Maltese Falcon Society "Success to crime." William Nadel of the New York chapter conducted a Dashiell Hammett/"Thin Man" walking tour of Manhattan. Founded by mystery writer Jiro Kimura, the Japanese chapter produced a newsletter called "The Maltese Falcon Flyer" ten times a year, and in 1983 began to present the annual Falcon Award. Co-founder Herron began to conduct the Dashiell Hammett Tour in San Francisco, the longest running literary tour in the United States. The San Francisco chapter meetings heard presentations by mystery novelists Julie Smith, Charles Willeford, Stephen Greenleaf, and Joe Gores. Other speakers included Hammett biographers Diane Johnson and William F.
The Maltese Falcon (1941 film) to appear in a stage play. Hammett remembers that the character "had two originals, one an artist, the other a woman who came to Pinkerton's San Francisco office to hire an operative to discharge her housekeeper, but neither of these women was a criminal." The character of the sinister "Fat Man" Kasper Gutman was based on A. Maundy Gregory, an overweight British detective-turned-entrepreneur who was involved in many sophisticated endeavors and capers, including a search for a long-lost treasure not unlike the jeweled Falcon. However, the character was not easily cast, and it took some time before producer Hal Wallis