Welcome to a hard-boiled and not without noir blog with news and reviews, occasional outbursts of maniacal Autograph Hound activity, plus archival records from the forty-five year run of The Dashiell Hammett Tour. 
The Dashiell Hammett Tour
1977-2022
Arkham House Ephemera
The Classic Years 1937–1973
Death Lit
Essays and Reviews Selected from Fifty Years of Writing 1974–2024
Willeford
The Book
Tag Archives: Tenderloin Museum
Two-Gun Bob: Conan — in Jeopardy(!)
After getting back to the lair after rolling up to catch Peter Field’s talk in the Tenderloin Museum last night (also grabbed a copy of his new history of The TL — you’ll like it, lots of pictures), I opened … Continue reading
Frisco Beat: Stanley C. Sargent
Counting down to the showing of Lon Chaney’s The Penalty in the Old Mint next Thursday — which I chalk up as one of the successful ideas I pitched to the Tenderloin Museum when they were asking what other programs … Continue reading
Posted in Frisco, Lit
Tagged Fritz Leiber, Geary Street, Hyde Street, Pat Lupoff, Richard A. Lupoff, Stan McNail, Stan Sargent, Tenderloin Museum
Frisco Beat: Lon Chaney Hits the Old Mint Again!
If you’ve ever caught the 1920 Lon Chaney silent flick The Penalty, you no doubt remember the sequence where Lon and his mob are looting the Old Mint on the corner of Fifth and Mission. On Thursday March 29 — and, … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Film, Frisco, News
Tagged CitySleuth, Lon Chaney Sr., Old Mint, Tenderloin Museum, The Big Knockover, The Penalty
Frisco Beat: Back to the TL Museum for The Penalty
At top and bottom, a couple of shots from my July 13 appearance in the Tenderloin Museum, talking up The Thin Man and with some snippets of the 1931 Falcon — high point being when we spotted the heart of the … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Film, Frisco, News
Tagged CitySleuth, Lon Chaney Sr., Tenderloin, Tenderloin Museum, The Big Knockover, The Penalty
Sinister Cinema: Back to the Tenderloin Museum
I’ll be hitting the Tenderloin Museum once again on July 13 — hey, just three days before their second anniversary on July 16 — to talk Dashiell Hammett for awhile. Hammett, pretty much the most famous writer to have made … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Film, Frisco, News
Tagged Dwight Frye, Myrna Loy, Skippy, Tenderloin, Tenderloin Museum, The Midget Bandit, Thin Man, William Powell
Frisco Beat: Tenderloin Museum, Year One
Coming up fast on July 16, The Tenderloin Museum celebrates its first anniversary — details on the website or the Facebook page. From 10a.m. to 9p.m., free admission, with workshops, talks, jazz, a drag show — the whole historical and … Continue reading
Sinister Cinema: Voice of Noir
How about a few more pics from the gig in the Tenderloin Museum? I was supposed to talk for 30 or 40 minutes about Hammett living in the TL, the 1941 film of The Maltese Falcon and so forth — … Continue reading
Frisco Beat: Reeling in the History
Did a couple of groups by appointment yesterday, got lucky with the brutal winter rains holding off. . . . On one of them the mysterious CitySleuth came along and tossed in some tidbits of film/Frisco history — one was … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Film, Frisco, Tour
Tagged 891 Post, Bill Arney, CitySleuth, Heisenberg, Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak, Lon Chaney Sr., Mark Murphy, ReelSF, Ruby Skye, Tenderloin Museum, The Big Knockover, The Penalty, Vertigo
Sinister Cinema: The Black Bird Flaps Back to the Old Hood
Tuesday October 27 The Maltese Falcon returns to the hood where it was imagined, plotted and pounded into life on the typewriter keys by none other than longtime Tenderloin resident Dashiell Hammett — the 1941 film version with Bogie, of … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Film, Frisco, News
Tagged Bogie, Cadillac Hotel, Jack Dempsey, Tenderloin, Tenderloin Museum
