Maltese Falcon Statue

[Nick Charles]

I'm currently reading a book call, Discovering The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade : The Evolution of Dashiell Hammett's Masterpiece, Including John Huston's Movie with Humphrey Bogart and in it they have two references ti the actual bird that are really weird.

1. A letter that says "As you know on this story we have a Prop that works the Maltese Falcon, which is a plastic modle, Blanke and Huston have an outside modeller who is working on this and the cost of it will be $75 covering everything. A requisition is coming in to you for an O.K. this morning.

2. A foot note on the page says The lead-cast statue weighs fifty pounds.

holy crap I'd hate to lug that around.

There are also pictures of the two falcons on the covers and they look anything but black.

 

[PrettyBigGuy]

Sonds like an interesting read. Have you seen the falcon that MK reproduced on the Golden Era main page?
http://www.thegoldenera.net/Falcon.html
He made a limited run several years ago. BTW, the bird in my avatar is one of these!
PBG

 

[jake_fink]

In his book "The BLack Dahlia Avenger" Steve Hodel argues that his father, Dr. George Hodel, and Fred Sexton, the artist who modeled the Falcon prop, were serial killers responisble for both the killing of the Black Dahlia and Jeanne French (the Red Lipstick murder), among others. Both were friends of John Huston, the author's mother is in fact the first Mrs Huston, and he met the man himself on a few occassions. There were at the time accusations of incest, statutory rape and allegations of "wife-swapping" among the ultra-rich, ultra-chic group of self-proclaimed dadists.

Now, none of this has been proven in a court of law, and probably never will be, but - for reasons unknown to even myself - I've read an awful lot about the Dahlia case, and I think there is something compelling about Hodel's thesis. I'll leave it to you to follow up if you want... it's getting away from the topic you started with.Anyway, I thought it was interesting that as well known as that prop/statue is, few people know the name of the man who made it, let alone whether or not he was a killer.

(CUE MYSTERIOUS MUSIC: FADE TO BLACK.)

 

[Clyde R.]

Interesting info on the black bird. I'm a big fan of the movie and have looked at some of the statues available on ebay. I'd love to have a decent repro for my office.