On This Day

The Maltese Falcon premiere

October 3rd 1941

06:45 3 October 2024

The Premiere of 'The Maltese Falcon' took place in New York on this day in 1941. John Huston was established as a successful Hollywood scriptwriter when he asked Warner Bros. if he could turn his hand to directing. Warners agreed and even said he could choose his own project providing his next script was a hit. Fortunately for Huston ‘High Sierra’ (1941) was a success at the box office and he started work on filming his screenplay based on the 1930 detective novel ‘The Maltese Falcon’ by Dashiell Hammett.

The story had been adapted for the screen unsuccessfully twice previously and Huston was determined to make it third time lucky. Meticulous in his preparation for his directorial debut, Huston planned everything to the last detail with instructions to himself for a shot-for-shot setup, with sketches for every scene, ensuring the movie would come in on schedule and under budget. Warner Bros. wanted George Raft to play the lead role of private eye Sam Spade but Raft declined, not wanting to work with a first-time director, leaving the door open for John Huston to cast his friend Humphrey Bogart.

The setting is 1940’s San Francisco where Private investigators Sam Spade (Bogart) and his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) are meeting a prospective client, a mysterious woman calling herself Ruth Wonderly (Mary Astor). After agreeing to take on the case involving her missing sister, Archer ends up dead and Spade finds out Wonderly (now known as Brigid O’Shaughnessy) is involved with a group of unscrupulous characters all of whom are trying to obtain a valuable jewel-encrusted statuette known as the Maltese Falcon. The tough, world-weary Spade is soon embroiled in a dangerous world of crime and intrigue with the infamous “Fat Man” Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet, in his first screen role) and his associate Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre).

Widely considered to be the first true film noir, ‘The Maltese Falcon’ turned Bogart into a Hollywood star after years of playing support roles in B-Movies and he would go on to have further success with Huston, collaborating on such great films as ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’ (1948), ‘Key Largo’ (1948) and ‘The African Queen’ (1951). Greenstreet and Lorre became household names and would both appear again with Bogart in ‘Casablanca’ the following year.

Brilliantly directed and scripted by Huston, with an excellent cast, ‘The Maltese Falcon’ is a timeless classic and remains fully deserving of its accolades as one of American cinemas greatest films eighty three years after its premiere.