The Adventures of Sam Spade

The Adventures of Sam Spade was first heard on ABC July 12, 1946, as a Friday-night summer series. The show clicked at once, and went into a regular fall lineup on CBS September 29, 1946. From then until 1949, Sam Spade was a Sunday-night thriller for Wildroot Cream Oil, starring Howard Duff in the title role. With Duff's departure, NBC took the series, leaving it on Sunday for Wildroot and starring Stephen Dunne as Spade. This version lasted until 1951, the last year running as a Friday sustainer.

Spade's appearance on the air marked an almost literal transition from Dashiell Hammett's 1930 crime classic, The Maltese Falcon, where he first appeared. Spade was a San Francisco detective, one of the most distinctive of the hardboiled school. His jump to radio was wrought by William Spier, who had already carved out a reputation as a master of mystery in his direction of another highly rated CBS thriller, Suspense.

Sam Spade shot him to national fame. The character, as Spier saw it, would Have many easily identifiable traits. The first thing Spade usually wanted to know was, "How much money you got on you?" "Two hundred? Okay, I'll take that and you can pay me the rest later." But Spade wasn't a spendthrift -- he never threw silver-dollar tips a la Johnny Dollar, even if he could have put it on his expense account. Spade favorite way to travel was by streetcar; it took him almost anywhere for a dime. He disliked cabs and liked cheap booze. You didn't need more than an occasional, subtle reminder: those glasses clinking every week as Sam opened his desk drawer and began dictation were enough. We knew Sam and Effie weren't toasting each other with Sal Hepatica. Sam was a man who worked out of his desk, and the thing closest at hand in that top drawer just might be a half-empty bottle of Old Granddad.

His clients got bumped off with startling regularity. Then Sam sent his report (and presumably his bill) to the widows. He dictated his cases to his faithful secretary, Effie Perrine, a babbling, man-hungry female who might have been the adult Corliss Archer. Each case came out as a report, dated, signed, and delivered. Spade license number - 137596 - was always included in the report. The cases unfolded in chronological order, the scenes shifting between Sam and Effie and the dramatization of Sam's dictation. Effie, who always seemed on the verge of tears whenever Sam became involved (as he did weekly) with a curvy client, was beautifully played by Lurene Tuttle, Jerry Hausner played Sam's lawyer, Sid Weiss. Lud Gluskin directed the music and Dick Joy announced. Soon after the series began, Ann Lorraine dropped her writing duties, and Gil Doud became Bob Tallman's writing partner.

The show ran in its original format through the episode of September 17, 1950. Then Howard Duff quit for a fling at movies, and Sam Spade languished for two months. On November 17, 1950, it returned on NBC. Duff's absence was handled in usual network form: by importing a new voice. NBC ran the show as though nothing had happened, using Steve Dunne as a boyish-sounding Spade. Spier and Miss Tuttle followed the series over, and for a time so did Wildroot. Wildroot and the listeners all got wise around the same time. Dunne was a good radio man, but he sounded like Sam in knee pants.

Duff once said that Hammett had done such a great job in The Maltese Falcon that any actor could have played Sam and become a radio hero. He saw that theory proved wrong.

Dashiell Hammett's name was removed from the series in the late 1940s because he was being investigated for involvement with the Communist Party. Later, when Howard Duff's name appeared in the Red Channels book, he was not invited to play the role when the series made the switch to NBC in 1950.