Read this: 75 years later, the fate of The Maltese Falcon remains a mystery
Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 detective novel The Maltese Falcon had already been adapted for the screen twice before John Huston’s version starring Humphrey Bogart. But it was the Huston film, originally released on October 3, 1941, that became a certified classic. The MacGuffin driving the film’s plot is a one-of-a-kind, life-sized statue of a bird. Memorably described by Bogart as “the stuff that dreams are made of,” the desirable trinket is revealed at the movie’s cruel climax to be a worthless lead fake.
That hasn’t prevented the falcon from becoming one of the most prized props in movie history, right alongside the ruby slippers from The Wizard Of Oz. But what really happened to the statue from the movie, and is it truly one of a kind? Earlier this year, Bryan Burrough researched the topic for a Vanity Fair article entitled “The Mystery Of The Maltese Falcon.” The article is, by the author’s admission, “ambiguous,” but it does contain plenty of fascinating speculation and intrigue, including a possible tie to the Black Dahlia case.
