cerf, At Random (New York: Random House, 1977), 206.
8 Berger, “Profile: Lillian Hellman,” 241.
9 DJ to SC; Barbara Sheppard to SC.
10 PF to SC.
11 DJ to SC recalling her conversation with LH.
CHAPTER 13
1 DH to LH, September 27, 1942, SL, 184.
2 DH to JD, September 28, 1942; to Mary Hammett, July 15, 1943; SL, 185, 209.
3 DH to LH, October 1, 1942; December 14, 1942; January 7, 1943; SL, 187–8, 191, 192–3.
4 DJ, Dashiell Hammett, 172–3.
5 DH to LH, January 23, 1943; May 9, 1943; July 17, 1943; SL, 198–9, 206, 209–10.
6 DH to LH, September 23, 1943; October 17, 1943; SL, 228, 242.
7 DH to LH, February 3, 1944; SL, 277.
8 DH to LH, March 13–15, 1944; April 17, 1944; SL, 301–2, 316.
9 DH to LH, October 26, 1944, HRHRC.
10 DH to LH, November 18, 1944, HRHRC.
CHAPTER 14
1 LH interview with Fred Gardner, in Bryer (ed.), Conversations with Lillian Hellman, 107–23.
2 This FBI record of DH’s activities in the late 1940s comes from a twenty-page report dated January 17, 1950, submitted to Washington by a special agent in the New York FBI office.
3 DJ to SC.
4 DJ, Dashiell Hammett, 221.
5 LH, Unfinished Woman, Penguin, 1972, 210.
6 DH to JHM, February 2, 1951, HRHRC.
7 Carl Rollyson interview with Catherine Kober.
8 The label “Second Red Scare” refers to the hounding of left-wing thinkers and writers during the late forties and fifties by anti-Communist crusaders who feared America would be taken over by Communist principles.
9 JHM, Dashiell Hammett, 141.
10 Again, evidence found by SC at HRHRC contradicts reviewers’ and biographers’ suggestions that DH wrote this key speech. Some corrections to LH’s early drafts are in DH’s handwriting, but later drafts and the final version are undeniably in LH’s. Her generosity in allowing it to be thought that DH wrote this speech contributed to the DH legend she was carefully developing.
11 Carl Rollyson, Lillian Hellman: Her Legend and Her Legacy (New York and San Jose: toExcel Press, 1999), 312.
12 LH, Three: An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, Scoundrel Time (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 282–3.
13 DJ, Dashiell Hammett, 247.
14 JHM, Dashiell Hammett, 151, 148.
15 DH to JHM, October 18, 1951; SL, 564.
16 JHM, Dashiell Hammett, 156.
17 For Sale notice, New York Times, October 14, 1951.
18 DH to JHM, April 10, 1952; SL, 582.
CHAPTER 15
1 Tulip was published in 1966 in the collection The Big Knockover.
2 DH to LH, August 18, 1952; August 24, 1952; SL, 585, 588.
3 DH, Tulip, in The Big Knockover, 304, 331, 340, 347–8.
4 See Julian Symons, Dashiell Hammett (San Diego & New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), 153.
5 Evidence for LH’s handwriting: (a) looped letter I seen in LH’s scribbled word file on letter from Leon Auerbach to Edward Twentyman, July 27, 1966; (b) Greek style E seen in LH’s scribbled words on Cassell’s blurb, May 10, 1966; (c) Greek style E seen on letter from Edward Twentyman at Cassell to Robbie Lantz, July 8, 1966; (d) small loopedvs is a constant in her handwriting.
6 LH’s typed notes, loose page tucked into 1960 appointments book, HRHRC.
7 Quoted in Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson: A Biography (New York: Ballantine, 1989), 430.
8 DJ, Dashiell Hammett, 285.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Note: This bibliography is not a full record of works and sources consulted during the author’s research, but it includes all those referred to in the text.
ARCHIVES
Academy of Arts and Letters, New York.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles.
Arthur Kober Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin.
CIA Files, Lillian Hellman, New York.
City of New Orleans Official Archives.
Columbia University, Special Collections and Oral History Archives,
Dashiell Family Records, Baltimore, Maryland.
&n
bsp; FBI Files, Hellman, Hammett.
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, Texas: Dashiell Hammett Collection, Lillian Hellman Collection.
Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.
New York Public Library, Berg Collection.
Newcomb College Center for Research on Women, New Orleans.
Princeton University Library.
Stanford University: William Abrahams Collection.
State Department Library, Washington, DC.
Tulane University, New Orleans: Amistad Research Center; Sophie Newcomb Archives.
University of California, Los Angeles: Special Collections.
University of Southern California, Los Angeles: Special Collections.
University of Washington, Seattle: Letter Collections.
Warner Brothers and Theater Collections, Los Angeles.
William Wyler Southern Methodist University Oral History Project.
Yale University: Beinecke Library Manuscripts and Archives Collections.
WORKS BY DASHIELL HAMMETT
Novels
Red Harvest. New York & London: Knopf, 1929.
The Dain Curse. New York & London: Knopf, 1929; New York: Vintage, 1972.
The Maltese Falcon. New York & London: Knopf, 1930; London: Orion, 2002.
The Glass Key. New York & London: Knopf, 1931; London, Orion, 2002.
The Thin Man. New York: Knopf, 1934; London: Barker, 1934; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1935.
Woman in the Dark. New York: Vintage, 1989.
The Four Great Novels: Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key. London: Picador, 1982.
STORY COLLECTIONS
Nightmare Town, ed. Ellery Queen. New York: Spivak, 1948.
The Big Knockover. Ed. with introduction by Lillian Hellman. New York: Random House, 1966; New York: Vintage, 1972. Includes “The Gutting of Couffignal,” “Fly Paper,” “The Scorched Face,” “This King Business,” “The Gatewood Caper,” “Dead Yellow Women,” “Corkscrew,” Tulip, “The Big Knock-Over.”
The Continental Op. Ed. Steven Marcus. New York: Random House, 1974.
OTHER BOOKS
Secret Agent X-9, Books One and Two. Philadelphia: David McKay, 1934. Hammett’s comic strip.
Dashiell Hammett Page 19