I mentioned in a previous message to my fellow Rara-Avians
that Richard Layman's book Discovering The Maltese Falcon and
Sam Spade was going to come out in the future, but looking
through my notes I found that I never informed everyone that
the book actually has come out.
To rectify my omission:
Discovering The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade, a richly
illustrated new paperback ($19.95 U.S./$26.95 Canada; 376
pages; ISBN 0-9725898-6-4), edited by Richard Layman,
uncovers from institutional and private archives a wealth of
revelations about the book and film versions of The Maltese
Falcon, its author Dashiell Hammett, and his influential
hero, detective Sam Spade.
Layman crams his book with fascinating facts, and provides
hundreds of never-before-published photos, documents, and
original source materials, including production notes for the
three movie versions.
My favorite description of the book came from Kenneth Turan
in the L.A. Times, who called it "a treasure beyond price for
fans of both the classic Hammett novel and the three (that's
right, three) film versions of the doomed quest for a black
bird. An incredible amalgam of photos, memos, letters,
reviews, whatever, this will make fans of the book or the
film gasp as one unexpected delight succeeds another. With
this book, wonders really do never cease."
A few of the many surprises provided:
• For rights to publish the now-famous novel (which has sold
more than 4.5 million copies in English alone), publisher
Alfred A. Knopf paid author Hammett an advance of
nothing.
• The sculptor who created the legendary statuette of the
black bird for the 1941 Humphrey Bogart movie may have been
an accomplice of the Black Dahlia murderer and the killer of
author James Ellroy's mother.
• Hammett's working notes (printed here for the first time)
for his first, but never-finished novel, The Secret Emperor,
show that it included elements he later used in The Maltese
Falcon and The Glass Key.
• About the same time that Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon,
he also wrote "The Boundaries of Science and Philosophy,"
published here for the first time.
• More than two thousand changes were made to the original
Black Mask version of The Maltese Falcon before it was
published as a novel.
Contributors to Discovering The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade
include Dashiell Hammett himself, plus Jo Hammett, Richard
Layman, Joseph T. Shaw, Mary Astor, Dorothy Parker, Hal
Wallis, John Huston, Joe Gores, William F. Nolan, and more
than fifty additional writers. It is illustrated with more
than 250 black & white and color photos, drawings, and
facsimiles.
Reviews have all been favorable so far. But no reviewer yet
has called the book "the stuff that dreams are made of," much
to my surprise.
I'll be glad to answer any questions.
Vince Emery
Vince Emery Productions Publisher:
- LOST STORIES by Dashiell Hammett
- DISCOVERING THE MALTESE FALCON AND
SAM SPADE edited by Richard Layman
www.emerybooks.com Box 460279, San Francisco, CA 94146 USA
vince at emery dot com Phone
1.415.337.6000
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 30 Nov 2005 EST