Dashiell Hammett

Birth Name:
Samuel Dashiell Hammett
Birth Date:
May 27, 1894
Birth Place:
St. Mary's County, Maryland
Death Date:
January 10, 1961
Place of Death:
Lenox Hill Hospital, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Age:
66
Cause of Death:
Lung cancer
Cemetery Name:
Arlington National Cemetery
Claim to Fame:
Writers and Poets
The name Dashiell Hammett is synonymous with the "hard-boiled" genre of detective fiction. Born Samuel Dashiell Hammett, he worked as a detective in his early twenties and later wrote numerous popular mystery novels, most famously "The Maltese Falcon" (1930) and "The Thin Man" (1931). Hammett enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1918 and served in the Motor Ambulance Corps, but spent most of World War I hospitalized for influenza and tuberculosis. Hammett enlisted again after Pearl Harbor, at the age of 48, and was stationed at a base in the Aleutian Islands. A vocal supporter of civil liberties and left-leaning causes, Hammett was blacklisted as a suspected communist during the early Cold War, and he served six months in jail for refusing to divulge the names of those who helped fund an activist group that he led.

Not-So-Fun Fact

When Samuel Dashiell Hammett died of lung cancer Jan. 10, 1961, at age 66, he was a broken man. The architect of the modern American crime novel and the author of five classic works, Hammett was nearly penniless at the time of his death, his income attached by the Internal Revenue Service, his health destroyed by a six-month stint in federal prison when he refused to testify at the infamous McCarthy Hearings.

Those five classic works of literature are Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key and The Thin Man.

Cemetery Information:

Final Resting Place:

Arlington National Cemetery

1 Memorial Avenue

Arlington, Virginia, 22211

USA

North America

Map:

Map of Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C.
Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C.

Grave Location:

Section 12, Grave 508

Grave Location Description

As you make your way through the cemetery, drive up on McClellan Drive and turn right onto Grant Drive. Drive approximately 400 feet and look for the red fire hydrant on your left (that is Section 12). The grave of Dashiell Hammett is two rows from the fire hydrant.

Grave Location GPS

38.876699761769224, -77.06869077033595

Photos:

[+]
[+]
[+]
[+]
[+]
[+]
[+]

FAQ's

Dashiell Hammett was born on May 27, 1894.

Dashiell Hammett was born in St. Mary's County, Maryland.

Dashiell Hammett died on January 10, 1961.

Dashiell Hammett died in Lenox Hill Hospital, Manhattan, New York City, New York.

Dashiell Hammett was 66.

The cause of death was Lung cancer.

Dashiell Hammett's grave is in Arlington National Cemetery

Read More About Dashiell Hammett:

Videos Featuring Dashiell Hammett:

Watch YouTube video titled Dashiell Hammett documentary
Dashiell Hammett documentary
Watch YouTube video titled Dashiell Hammett’s The Continental Op
Dashiell Hammett’s The Continental Op
Watch YouTube video titled Detective Fiction: Dashiell Hammett vs. Raymond Chandler
Detective Fiction: Dashiell Hammett vs. Raymond Chandler
Watch YouTube video titled Dashiell Hammett's Philosophy of Life
Dashiell Hammett's Philosophy of Life
Watch YouTube video titled Dashiell Hammett - 'The Maltese Falcon'
Dashiell Hammett - 'The Maltese Falcon'
Watch YouTube video titled The Maltese Falcon (2/10) Movie Clip - Joel Cairo (1941)
The Maltese Falcon (2/10) Movie Clip - Joel Cairo (1941)

See More:

James Baldwin

popular name: James Baldwin

date_of_death: December 1, 1987

age: 63

cause_of_death: Stomach cancer

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: James Baldwin was an American author, playwright, poet and activist. His work explored the intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in the Western society of the United States during the mid twentieth-century. He used themes of masculinity, sexuality, race, and class to create narratives that ran parallel with some of the major political movements toward social change of the twentieth-century. His best known work includes Notes of a Native Son (1955), Giovanni's Room (1956), The Fire Next Time (1963), and No Name in the Street (1972). Two of his works, 'Remember This House' and 'If Beale Street Could Talk', were adapted into Academy Award-winning films.

Dominick Dunne

popular name: Dominick Dunne

date_of_death: August 26, 2009

age: 83

cause_of_death: Bladder cancer

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Dominick Dunne was an American writer, investigative journalist, and producer. He started as a producer in film and television, and is noted for involvement with the pioneering gay film The Boys in the Band (1970) and the award-winning drug film The Panic in Needle Park (1971). He turned to writing in the early 1970s. After the 1982 murder of his daughter Dominique, he came to focus on the ways in which wealth and high society interacts with the judicial system. Famous trials he covered included those of O.J. Simpson, Claus von Bulow, Michael Skakel, William Kennedy Smith, and the Menendez brothers. Dunne was a frequent contributor to Vanity Fair, from the 1980s, and also appeared regularly on television discussing crime.

Wallace Stevens

popular name: Wallace Stevens

date_of_death: August 2, 1955

age: 75

cause_of_death: Stomach cancer

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955. Stevens's best-known poems include "The Auroras of Autumn", "Anecdote of the Jar", "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock", "The Emperor of Ice-Cream", "The Idea of Order at Key West", "Sunday Morning", "The Snow Man", and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". Though now considered one of the major American poets of the twentieth century, Stevens did not receive widespread recognition until the publication of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Knopf, 1954), just a year before his death. His other major works include The Necessary Angel (Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), a collection of essays on poetry; Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction (The Cummington Press, 1942); The Man With the Blue Guitar (Alfred A. Knopf, 1937); and Ideas of Order (The Alcestis Press, 1935). His published book The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (1954) earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Back to Top