Word: hammett
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Born in 1894, Hammett grew up in Baltimore and quit high school after one semester to help bolster his family's income. He held some odd jobs and then joined Pinkerton's National Detective Agency in 1915 at a salary of $21 a week. Pinkerton's kept detective reports anonymous, so exactly what Hammett did in the line of duty cannot be checked. He later claimed that he was once sent out to find the thief who had stolen a Ferris wheel. He left Pinkerton's after three years to enlist in the Army, but less...
...fiction filled a gap between the elegant puzzles of the Conan Doyle school and the dumb gore and violence of the pulp magazines. Typical Hammett detectives, like the Continental op and Sam Spade, got their hands dirty but kept their minds alert. They often found that those who had hired them were criminal or corrupt; they prowled, lonely paladins of justice, through stark landscapes of betrayal and greed. Hammett's stories paid the rent. His novels, especially The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Glass Key (1931), brought him an international reputation...
Even while critics hailed him as Hemingway's equal, Hammett was losing his drive and his touch. He discovered that he could live handsomely off subsidiary rights. The Thin Man (1934) was his last and most careless novel; it ultimately brought him almost $1 million from film and radio serializations. Hollywood kept recycling his material; the 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon, with Humphrey Bogart and Sidney Greenstreet, was the third film based on that book in ten years. Hammett had always shown a streak of to-hell-with-it independence, and success made him increasingly reckless. He partied...
...Hammett had any political convictions before he became friends with Hellman, he apparently kept them to himself...
Layman argues that "Hellman's influence" chiefly led Hammett into liberal, antifascist crusades in the late 1930s. This may explain his initiation but not the zealousness that followed. In 1937, like many writers at the time, he became a champion of the Loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War. By 1940 he had moved far to the left and was working to get the Communist Party slate on state ballots in time for the upcoming election. His conversion was swift and complete. Writes Layman: "It seems likely from the responsibilities Hammett was given for Communist activities that he joined...