Dashiell Hammett documentary 

Kathleen turner's voice is a joy to the ears.

Great to have so many people who knew Hammett personally speaking in the documentary. Another ten years and it would probably have been too late for many of them

I'm lucky to have a single volume collection of all 5 of Hammett's novels. I bought it in '93 at B&N's discount section for $7.99.

I have just discovered this amazing channel. As an avid reader of the "vintage" authors, I truly appreciate these documentaries. Thank you.

I respect Hammett for his writing and for knowing when to stop writing. Too many authors continue without the same level of story ideas.

Great video I loved The Continental Op and Sam Spade. His work as a detective made his novels and stories realistic !

A superb and enthralling study of the man, his life, work and demons, put forth via excellent narration.

Outstanding. In maturity, so many 'dots' are being connected for me in learning more about Dashiell Hammett: his relationship with Lillian Hellman (which I first learned about in the movie 'Julia'), continuing the legacy of 'Detective' stories from my favorites Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle from the English tradition to that of the American, his involvement in the 'Red Scare' and the McCarthy Era, and establishing a cornerstone of the classic Hollywood 'Film Noir' genre. And, of course, seductively narrated by the incomparable voice and style of Kathleen Turner, who would continue the Film Noir tradition to a new generation (myself included) in the modern classic 'Body Heat'. Thank you.

The first atomic bomb (Fat Man) was named for a Hammett character (Caspar Gutman). The second was originally named the Thin Man after another Hammett character but the size was reduced and it became Little Boy. The gun-type bomb, Little Boy used a conventional naval gun barrel. It was heavy because it had to stand up to repeated firings. Eventually they figured out they could cut the weight b/c it would only be fired once. That also shrunk it in size.

In 1992 I climbed out the window of my downtown Phoenix apartment and left behind a career, an apartment and a lifetime of connections to live in the Jemez mountains of New Mexico as an artist. I had never read about Flitcraft or what he did by way of Hammett's parable, but it now seems to apply rather sharply. I recommend anyone to do the same: climb out the window of your life, and start again. The ''second act'' of your play can have as little or as much to do with the first as YOU DECIDE.

Very well done. Kathleen Turner was the perfect narrator.

I read a couple of his novels decades ago, when I was reading plenty of fiction. This interesting documentary provides plenty of info about an unusual, distinctive life. Thanks again, Paul.

Unable to write for 30 years would have been excruciating

I was born after the Golden Age of Radio. However, I access, The Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective, nearly every day on my Echo Dot. Effie and Sam are great characters and Howard Duff as Sam, is my favorite. What great stories. Thanks for the inside baseball on a truly wonderful writer.

This documentary is a fine piece of work. It offers a balanced and nuanced view of the man, his work and the times in which he lived. It particularly benefits by the testimony of many who knew him as he was, not as the semi-mythic figure he became and even now, mostly remains. It would rate it as 'top drawer'.

Another one of the very BEST (A+) documentaries.

I love Dashiell Hammett! I try to find anything he has written ! So handsome 😍! I'm from Baltimore MD were he lived. I'm very proud of that . I didn't know that he went through the McCarthy torture !!! Dashiell Hammett fought in two world wars the man loved this country and McCarthy put him and other victims through hell! Dashiell we love you. Thank you for serving and your wonderful works 💗

"What's that man doing in my drawers..." I did the same thing he did!

Thanks for posting. Good stuff 😃

San Francisco changed a lot.. the biggest understatement of all time.

What a great program. Just outstanding to have interviews that knew the man. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Very engrossing. Have read almost all Hammett's detective stories and of course have watched The Thin Man movie many times. Late '50s a tv series was created with Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk. While not as suave and polished as William Powell and Myrna Loy with snappy dialogue, still fun entertainment.

Im here because everyone calls me this guy as my names Dashiell lol

That was great! Hammett is another favorite American writer of mine. Thanks for this video.

Many if not most editors required a set page count from writers, as if they were ordering from a fast food joint. It was up to the writer to stretch the meal as close to the goal as possible, without overpowering readers with too much onion. Luckily I began at the end of the 20th century, and not the start.

Nice documentary! I like all these interviewees, especially Joan Mellen and her take on Hammett's political commitment.

Dashiell Hammett was The Greatest!!

This is a fine video documentary about a man who has always interested me. Thank you.

This documentary is perfectly done.

Great bio thank you

Tragic yet somehow admirable and quietly heroic.

Great documentary. I learned a lot. Thank you for this.

If you are unable to provide captions for this, can you activate auto-subtitling?

What a great documentary. As intelligent as its subject.

I bet the San Francisco of Dashiell Hammett was wonderous.

Proclaiming New Orleans as an anti-Semitic city is based on what?

He could be regarded as the inventor of film noir. His Continental op, and Sam spade are the prototypes for the hard men in a merciless world that came to characterize the genre.

Love your documentaries. Are there any documentaries about E. E. Cummings or surrealist poets/writers?

Ok Im hooked, now I need a full biography of him.

Very well made, thank you. So, can we expect one on the Master of the Mean Streets?

Raymond Chandler made some genuinely bizarre, crabby, and ultimately inarticulate criticisms of Hammett. It was a lousy way to thank the man to whom Chandler owed his career.

Splendid Noir 🔎

Many many fine things in this. Inspiring.

well done

"He (Hammett) created the terms of their relationship before they even met." I pause the video to try to figure out what that means. Hammett was playing a role in his relationship with Hellman: he played the strong silent withdrawn and withdrawing (of love, affection, flattery) type of guy. His behaviour elicits respones from Hellman that include whining, whinging, begging, berating, and clinging. ??? That interpretation doesn't allow Hellman any agency: she's nothing more than the embodiment of a fictional character from Hammett's novels. I see Hellman as more dominant than Hammett in that relationship, for the most part, in spite of her clingy, beggy aspects. Hammett wrote female characters that he could bleep to, and was attracted to a living woman who had many of those sexy (?) traits. The two of them together were toxically bonded with rituals of alcohol and argument.

Hammet is such an interesting figure in literary history, one I'm sure would never covet my ox.

Striking how he found his "Girl with the Silver Eyes" in Hellman, who very much lived up to the role. She was as narcissistic as any of his hardboiled anti-heroines. But he was harder. Sounds like a stand-off to the end between these 2 literary giants.

Actually, there is a large Jewish population in New Orleans.

An amazing man,unfortunate that he drank,and had t.b.I wish he wrote more,but it wasn't in him.A camp counselor read Maltese Falcon,to my cabin,and it was incredible. Thanks,Dashell.

It is interesting how the original Maltese Falcon movie was less censored than the 1941 remake. We know why.😂

Thank-you*

love this

Maltese Falcon is an amazing movie. Love the word gunsil.

I've read Hammett's and Chandler's (admittedly small) output so many times I could never count. The first novel mentioned, Red Harvest, is the single bloodiest novel in our language I'm pretty sure. And it's fine literature by just about any measure.

Never knew all that about Lilian Helman. Thanks

Sounds like a wonderful writer unique and special.

The maltese falcon the classic film noir. Irreplaceable mystery writer with characters framed in the language of corruption. He is unforgettable and he should have been an anarchist in his soul.

Read Red Harvest...you'll see what the fuss is about. He's the real deal.

Why can't anyone pronounce Dashiell correctly??? They always ignore the i as if it's not even there... the i isn't silent...

I seem to have missed the part about Hammett and Hellman being active members of the Communist Party.

I knew I headbanging in my kid days I know it means a good start when I was at work. Think o don't have knowledge like that it not agai st the law to get on top someone when he z I could.

His girlfriend was Lillian Hellman a great writer herself.

Pretty cool

Thanks; I thoroughly enjoyed your documentary. As a huge fan who has read just about everything he produced, but without agreeing with him politically, I still consider him a great, although very flawed American patriot. But as a writer of detective fiction, he has no superior, and he was a true original who lived according to his code.

27:38 Victor Moore famous for "Swing Time" with Fred Astaire.

The things you don't know.....sad.

Who is the woman wearing the pearl necklace who comments in several places? She is brilliant.

The narrator sounds a lot like Barbara Stanwyck...

I've been a voracious reader of all the detective story writers. I think he, like Hemingway, simply ran out of product. Alcohol was an excuse for both Hammett and Hemingway, and not a destroyer of their talent. Hellman had a style of her own and used it well. She produced writing for a living until she decided to quit. The interviewee who slammed Hellman isn't capable of astuteness, as she's protecting a bias of her own writing. In short, it's her opinion, nothing else. Hammett, like Hemingway, had his tome in the sun, and faded, as did all the writers who couldn't produce enough for Holly Wood's demands.

Is it Kathleen Turner's voice?

Kathleen Turner sounds like Patricia Neal.

Dashiell Hammit was the best mystery writer period end of story.

What a name, it just sounds like his professional role. Important to realize, many whom have Physical Material Success, seem to also have a Life Journey ✓ on the subject of "Experiencing a Spiritual Awakening". Spiritual (not necessarily a Religion, or Religious Spiritual, although it encompasses a greater understanding of the area), Spiritual, in terms of, learning the greater reality of the Universal Laws, the Quantum Physics Science understanding, the who/what we truly are, that is we know as ourselves, and a conception of Nonphysical, of the Spirit/Soul/Inner Being/Higher Self, that which is washed from memory, in most, upon our entering into this Human Vessel and experiencing the Physical Journey. Discovering the "Universal Law of Attraction" being key, and realizing the fact it has such a full value in the whole of the Universe, certainly in Everyone's personal reality and Experiences. Often it requires a something poignant to initial the focus on the subject. The value of this will be Realized and known as far more important than the Material Successes. ... and then almost always, there's opportunities to again experience material monetary Abundance. Harmony and Higher Mind 🔑

There is no "American male mystique".

It's bugging me: who's actor reading 📚 excerpts of novels? Straythairn? (Who was born in SF) Small world.

Dashiell Hammett's writing carries more along the lines of realism, compared with other authors of hardboiled detective fiction.

I didn’t know man carrying thing made documentaries

Did someone add the annoying music before uploading on yt ???

S.O.Swho was the actress in the scene when the men didn't know her name?

Howard Duff - Sam Spade.

💙💙💙💙💙

Diane Johnson looks and sounds like Meryl Streep

leaves his family to live with a mistress in NY state. Hammett is the first person Ive ever heard of that had TB that didn't move to the Southwest. Hellman must have been seriously self-centered or Hammett was a fool.

He was a very nice looking man. He looked aristocratic!🙄

Was his wife by any chance ? a young war widow? I had heard that she was. Interesting that he continued to support her all his life.

Is that Straithairn narrating?

I agree very Well done. I always Preferred Raymond Chandler as a writer, But Hammett is undeniably great!

Corruption was abundant.... nothing's changed

Barbara Stanwyck no it's Kathleen Turner.

Great documentary on Hammett.

Sorry he spent even a little time as a Pinkerton thug, but, heck, we all have to start something somewhere.

Is it ever possible to get through a book, article, or video without being dragged through the wailing semite scream of personal agony? Oh, I've got the Anglo/Celtic blues, and must halt the familiar scene.

I read about 400 words a minute. The Falcon I ate in three hours. The reason Hammet sounds so good today is we talk like that now. Everyone started talking like that when they they saw it. For 90Years we have talked what he wrote. I saw the tiny apartment in Seattle's Chinatown where he wrote. It's quite a neighborhood! My father wanted to be him and my mother married him, my Dad. They even went to Mexico. I grew up with Beats in my house. Of course I'm weird as hell.

I think it’s time to talk about the New Blacklist that is responsible for the nadir Hollywood has been in most of my adult life.

Just loving the Jewish cult tropes in this. The talk of "True socialism" indeed.

He drank his talent away and what was lett, Hellman took and used as her own since she had none. She used him, but he was a willing dupe.

47:03 Evil Communists looking evil.

Great writer. Try doing the type of writing he did . Good luck….. Hey, I’ll bet youze mugs don’t know who the thin man is.

Typical American! “Hammer may have written the original private detective” what! He was about 30 to 40 years too late

snitches get stitches