Financial History Issue 128 (Winter 2019) | Page 19

EDUCATORS’ PERSPECTIVE Avoiding the Maltese Falcon By Brian Grinder and Dan Cooper The Maltese Falcon is best remem- bered today as the 1941 breakthrough film noir classic starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. 1 The movie is based on Dashiell Hammett’s novel of the same name, which was first published serially in the detective magazine The Black Mask, from September 1929 to January 1930. Hammett’s third and most successful novel imagines a world where self-interest is paramount. It is a world where capital- ists are portrayed as ruthless criminals who will stop at nothing to get what they want. What they want ultimately turns out to be worthless. Hammett (1894–1961) worked as a Pinkerton agent in Baltimore from 1915 to 1917. He enlisted in the US Army in 1918 (WWI) and contracted tuberculosis while working as an ambulance driver at Camp Mead, Maryland. He returned to work for the Pinkerton Agency in 1919. In 1920, he moved to Spokane, Washington, where he worked for a few months as a Pinkerton operative and strikebreaker in the mining districts of Idaho and Montana. He suf- fered a relapse of tuberculosis and ended up in Cushman Hospital in Tacoma to recuperate. He met his wife, Josephine, at the hospital where she worked as a nurse. They married and moved to San Fran- cisco, where Hammett took up writing in a desperate effort to make ends meet. He eventually found success writing “hard- boiled” detective stories. In 1951, Hammett, a member of the Communist Party since 1936, was sum- moned to testify about communist activi- ties in the United States and repeatedly pled the fifth. This led the district court judge overseeing the trial to sentence Hammett to six months in prison for contempt of court. He served five months, which further damaged his health, and he died in 1961. Actor Humphrey Bogart poses for a publicity still for The Maltese Falcon, 1941. Hammett authority Robert Shulman describes The Maltese Falcon as a new ver- sion of the detective novel that “reveals a brilliant and penetrating analysis of a late capitalistic society.” While Hammett was critical of capitalism, what he describes in the novel is the universal human foible of unchecked greed. Such greed is not the unique product of capitalism; it has been with us since the dawn of mankind. Ham- mett’s tale leads to the conclusion that goals and objectives motivated primarily by greed only lead to disappointment. 2 The novel opens with Miss Wonderly (Brigid O’Shaughnessy) showing up at the offices of Spade and Archer, where she tells detective Sam Spade a cock- and-bull story about her concern for her runaway sister’s safety. Spade’s partner is murdered when he follows up on Miss Wonderly’s ruse. In truth, O’Shaughnessy was involved with a gang of criminals who were intent on stealing the Maltese Falcon. The falcon statuette was crafted by the Knights of Rhodes as a gift to the King of Spain, who had granted the island of Malta to them. According to Casper Gut- man, the criminal mastermind who is trying to steal the statue, the falcon was “not an insignificant bird, but a glorious golden falcon encrusted from head to foot with the finest jewels in their coffers. And—remember sir—they had fine ones, the finest out of Asia.” Unfortunately, pirates pilfered the bird while it was en route to Spain, and it disappeared for centuries. At some point, the falcon was painted with black enamel to conceal its true value. Gutman spent 17 years tracking it down. When he finally found it in Constantinople, he sent O’Shaughnessy along with Joel Cairo to retrieve it, but O’Shaughnessy, wanting the falcon for herself, betrayed Gutman. She tried unsuccessfully to get the fal- con into San Francisco from Hong Kong without being detected by Gutman’s gang. When her plan unraveled, she turned to Spade for help. Lying, cheating, stealing and murder are rife as everyone involved acts in their own self-interest. Alienation is a key theme in the novel.  O’Shaughnessy mur- ders Archer. Her own henchman, Floyd Thursby, in turn is murdered, shot in the back by Gutman’s gunman, Wilmer Cook, who also kills the captain of the boat that brought the falcon to San Francisco. Gutman betrays Cook when he agrees with Spade that Cook should be the fall guy. Cook kills Gutman after the falcon is shown to be nothing but black lead throughout. In the end, Spade, who may love O’Shaughnessy, turns her in for mur- dering his partner. According to Shulman:  Gutman, Cairo and Brigid O’Shaugh­ nessy ruthlessly pursue their own self- interest as they try to obtain the jew- eled black bird, a Satanic embodiment of fabulous wealth. The bird is fake, but the quest continues. The charac- ters are exotic, but their motives are all too familiar and their destructive results constitute a judgment on the entire enterprise of single-mindedly pursuing wealth. Self-interest, a mainstay of modern eco- nomics, pervades the novel. It surfaces in Gutman’s reply to Spade after Spade tells him that he represents himself, not Cairo or O’Shaughnessy:  That’s wonderful. I do like a man that tells you right out he’s looking out for himself. Don’t we all? I don’t trust a man that says he’s not. And the man that’s telling the truth when he says he’s not I distrust most of all because he’s an ass and an ass that’s going contrary to the laws of nature. A worthless bird statuette 3 wreaks havoc on everyone involved. Yet, writes Shulman: All the destructive energy of the novel’s characters has its source in the exchange of the bird. Every time it changes hands, the value goes up. Gutman, Cairo and Brigid are the www.MoAF.org  |  Winter 2019  |  FINANCIAL HISTORY  17