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 Maltese Falcon (1941 film) the film set, she remembered seeing a prop that was "shiny and black", but "not like patent leather shoes". Fortier also identified initials inscribed in the right rear tail feather of a plaster Maltese Falcon prop owned by Hank Risan as her father’s. Fortier explained that she owns many of her father’s paintings and commented that many of the signatures share the same idiosyncratic characteristics. The "Maltese Falcon" itself is said to have been based on the "Kniphausen Hawk", a ceremonial pouring vessel made in 1697 for George William von Kniphausen, Count of the Holy Roman Empire. It is modeled