John Huston and the Making of 'The Maltese Falcon'

Warner Bros. had already filmed Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon twice — a racy 1931 version and the comedic Satan Met a Lady in 1936 — when a screenwriter named John Huston asked to direct it himself. The studio said yes mostly because the property was cheap and the risk was low. Seventy years later, the result is the founding document of film noir.

Huston's insight was fidelity: he reportedly had a secretary retype the novel in screenplay format as a starting point, keeping Hammett's dialogue nearly intact. George Raft turned down Sam Spade because he didn't work with first-time directors; Humphrey Bogart, then a supporting heavy, took the part and became Bogart.

The shoot was disciplined to the point of legend — largely in sequence, on schedule, under budget — with Huston storyboarding every setup. Mary Astor ran laps before takes to get Brigid's breathlessness; Sydney Greenstreet, 61, had never made a film. The falcon prop itself now sells at auction for more than the movie cost.

Hammett's 1930 novel — cataloged here — gave the movies their private-eye grammar: the code, the double-cross, the stuff dreams are made of. Huston's film gave that grammar a face and a shadow.