The Maltese Falcon (1931 film) The Maltese Falcon (1931 film) The Maltese Falcon is a 1931 American pre-Code crime film, based on the 1930 novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and directed by Roy Del Ruth. The film stars Ricardo Cortez as private detective Sam Spade and Bebe Daniels as Ruth Wonderly. Maude Fulton, Brown Holmes, and Lucien Hubbard (who went uncredited) wrote the screenplay. The supporting cast features Dudley Digges, Thelma Todd, Walter Long, Una Merkel, and Dwight Frye. A print has been held by the Library of Congress since the 1970s. In San Francisco, private investigator Sam Spade (Ricardo Cortez) and
The Falcon and the Co-eds the Co-eds". Film historians Richard Jewell and Vernon Harbin described "The Falcon and the Co-eds" as handicapped by a "twisting and turning narrative" that revealed a "sloppiness". In a recent review for the "Time Out Film Guide", Tom Milne wrote, "Despite the off-putting title, an attractive little thriller in which the Falcon investigates murder in a girls' school, where an atmosphere of fear and loathing centres on a girl with second sight, while she herself is driven to suicidal despair by her predictions of murder. Scripted by Ardel Wray, who worked regularly with Val Lewton (I Walked with a Zombie,