My, You’ve Aged Well, Sir

In addition to this being Christmas Day, it’s also what would have been the 110th birthday of American actor Humphrey Bogart. (He died in January 1957.) There are any number of movie clips I might have chosen to celebrate his career, but since I recently had the opportunity to write an essay about Dashiell Hammett and his 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon, I decided to embed a scene here from the 1941, John Huston-directed film version of Falcon. In it, we see Bogart, portraying hard-boiled San Francisco private investigator Sam Spade, meeting the wily Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) for the first time. A reminder of Bogey’s performance in this classic picture qualifies as a gift in my book.

Merry Christmas, everyone!