 A lifetime's heavy drinking of alcohol and cigarettes made Hammett's tuberculosis worse. As the years of the 1950s went on, Hammett became "a hermit". Hammett no longer could live alone, so the last four years of his life he spent with Hellman. On January 10, 1961, Hammett died in New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital, of lung cancer. He had been diagnosed just two months before. As a veteran of two World Wars, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.