 Sam
Spade, P.I.
(30 min)
Show Description
Sam Spade is Dashiell Hammet’s most famous
creation. Set in the 1940’s before computers and the Internet, Sam’s
colorful PI character solves crimes, keeping one step ahead of the bad
guys. Assorted guest stars will make this re-creation of the classic
mystery drama a hit.
Show History
In the 1940’s, Sam Spade was a staple of the
airwaves, thanks to The Adventures of Sam Spade, a popular
radio show, featuring Howard Duff in the lead role, and sponsored by
Wildroot Hair Oil. In fact, a series of single-page comic strip/hair
tonic ads appeared in magazines, newspapers and comic books, featuring
Spade shilling for Wildroot Hair Oil. (The ads were drawn by Golden Age
artist Lou Fine, who later went on to do the Peter Scratch
comic strip.)
In fact, the only real sequel to
The Maltese
Falcon was not produced for either prose or film, though, but for
radio. Both The Adventures of
Sam Spade and the great mystery anthology show Suspense
were both produced by the same man, William Spier. During the first year
or two that Sam Spade was on the air, Suspense was an hour
show, hosted by Robert Montgomery. To get fans of Suspense
listening to Sam Spade, Speir produced a special one-hour Spade
episode called “The Khandi Tooth Caper” and aired it on Suspense.
The episode is a direct sequel to
The Maltese
Falcon, with Spade once again meeting Gutman, Cairo, and another
“gunsel.” It explains what happened to the real Falcon, alludes to
Brigid O’Shaugnessy’s fate, and sets Spade and the bad guys at odds as
they again contend in the search for another quest object, the fabled
Khandi Tooth. As an inside joke, host Montgomery, who played Philip Marlowe
in the screen version of The Lady in the
Lake made a cameo appearance as Marlowe in the episode. Later,
the episode was presented as a two-parter on Sam Spade’s own series.
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