Biography
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was the most influential American detective novelist of the twentieth century — the creator of the Continental Op, Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1930), and Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934). He was also a longtime member of the Communist Party USA, a U.S. Army veteran of two world wars (he enlisted at 48 in 1942 and served in the Aleutian Islands), and the longtime companion of playwright Lillian Hellman.
In 1946 Hammett accepted the role of trustee of the bail fund of the Civil Rights Congress, the CPUSA-aligned legal defense organization that posted bond for Smith Act defendants. When four of the original Dennis 11 defendants jumped bail in July 1951, Hammett was subpoenaed before the U.S. District Court in New York and ordered to identify the contributors to the bail fund. He refused, asserting that he did not know the contributors names and that even if he did he would not provide them. He was held in civil contempt and sentenced to six months in federal prison.
Hammett served his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution camp at Ashland, Kentucky in 1951, where his health collapsed. After his release the IRS pursued him for back taxes for the rest of his life. He was blacklisted from publishing, magazine, and screenwriting work and never wrote another novel. He died of lung cancer in 1961, age 66, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery as a U.S. Army veteran over the objection of J. Edgar Hoover.
