Salon.com > Dick Lochte

Before “The Thin Man”

Mon, 17 Apr 2000 16:00:00 +0000

For an author who has been dead since 1961 and, more to the point, whose muse went south in 1934, Dashiell Hammett had quite a year in 1999. Knopf published "Nightmare Town," a collection of his long-neglected shorter works, edited by Kirby McCauley, Martin H. Greenberg and Ed Gorman. And a handsome, compact volume from the Library of America, "Dashiell Hammett: Complete Novels," marked the return to hardcover of the five full-length fictions that forged his reputation -- "Red Harvest," "The Dain Curse," "The Maltese Falcon," "The Glass Key" and "The Thin Man."

These two recent literary helpings of Hammett serve as notice to some and a reminder to others that there was a time when he was more famous for his fiction than for being Lillian Hellman's sparring partner and literary guru. They also suggest that his creative flow seems to have stemmed at the tail end of 1930. Earlier that year, he had completed the novel "The Glass Key." He also had begun a new manuscript, "The Thin Man," that he would eventually discard in favor of a very different sort of mystery with that same title. As he wrote to a friend, "My publisher and I agreed that it might be wise to postpone the publication of 'The Glass Key' ... So -- having plenty of time -- I put [the] 65 ["Thin Man"] pages aside and went to Hollywood for a year. One thing and/or another intervening after that, I didn't return to work on the story until a couple of years had passed -- and then I found it easier ... to start anew."

Peccadilloes of the rich and infamous

Thu, 16 Oct 1997 19:00:00 +0000

| When Harold Robbins' heart stopped beating yesterday in Palm Springs, Calif., he was 81. For nearly 50 of those years, from the publication of "Never Love A Stranger" in 1948 to this year's "Tycoon," he was a phenomenally successful author. Before Dominick Dunne and Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins, before even Jacqueline Susann, Robbins had proven himself the master of the roman ` clef bestseller. His chronicles of the sexual and financial peccadilloes of the rich and the restless and the often clunky films made from them earned him a fortune he did his best to spend emulating the extravagant lifestyles of his characters.

I interviewed him several times over the years. (I also was fortunate enough to attend some of his outlandishly lavish press parties, including the infamous dinner at one of L.A.'s better restaurants where a horned devil chased a nymph, both starkers, onto the long table and ravished her while the dessert was being served.) Our last meeting took place a little more than two decades ago at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel, his usual choice of venue. The Pocket edition of his novel "Descent From Xanadu" was then at the top of the paperback charts. He'd entered into a new long-term agreement with 20th Century Fox involving all of his unproduced works (including "Xanadu") and whatever new ones he might think up. And he had just turned in the manuscript for "The Storyteller," which he proudly proclaimed "the most autobiographical of all my books."

Just one more hangover

Fri, 11 Jul 1997 19:00:00 +0000

Robert Mitchum, who died on July 1 at the age of 79, was too much for
this, the All-Things-In-Moderation Generation. He did what he wanted to
do when he wanted to do it. He lived hard. He played hard. He drank.
He smoked (emphysema and lung cancer finally did him in). One of his
last professional tasks was to remind us that we're carnivores and that
Brussels sprouts are NOT what's for dinner.

Mitchum was the genuine article -- the Hollywood tough guy as
hard-boiled as the heroes he played. He'd walked the walk, a runaway who
hit the rails as "a thin, ferret-faced kid" of 14 and who, two years
later, wound up on a chain gang in Georgia. He was a drifter, a boxer,
a shoe salesman and even a poet. He wrote a play optioned by the
Theater Guild and an oratorio that Orson Welles produced and directed in
the Hollywood Bowl in 1938.

Just One More Hangover

Fri, 11 Jul 1997 12:17:00 +0000