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Image of Sam Spade

Sam Spade

Sam Spade is the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon. As Hammett says about him, “Spade has no original. He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and in their cockier moments thought they approached. For your private detective does not—or did not ten years ago when he was my colleague—want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent by-stander or client.”
Alias Sam Spade
Real Names/Alt Names Sam Spade
Characteristics Hero, Detective, Film Characters, Pulp Characters, Wold Newton Universe, Modernism Era
Creators/Key Contributors Dashiell Hammett
First Appearance “The Maltese Falcon” in Black Mask (Sep 1929)
First Publisher Pro-Distributors Publishing Company
Appearance List Magazines: “The Maltese Falcon” serialized in five parts in Black Mask (September 1929 to January 1930), “A Man Called Spade” in The American Magazine (July 1932) [Internet Archive], “Too Many Have Lived” in The American Magazine (October 1932), “They Can Only Hang You Once” in Colliers (November 19, 1932), “A Knife Will Cut for Anybody” (unpublished). Novel: The Maltese Falcon (1930), A Man Called Spade and Other Stories (1944). Film: The Maltese Falcon (1931, Warner Bros.) [Internet Archive], Satan Met a Lady (1936, Warner Bros.) [Internet Archive], The Maltese Falcon (1941, Warner Bros.) [Internet Archive]. Radio: “The Maltese Falcon” (1943, CBS), “The Maltese Falcon” (1943, CBS), “The Maltese Falcon” (1946, CBS), The Adventures of Sam Spade (1946, ABC, 13 30-minute episodes), etc. Comics: The Maltese Falcon (1946, Feature Books #48). Also see Scorched Earth: Expressions of Modernity in Dashiell Hammett’s Pulp Fiction by Anna P. Kelly via [Harvard.edu].
Sample Read The Maltese Falcon [Internet Archive]
Description Sam Spade is the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon. As Hammett says about him, “Spade has no original. He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and in their cockier moments thought they approached. For your private detective does not—or did not ten years ago when he was my colleague—want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent by-stander or client.”
Source Sam Spade – Wikipedia
Black Mask (Sep 1929) | H. C. Murphy
Black Mask (Sep 1929) | H. C. Murphy

A Man Called Spade, And Other Stories (Dell #411, 1950) | Robert Stanley, A Man Called Spade in The American Magazine July 1932) | Joseph M. (Massey) Clement (aka J. M. Clement aka Joseph Clement), A Man Called Spade in The American Magazine July 1932) | Joseph M. (Massey) Clement (aka J. M. Clement aka Joseph Clement), Too Many Have Lived in The American Magazine (October 1932) | Joseph M. (Massey) Clement (aka J. M. Clement aka Joseph Clement), They Can Only Hang You Once in Colliers (November 19, 1932) | Joseph M. (Massey) Clement (aka J. M. Clement aka Joseph Clement), The Maltese Falcon in Black Mask (September 1929), A Man Called Spade, And Other Stories (Dell #90, 1944) | Gerald Gregg (or Otto Storch)