Hammett and the Hardboiled Tenderloin

by Joe Donohoe

Don Herron's celebrated Dashiell Hammett Tour of San Francisco is a walk with an edge. It's a stroll through the Tenderloin where the author of The Maltese Falcon lived and wrote most of his fiction. For thirty years, Don has negotiated pilgrims past murder sites, junkies, crackheads and gang turf all while talking about hardboiled detective fiction. The hard edge of the Loin has been a constant since Hammett first wrote tales of cynical heroes, psycho gun wielding punks, and women who could kill as easily as seductively smoke cigarettes in the 1930's. As Herron points out in the tour, even the building facades from Prohibition are still in place along Post Street. As Hammett was the inventor of the hardboiled genre of mystery fiction (predating Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain) it's safe to say the Tenderloin is where noir was invented.

The French term roman noir was first used in the 18th century to describe gothic novels but was later applied to hardboiled detective fiction and its Hollywood counterpart, film noir. The Maltese Falcon (1941), based on Hammett's 1929 novel of the same name, was an early example of the genre. Noir offered a kind of nightmare mirror into American prosperity: a dark dreamscape in which the assumptions of materialism and free enterprise were questioned in a way that still resonates with us today. The maltese falcon itself was a symbol of wealth that elicited greed and destroyed the lives of whoever came into contact with it, perhaps echoing the economic anxieties of the world in which Hammett wrote - the eve of the Great Depression.

Don Herron began the Dashiell Hammett Tour in 1977. A professional cab driver, the tour is a labor of love. Initially one dollar, the tour is now ten dollars, but the walk is still a bargain for a four-hour, three mile stroll rich with the history and character of the Tenderloin and the writers who've lived here. From the Civic Center it snakes its way up through the Loin half way up Nob Hill to Bush Street and then down the Stockton steps to Union Square, finishing at John's Grill, the "Home of the Maltese Falcon," on Ellis Street between Stockton and Powell.¹

The walk commences at noon at McAllister and Larkin every Sunday in May and September (other dates must be scheduled). I went on the tour for the second time last May with girlfriend, Erika, to refresh my memory. The scope of the walk is encyclopedic with Herron shooting out facts like a Tommy gun.

"Here's a question," Herron asked in his trademark fedora and trench coat. "Who are the two most important mystery writers?" The answer? Edgar Alan Poe and Dashiell Hammett. The reason? Poe created the classic detective story with The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841, but the only real innovator in crime fiction that has come along since, according to Herron, has been Dashiell Hammett. The innovation? Realism. Hammett created the hardboiled, professional private investigator by drawing from his own experiences as a real life detective.

In fact, Hammett's life is as interesting as his fiction. He quit school at 14 to support his family with an endless string of odd jobs until, in 1915, he answered a newspaper ad stating, "Orphans Wanted." The restless 21-year-old, drawn in by the appeal to danger, soon became an operative with the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency, the closest thing in the United States to a national police force before the rise of the FBI.

In 1922, Hammett and his new family rented a flat from a bootlegger at 620 Ellis Street. Having contracted tuberculosis in World War I, ill health forced him to quit the Pinkertons, but it was during this period, Herron notes, that Hammett was seized by "the anomalous urge to write." He started submitting stories to the popular Black Mask Magazine where Editor, "Cap" Joseph Shaw, liked what he read.

Hammett peopled his fiction with characters he met as a Pinkerton. The agency placed him all over the country and in many dangerous and/or exotic situations. His long time lover and confidant, playwrite Lillian Hellman, would discuss in her memoirs all the scars Hammett had on his body from conflicts with hoods and lowlifes. As a real life operative, Hammett dealt with stolen gold, a stolen ferris wheel, a German spy and (since this was one of the primary functions of the Pinkertons) strike breaking. Decades later Hammett was asked how a former Pinkerton strike buster could end up with so many Marxist views and communist friends. He said simply that when younger "I was politically ignorant."

Hammett's fiction is celebrated by both pulp novelists and the literati alike. Many famous mystery writers have made the pilgrimage to pay homage to the acknowledged Master of the Trade. Like all Masters, Hammett's writing transcended the genre. The influence of his "no bullshit" prose is evident in writers like Raymond Carver, William Burroughs, and Charles Bukowski, all of whom utilize the dialect of the American streets, a technique Hammett helped introduce into fiction.

One highlight of the tour is a visit to the apartment of architect Bill Arney at 891 Post Street. Both Don and Bill have argued, with good evidence, that Bill's apartment is where Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon in 1929 and is the model for the main character, Sam Spade's, own apartment. The novel's descriptions agree with the general layout of the place with a fold out Murphy bed, bathroom off of a long hallway, and northwest corner view of the street.

The first time I took the tour, Bill read a scene aloud from the novel where Spade pours himself a shot of Bacardi:

"So I did what Spade was doing to get into the mind set," said Bill. "I had a bottle of Bacardi 151 and I poured myself a shot and almost killed myself and said to myself 'Man this Spade is tough'."

The Continental Op (short for "Operative") is the first and most primitive of Hammett's protagonists. Short, fat, middle aged, and ugly, the Op is oblivious to pain, sentiment, or greed. In one story the Op survives being brained with a gun and thrown off the Oakland ferry into the mid-winter San Francisco Bay where he treads water until he is rescued. Taking a ferry back to San Francisco, he doesn't change out of his wet clothes until he arrives back at this apartment for a shot of whiskey.

Unlike the nameless Continental "Op" who worked for a detective agency, Hammett's next fictional protagonist, the slick Sam Spade, is an independent contractor - a private detective who is very much interested in profit.

The film version of The Maltese Falcon, directed by John Huston, is how most people think of Dashiell Hammett. Humphrey Bogart plays Sam Spade, and Mary Astor plays the female lead, Brigid O'Shaugnessey.

Like any good noir story line, the film is loaded with moral ambiguity from beginning to end. Toward the beginning we learn that Spade is sleeping with his partner's wife, but it doesn't seem to matter much since he can't stand his partner and for what it's worth, he can't really stand her either.

His partner, Miles Archer, is then shot dead on Burritt Street near where "Bush Street roofed Stockton before slipping downhill to Chinatown". His body falls down a bare hillside where presently the building housing the Tunnel Top bar resides. This is the penultimate destination of the Dashiell Hammett Tour where the city even placed a plaque commemorating the incident. It reads: "On Approximately This Spot, Miles Archer, Partner Of Sam Spade, Was Done In By Brigid O'Shaughnessy."²

In the book, Spade, who is noticeably understated, if not indifferent to the death of his partner, must solve his murder if for no other reason then so he himself doesn't go down for the crime. In the process, he gets entangled with a crew of shady underworld characters and the eponymous black bird.

Throughout the story, he mouths off to the cops and shows no fear to any psychos he manages to run into. He is adept at playing both sides against the middle, having a quick answer for everything.

Spade reveals only towards the end what his values are and even then only with care: "When a man's partner is killed you're supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him," he claims. It was rare that such a complicated character showed up in the American cinema of the 1940's.

After the success of the book version of The Maltese Falcon in 1929, Dashiell Hammett seemed financially set for the Depression; however, he was broke by 1932 thanks to womanizing, gambling, and drinking in L.A. and New York. Concerning the womanizing and drinking, an individual who took Herron's tour once noted that "at least he didn't waste his money." In fact, he was estranged from his family by that time, but he still managed to send them money despite his hardship. Although he wrote several more books, his last novel is the one that made him rich again. The Thin Man, published in 1934, was transformed into a series of popular films starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as a wealthy (drunk) detective duo - Nick and Nora Charles.

At age 48, Hammett enlisted in the army to fight in World War II, having his molars pulled to do so, and was honorably discharged in 1945. After the War, Russia, America's wartime ally, was once again a bitter enemy, and it was open season on leftists spearheaded by US Senator Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover. Hammett was among the casualties. Hammett headed the New York Commission on Civil Rights, posting bail for imprisoned Marxists. When three communists jumped bail in 1951, Hammett was subpoenaed to reveal the names of Commission financiers. He refused, was held in contempt of court, and imprisoned for five months. His health declined in incarceration, and when he was released, the IRS audited him for back taxes. Hammett took it all uncomplainingly. He died broke and was buried as a war veteran in Arlington National Cemetery despite the protests of Hoover.

He lived as he wrote. By a code. And that code was this: if he made a decision he was willing to abide by the consequences and not complain. He was also willing to do the right thing and "stand by a partner" even if it meant he would be punished. He would expect no less from his detective heroes.

¹ Incidentally, John's Grill was burglarized in February 2007, and the original falcon replica was stolen. In November of 2007, a new replica was created by Peter Schifrin of the Academy of Art. www.johnsgrill.com

² According to Herron, a participant on his tour one year who was "none too bright" once saw the official city plaque, panicked, and started stuttering "A-a-a-ll this stuff is real man! No way! I thought this was stories," and took off running down Bush Street. Hopefully he wasn't run over by a bus.

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