Not all that long ago I dutifully reported that a TV series — or mini-series — was in the works, where Sam Spade has moved to France. Que some crime. Roll cameras.
You can punch up the trailer for Monsieur Spade on YouTube. Due to run on AMC in January. Clive Owen as Sam Spade. And based on the trailer, Clive Owen’s butt as Sam Spade’s butt.
Looks to be well made, but whether it needed to have Sam Spade in it remains an open question for the moment. The most disturbing detail in the preview is that some of the plot involves a young kid Spade seems to be protecting.
Publisher Vince Emery once read all of Hammett and worked up a list of distinct Hammettisms — almost always referring to a car as a machine, that sort of thing. Pretty long list.
As far as I know Vince may have been the first person to ever notice that Hammett’s crime stories never have children in them. Think about it. You might find a couple of older teenagers, but some little kid? Nope.
Guess the filmmakers wanted a little kid in it, to be like every other movie being made at the moment. Hell, maybe they’ll kill him off.
It’s Hollywood, Jake — they had a kid playing Nick Charles Junior running around on the MGM lot years ago (none other than Dean Stockwell, who was better in Blue Velvet).
I also spotted a couple of casual news items about a new Thin Man flick, to star Brad Pitt and Margo Robbie as Nick & Nora. Could be good, but then again, with the atmosphere today they might make them teetotalers or tragically limit the martini consumption to one per hour.
Of course that one I’ll believe when and if it all shakes out. Johnny Depp had an option on Thin Man for a few years, but it came to nothing finally.
The noted book and pulp collector Kevin Cook just mentioned that the issue of Detective Fiction Weekly featuring the story “The Diamond Wager” by a “Samuel Dashiell” is offered in an e-catalog this week from a well-known pulp dealer for $700 — because it features a Hammett story.
I guess the word hasn’t reached the dealer as yet that Hammett didn’t write that story. Will Murray, an expert among pulp experts, revealed the truth in a June 30th article. I agree with Will’s deductions completely. Read his article, and pass the news around to the still uninformed.
Yes, a couple of the early, creaky Hammett bibliographies list it as a Hammett yarn. And unfortunately it got picked up in the 2013 collection The Hunter and Other Stories (no previous collection snapped it up — Frederic Dannay had at least 8 or 9 chances to paperback it, but you know, I’ll bet he knew that Samuel Dashiell was another writer altogether, which pretty much is the summation of Will’s thesis).
Kevin Cook states, “Believing in capitalism and all that jazz, I still would not sell — and rip someone off — my copy of the Detective Fiction Weekly issue with ‘The Diamond Wager’ — for $700, or even far less.
“What is the pulp worth now? $25 perhaps? I plan to just keep it in the collection as a curiosity rather than disposing of it.”
So, read Will’s article and spread the word, while keeping the time-honored dictum always in mind:
Terry Zobeck kept an eye on the huge auction of books from the library of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts. He even tossed in a bid himself, getting in on the action.
With prices paid and the gavel now quiet, Terry sums up the highlights of the crime scene bidding for anyone gumshoeing into These Mean Streets:
The auction of Charlie Watts’ rare books realized a whopping $4.7 million, including a 26% buyer’s premium.
Two of the books set world records. Charlie’s inscribed copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles went for $261,000, the highest price paid for any book by Doyle. His copy of Agatha Christie’s Thirteen Problems, the first to feature Miss Marple, brought $73,750, smashing the previous record for a Christie book by more than $15,000.
The auction had several Hammett items. The one that originally caught my eye was the corrected typescript for the story “The Hunter.”
Initially offered in the first part of the sale on September 27 and 28, focused on the premium items, it did not sell at that time and was moved over to the online sale that ended on the 29th.
The typescript sold for only $2,900 — I should have bid on it, but I had my eye on a multi-item lot on the 29th that included three extremely rare books by Hammond Innes. That lot ended up selling for more than three times my high bid. Oh well.
Charlie owned all five of Hammett’s novels, in dust jacket. His copy of The Maltese Falcon came with a price-clipped jacket with only a few chips. It went under the hammer for $37,780.
His signed copy of The Thin Man fetched $21,500, while Red Harvest, with some significant restoration to the jacket, sold for about $20,000. The Dain Curse and The Glass Key did not sell initially and so were moved to the online sale the next day, where they sold for $20,000 and $2,600, respectively.
He also owned a second copy of Red Harvest, which lacked the dust jacket, but with a nice inscription from Hammett. This copy went for $20,000. If I were Charlie, I would have married this copy to the dust jacket from the other copy. I know this practice is objectionable to purist collectors, but the hell with them. (In fact, the Christie’s description of Charlie’s copy of The Thin Man suggests the jacket may have been “supplied.”)
Charlie also owned all seven of Raymond Chandler’s novels, including an inscribed UK copy of his final novel, Playback. Signed to his agent and fiancé, Helga Green, to whom the novel is dedicated, it went for $38,400!
He also owned a copy of Chandler’s story collection, The Simple Art of Murder, inscribed to Chandler’s agent, Ray Stark. That book realized a price of $30,700.
Of most interest to me, however, was the set of all eleven issues of Black Mask with Chandler’s stories. The set sold for just under $20,000. (It’s odd that Charlie didn’t have a set of Chandler’s appearances in Dime Detective. I’ve always considered those stories superior to those from Black Mask.)
Charlie Watts was one of the finest rock ‘n’ roll drummers of all time. He also had excellent taste in books. I’m certain he would be pleased to see that his library brought in a tidy sum for his family and ended up in the hands of happy collectors — many of them hardboiled — throughout the world.
Mostly in connection with the Texas writer Robert E. Howard, I’ve been in and out of the Lone Star State several times and got to deeply savor some of the storms. Tornadoes even hit a couple of towns over from where I stood.
I’ve never been in one of the big hailstorms, though rolling in with Rob Roehm from his home in the Mojave Desert we followed one in by a few hours and I saw something I’d never seen before: large mobile hail stone centers, driving around doing repairs.
Damn. I got the idea. I’d still like to see a Texas hailstorm — if I was huddled under a metal roof or at least a tree and not caught flatfooted in a car being torn apart on the road.
“The open beauty of the plains became terrifying in springtime lightning storms; feeling a charge in the air, those men who carried pistols might toss them out of fear, while on some nights, electricity would flash on cattle horns, brims of men’s hats, or tips of their horse’s ears before striking nearby. Hailstorms, too, were more violent on the plains, forcing cowboys to jump off and uncinch their saddles for cover from the pelting stones.”
Couldn’t leave him out, in my opinion. It’s like the IMDb Top Four Known Fors.
Right now I think the Wild West is best known for Wild Bill, Buffalo Bill Cody, Geronimo and Billy the Kid.
I wouldn’t argue that you might squeeze in Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, Jesse James, Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse instead. The top names are the top names, and I have nothing against Kit Carson or Joaquin Murietta but let’s stay real here.
And as part of the coverage of Hickok I was pleased to see Nathan stick in some info I can’t recall reading about before now.
One of my favorite side hobbies is the Who Was When? game, where you bring together people you wouldn’t associate with one another — and my absolute favorite was tumbling to the info that the 12 year old Benjamin Franklin knocked off a poem and sold copies on the streets of Boston about the Last Stand of Blackbeard the Pirate, which took place in a whirlwind of blades and musket balls November 22, 1718 on Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks.
Apparently the first mention ever of Blackbeard in a poem, and we’ve all heard of Blackbeard, right? And Ben Franklin.
Here’s the info Nathan eased in:
On July 21, 1865, Hickok had been in what is often called the first recorded one-on-one gunfight — quick draw, as opposed to European-style gentlemen’s dueling — when he and a man in a white linen coat named Davis K. Tutt fired at each other across some seventy-five yards of Springfield, Missouri’s public square. Tutt, who had taken Bill’s pocket watch against his poker debt, moved first, according to some witnesses, then grabbed his breast after the shots were fired to announce, accurately, “Boys, I am killed.” After the facts of the shooting made the local paper, Hickok’s name was introduced to a public hungry for other stories of frontier violence, true or not. Hickok was happy to oblige his growing myth, particularly in an interview filled with tall tales he fed to the journalist Henry Morton Stanley, who more famously found Dr. Livingstone near Lake Tanganyika in Africa a few years later.
Man, that newshound Stanley got around, didn’t he?
“Wild cattle that refused to move with the herd and kept returning to the brush the cowboys might make docile by sewing their eyelids shut; after about two weeks, when the thread had decayed enough for the eyes to reopen, the animals were less likely to stray. The trail hands spent stormy nights in their saddles, watching the nervous group they had assembled, or otherwise slept in shifts on bedrolls on the ground. But to Charlie it was the only life worth living.”
Charlie Siringo was an Everyman Cowpoke like many hundreds more, doing a job, riding the vast plains as sprawling cattle drives began to forge north from Texas to the cowtowns and railroad heads, doing his bit to change the face of the Wild West.
I’m confident Nathan Ward realized what he had to hand in the Siringo saga as he was writing his biography of Dashiell Hammett, mining a later stage in the life where the cowboy became a range detective working with the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. Companion volumes with plenty of adventure. And as it turned out, Siringo and Hammett both ended up in Hollywood, which didn’t hurt their notoriety any.
Trailing after Siringo, Nathan uses the canvas of that life to paint a vivid picture of the Old West growing — growing faster than history could keep up. From rounding up stray mavericks in the brush to endless trainloads of beeves heading to Chicago to make it the meat-packing capital of America. From Billy the Kid to Tom Mix, lives becoming legend.
Terry Zobeck, keeping his eye to the pavement, let me know about the latest trove of rare and first edition Hammett hitting the auction block. And get this angle: those books and typescripts all come from the collection of the late Charlie Watts, impeccable time-keeper for the Rolling Stones.
You’ve got about three days to dig some coins out of the couch or mortgage your house, and then Christie’s opens the flood gates. I can’t recall hearing that books were such an important part of Watts’ life, but if you’ve got all P.G. Wodehouse, all Christie, Hammett, Chandler, you spent some years out of your life in your library.
Here’s Terry with a quick look into the offerings:
The late Charlie Watts was not only one of the finest Rock ‘n’ Roll drummers of all time, he also turned out to be one hell of an avid collector. Not only did he collect musical instruments — including the kits of his jazz drummer idols — but also classic automobiles (despite not having a driver’s license) — and rare modern first editions, as well as a good deal of jazz-related books and autographed ephemera.
He seemed to have an especial taste for Golden Age and hardboiled mystery and detective fiction, having a near complete run of Agatha Christie’s novels and first editions of all of Raymond Chandler’s novels, including the inscribed dedicatee (Helga Greene) copy of Playback, and all of his appearances in Black Mask.
The outstanding part of the collection will be offered at the live auction. Among the highlights of this auction are an inscribed first American edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby—with an estimate of $250,000 to $375,000—and an inscribed British first edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles—with an estimate of $75,000 to $125,000. The inscribed Gatsby lacks the rare dust jacket, but never fear, Charlie had a second copy of the first edition in the dust jacket (estimated between $125,000 and $187,000).
But of prime interest to those of us on These Mean Streets is Charlie’s collection of books by Dashiell Hammett. He had first editions of all five of the novels in dust jacket, all 10 of the digest story collections, and an inscribed copy of Red Harvest (lacking the jacket; estimated between $18,740 to $31,200).
The Hammett piece that really caught my eye was the corrected typescript for “The Hunter” (estimated between $5,000 to $7,500). As is well known now, this was a unpublished short story that eventually served as the title story of the 2013 collection of rare and previously unpublished material. In his introduction to that volume, co-editor Richard Layman notes those stories are archived at the Harry Ransom Collection at the University of Texas, Austin. For The Hunter and Other Stories, a carbon copy of the story from the archive was the reference.
So how did Charlie Watts end up with the original top sheet typescript in his collection?
I contacted Rick to find out. He told me that the unpublished stories were among Hammett’s effects owned by his secretary in New York, Marjory May, whom Rick knew well. All her Hammett material was eventually sold at auction.
“The Hunter” typescript was apparently later bought along the way by Charlie.
The typescript has several corrections presumably made by Hammett shortly after he finished typing. The carbon seems to still have been present to amend, since all the corrections are incorporated in the published version of the story.
620 Eddy Street, where Hammett lived in San Francisco between 1921 and 1926, appears on the typescript. But the Watts’ typescript has that address crossed out and “20 Monroe St” added.
Hammett moved to the Monroe Street address in 1926 and lived there for only a few months. Presumably, Hammett submitted the story for publication shortly after having written it, but it was rejected. It appears that sometime in 1926 he submitted it again or at least considered submitting it, but it was never published in his lifetime.
Hammett was known not to save many of his typescripts, so he must have valued “The Hunter” to some degree. It is the best of the previously unpublished stories collected in The Hunter and Other Stories and a fine addition to Hammett’s bibliography.
And now it can be yours for as little as $5,000 — or perhaps a trifle more once the hammer falls. A real bargain for a fan of both Hammett and the Stones with a deep wallet.
Today is the official publication date for Nathan Ward’s newest bio,Son of the Old West — The Odyssey of Charlie Siringo: Cowboy, Detective, Writer of the Wild Frontier. Something to kick off another Biography Month here on These Mean Streets. It’s coming out of the stall bucking, already the No. 1 New Release on Amazon in the category of Bios and Memoirs of Criminals, and running pretty hot in the stampede of Adventurer and Explorer Bios.
I’ve got a few piled up, from the new autobio of Danny Trejo (happened to spot one of the Trejo’s Tacos outlets when I was cruising around LA on the 2nd) and a gorgeous new translation of Kafka’s diaries.
Plus I think I ought to mention some books I haven’t read through after many years — the doorstop award-winning bio of Captain Cook, where I tried, I really tried. And the Eugene Manlove Rhodes collection A Bar CrossMan, that’s one tough sled — Rhodes is one of the primal Writers of the Old West like Charlie Siringo, and probably needs some smooth new writer like a Nathan Ward to speed it all up.
And unexpectedly, Jimmy Buffett just died, reminding me that he got pretty pissed off when Steve Eng did an unauthorized bio on his life in 1997 (and responded with an autobiographical book of his own in 1998, an instant bestseller). I’ll dig around and see if I can find Steve’s report on it at the time. Buffett called him “some hack from Nashville,” and Steve reveled in his hard-won title. I bet he wouldn’t have objected if they’d carved it on his tombstone.
“There are Hammett quotes to apply,” Nathan suggests, “no matter how the next races go. I remember somebody bets on a horse named Peggy O’Toole, a sly in-joke. Maybe in The Glass Key.”
Yeah, Peggy was a dame who hit New York City with Hammett on his first big trip as a newly minted novelist. And I’m pretty sure the namedrop was in Glass Key, too.
Nice-looking pony. Hammett loved the track.
Jeez, just think: maybe we’ll get a showdown someday between Maltese Falcon and Dain Curse. Red Harvest and Thin Man.
Get your bets in.
“At minimum,” Nathan says, “we have to place a bet on this horse.”
You’ll remember Nathan Ward and his Hammett bio The Lost Detective. That one really gets going when Hammett rolls into San Francisco and sits down at his typewriter.
Over on CrimeReads Nathan has just kicked a story off from San Francisco again, a tale of mutiny at sea from 1902 with murder and shooting — highly detailed, very interesting. You’ll want to find out how the main mutineer later turned up as a sheriff in Arizona, I bet.
I haven’t been thinking a lot lately of Frisco as a hotbed of shanghai action and a major port and all that history, but of course it was.
Two words: Jack London. Three words: The Sea Wolf.
And the rebel crew back in 1902 picked up the handle the “cowboy mutineers.” I suspect Nathan may have come across this saga as he was working on his upcoming book about Charlie Siringo, due out in September. He’s been digging into range detective Siringo’s career the last few years. He keeps busy.
In 1977 Don Herron began leading The Dashiell Hammett Tour, now the longest-running literary tour in the nation. On this site you’ll find information on current walks — dates, where to meet, arranging tours by appointment — plus a hard-boiled blog with news, reviews of books and film, and a dash of noir.
