Ms. Hellman wrote these when she was 23-24ish. I think at that time she was divorced, working at MGM as a reader, and had just met the love of her life, Dashiell Hammett. The stories are the first flexing of her literary muscle. They were published once, in a magazine…
Tag: Dashiell Hammett
When we were very broke, those first years in New York, Hammett got a modest advance from Knopf and began to write The Thin Man. He moved to what was jokingly called the Diplomat’s Suite in a hotel run by our friend Nathanael West. It was a new hotel but…
Miss Scott is now ninety-one. At the library she first caught my attention because she was talking quietly, distinctively, with the librarian. I didn’t recognize her the first time I saw her, it was only later that I made the connection between this gorgeously poised, very erudite, older woman and…
Story by Daniel Miller Illustrations by Morgan Schweitzer Photography by Gina Ferazzi November 1, 2014 It was hot and I was late for lunch. I was feeling mean, like I’d been left out in the sun too long. We were meeting at a joint on La Brea, the kind of…
Here’s the thing, as written by Mr. Hammett, Sam Spade was a tall, blonde, devilishly handsome man. Hm. See above. Which leads me to one of my rants, this one about language. I’ve noticed recently that “plain speaking” folk can be almost satanically sly. Look at any political organization in…