Sam Spade is a hardboiled private detective and the leading character in Dashiell Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon (1930) first published as a serial in the pulp magazine Black Mask. Sam Spade also appears in three short stories by Hammett.
Sam Spade is most closely associated with actor Humphrey Bogart, who played the character in the most famous film version of The Maltese Falcon. This was the third and most well known movie version of the book, made in 1941 and directed by John Huston in his directorial debut. Spade was played by Ricardo Cortez in the 1931 version. In the 1936 film Satan Met a Lady, which was based on The Maltese Falcon, Warren William played the central character Ted Shane. Despite a number of perceived flaws and misteps - Bogart failed to dye his hair to the characteristic blonde called for by the novel, was considered to be too small and dark for the role, with the wrong facial structure, and was even slighted for not being enough of a lecher - he turned out not only to have succeeded, but in fact to have created the archetypal private detective, one which has influenced "film noir" characters ever since.
George Segal played Sam Spade, Jr., son of the original, in the 1974 spoof The Black Bird. The character was also parodied as Sam Diamond, played by Peter Falk, in the 1976 comedy Murder By Death.
In the radio productions, Sam Spade was played by Edward G. Robinson in a 1943 Lux Radio Theatre production, and by Bogart himself in a 1946 Academy Award Theatre production, both on CBS. A 1946–1951 radio show called the Adventures of Sam Spade (on ABC, CBS, and NBC), starred Howard Duff (and later, Steve Dunne), and took a considerably more tongue-in-cheek approach to the character.
