The Maltese Falcon (novel) The Maltese Falcon (novel) The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 detective novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett, originally serialized in the magazine "Black Mask" beginning with the September 1929 issue. The story is told entirely in external third-person narrative; there is no description whatever of any character's internal thoughts or feelings, only what they say and do, and how they look. The novel has been adapted several times for the cinema. The main character, Sam Spade (who also appeared later in some lesser-known short stories), was a departure from Hammett's nameless detective, The Continental Op. Spade combined several features of
The Maltese Falcon (1941 film) art and headed the Art Students League in Los Angeles between 1949 and 1953. In August 2013, Michele Fortier, the daughter of Fred Sexton, was interviewed on camera by UCLA Professor Vivian Sobchack, Ph.D. Fortier recounted her father’s creation of the Maltese Falcon prop model for the film, as well as visits to the film set where she interacted with actors Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet, and director John Huston. Fortier recalled that her father made "preliminary sketches" for the Maltese Falcon prop on a "manila envelope", and then sculpted the model for the prop in clay. During visits to