125 years ago today, on 27-May-1894, Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in Maryland. In 1915 he went to work for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. He left Pinkerton to serve in the Army during World War One. He did not see combat, but he did contract a case of tuberculosis. After his discharge from the Army and the sanitarium, he returned to Pinkerton, working in the San Francisco office, in the Flood Building at Powell and Market, but after a while his health forced him to quit.
He took up writing and supported himself by writing advertising copy for the Albert S Samuels Company, a jewelry store. Some sources claim that Hammett coined their slogan, "The house of lucky wedding rings," but Samuels' website says they started using it when the business opened in 1891. My wife and I bought our wedding rings there.
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He wrote many classic hard-boiled detective stories and novels. Many were published in Black Mask, a pulp magazine.
Hammett left San Francisco and went to Hollywood, where he worked as a screenwriter and pursued his interest in drinking. At some point he began a long-term affair with writer c, which provided some of the inspiration for his last completed novel, The Thin Man. Money from movies based on The Thin Man and radio shows based on it, on Sam Spade, and an original series called The Fat Man, provided Hammett with enough money that he didn't have to write to live.
When World War II broke out, Hammett again volunteered for the army. Despite his age and his lingering health problems, he served honorably during the war. When the Red Scare broke out after the war, Hammett, a liberal who had once belonged the Communist Party USA, became a target. His radio shows were cancelled. He eventually went to prison because he refused to name names. His health broken, he died a few years later.
Samuel D Hammett, veteran of World War I and World War II, is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
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