Maltese Falcon

SAN FRANCISCO -- Nine months after someone stole a Maltese Falcon statue from a San Francisco landmark, the restaurant owner is touting a new bird made famous by Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel and Humphrey Bogart's 1941 film noir classic. John Konstin of John's Grill said the 150-pound, 17-inch statue made of lead and bronze will be bolted down, locked in a case and eyed constantly by security cameras. The predator looks more fierce and realistic than the 50-pound plaster replica it replaces.

No other star of Hollywood's golden age continues to hold audiences in quite the way that Humphrey Bogart does. The American Film Institute voted him the greatest male star of all time, and his influence as cultural icon and representative of a certain distinctively American masculinity and noir cool is greater now than ever, half a century after his death. He has not lacked for able biographers ? there appear to be about 40, including the definitive 1997 volume by A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax ?

Sixty years after its initial publication, "The Maltese Falcon" remains one of the most skillfully written detective novels in the history of the genre. As few modern readers will be able to erase the images from the classic 1941 film, it's interesting to contrast the Dashiell Hammett and John Huston versions of the characters.

The first great antihero of American movies, Humphrey Bogart remained the epitome of nonconformist cool for generations after his death. He succumbed to cancer in 1957 at age 57, and the course of his afterlife was sealed three years later by Jean-Luc Godard's era-defining "Breathless," in which Jean-Paul Belmondo played a Parisian thug who borrowed his insouciant swagger from the movies of his beloved "Bogey. " The Bogey of the collective imagination was defined by his contradictions: a vulnerable tough guy and a cynical idealist.

Black Mask, the great pulp fiction magazine, was launched by H.L. Mencken in 1920 but really started to come into its own some six or seven years later under the editorship of Joseph T. Shaw, who would in time publish almost the entire pantheon of classic hardboiled American crime writers: Raymond Chandler, Horace McCoy, Erle Stanley Gardner, Raoul Whitfield, Lester Dent, Fredric Brown, Cornell Woolrich and so on. The list goes on and on. But Shaw's...

Call in the coppers, get Sam Spade on the case: The Maltese Falcon's gone again. In a missing-bird caper reminiscent of the one that perplexed Dashiell Hammett's fictional sleuth, the owner of a landmark restaurant here is offering 25 Gs ($25,000) for a replica of the famed Maltese Falcon swiped from a locked display case over the weekend.

People have been talking in one way or another about the black bird -- ex-detective Dashiell Hammett's third and classic novel, "The Maltese Falcon" -- ever since its original serial publication in Black Mask magazine in 1929. As a 1930 Knopf hardcover, the book was an immediate bestseller, going through seven printings that year. The "Falcon," a masterpiece of American hard-boiled writing, revolutionized the detective novel, and its merit as literature was seen from the first by critics.

Whoever added the hues to the newly colorized "The Maltese Falcon," which recently aired on Ted Turner's Atlanta-based WTBS, was miscolored. Bogie was decked out in blue pin-stripes. But that particular double-breasted suit, which he wore in the final three-fourths of the film, was actually chocolate brown. The suit brought $400 last year at a movie memorabilia auction.

I am very upset about this whole colorization scheme. I adore old movies and think that coloring classics such as "The Maltese Falcon" is an atrocity. The only good I see coming out of this whole process is that the networks are running more classics. Thank heavens for that little piece of home-based technology, the color knob. Ted Turner and other mercenaries like him may have the power to leave their mark like so many dogs on our collective heritage. At least the "general public" still has the power to remove the stench with a flick of the wrist.

How to have your TV studio visited by a wrathful spirit: The local KNBC news portion of NBC's "Today Show," covering the facts of Huston's death, mentioned that in his last years the director had problems with emphysema, even appearing in public using his breathing apparatus. Next there was a clip, without sound, of the director at a televised public speaking appearance with his oxygen tank. Then a clip from "The Maltese Falcon"-- colorized.

Black Mask, the great pulp fiction magazine, was launched by H.L. Mencken in 1920 but really started to come into its own some six or seven years later under the editorship of Joseph T. Shaw, who would in time publish almost the entire pantheon of classic hardboiled American crime writers: Raymond Chandler, Horace McCoy, Erle Stanley Gardner, Raoul Whitfield, Lester Dent, Fredric Brown, Cornell Woolrich and so on. The list goes on and on. But Shaw's...

The iconic 1944 film noir "Double Indemnity" was memorable for many things: Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray 's murderous lovers, Billy Wilder 's sly and menacing direction and this tasty, sexy exchange between Walter Neff (MacMurray) and Phyllis (Stanwyck), penned by Wilder and the great mystery novelist Raymond Chandler, who adopted it from James M. Cain's pulp fiction. Walter: "You'll be here too?" Phyllis: "I guess so, I usually am." Walter: "Same chair, same perfume, same anklet?"

SERIES How I Met Your Mother: Ted (Josh Radnor) brings a date to Lily's (Alyson Hannigan) birthday dinner in this new episode (8 p.m. CBS). Dancing With the Stars: Host Tom Bergeron and judges Len Goodman, Bruno Tonioli and Carrie Ann Inaba return as 11 new teams trip pair up for a new season. Among the stars: astronaut Buzz Aldrin; Pamela Anderson, Shannen Doherty and Niecy Nash; Erin Andrews; Olympic gold medal figure skater Evan Lysacek; Kate Gosselin; former TV "Bachelor" Jake Pavelka; Aiden Turner ("All My Children")

Hugh Hefner has a confession. "I think I opened the first Playboy Club because of 'Casablanca.' I wanted to have a place where people came to hang out as they did at Rick's," admits the pajama-clad founder of the Playboy empire. The Oscar-winning 1942 "Casablanca," starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as the reunited lovers Rick and Ilsa, is the favorite film of Hefner, a serious movie buff. "It has everything -- not only Bogie's charismatic character, but lost love, redemption, patriotism, humor -- it had a great musical score."

Events & Revivals The Cinefamily Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A. (323) 655-2510. Jerry Beck's Animation Tuesdays: "Scope-A-Toons" The Cinefamily's resident animation historian screens a collection of classic cartoons from the 1950s including "Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom," "Juggler of Our Lady" narrated by Boris Karloff, designed by R.O. Blechman and other rarely seen footage in CinemaScope, MetroScope and TotalVision....

SERIES Sports Jobs With Junior Seau: In this new episode Junior joins up with Boston's legendary "Bullgang" crew to convert a sports arena's playing surface from ice to hardwood and back again in 36 hours (7 p.m. VS). The New Adventures of Old Christine: Christine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) reluctantly attends her neighbor's (Molly Shannon) holiday block party, where she discovers a juicy secret about her hostess in this new episode. Michaela Watkins also guest stars.

I fully enjoyed and celebrated your fine article ("Sending 'Casablanca' Over the Rainbow," Nov. 6, by Jack Mathews). You are to be congratulated for capturing many people's sentiments. Vandalism of classic black and white movies is a disgrace. If the director of the film wanted it in color, it would have been filmed in color, as it was available. When Ted Turner colorized "Yankee Doodle Dandy," I did not like it . . . Then, when he did "The Maltese Falcon" and "Captain Blood," I saw the new addition to be "defacing."

Caution: The following letters have been colorized. Do not read without using special safety glasses. I cringed at Ted Turner's arrogance, and his plans to colorize hundreds of films, including "Casablanca" and "The Maltese Falcon" ("Turner Defends Move to Colorize Films," by John Voland, Oct. 23). Turner demeans the value of the art that he owns; obviously he has no appreciation for these works. Even if colorization becomes technically perfect (which it is not)

Writing a contemporary follow-up to a classic novel is either an act of bravery or chutzpah -- or perhaps both. One must contend with vociferous readers who consider the classic so sacrosanct they deem any new work heretical. In the last few months alone, the news of impending sequels to A.A.

The National Endowment for the Arts announced today that more than 200 organizations nationwide will receive grants totaling $2.8 million to host "The Big Read," an initiative meant to restore reading in American culture. Nineteen California organizations will get grants totaling $287,000.