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What is the ideal age for a Sam Spade casting?

Forums: Movies, Television, Casting, Imdb, Dashiell Hammett
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tsarstepan
 
Reply Wed 14 Sep, 2016 11:22 am
In a hypothetical casting for the television series or film franchise centered around Dashiell Hammett's infamously calm, cool, and collected literary detective, Sam Spade?

What age of a person would be considered having enough experience and gravitas that the character is known for? Then again, I could frame the hypothetical series or franchise as a prequel to the novels where we follow the character as he's learning his trade prior to the novels?

Okay... to clarify? What is the character's age in the first Hammett novel? Start that first.
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Type: Question • Score: 3 • Views: 2,016 • Replies: 7

 
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contrex
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Reply Wed 14 Sep, 2016 12:04 pm
Near the start of The Maltese Falcon Sam Spade is said to be "past thirty". I always imagined him as around 35. Ricardo Cortez was 31 in the 1930 Roy del Ruth movie, and Humphrey Bogart was 42 when he played Spade in the 1941 John Huston version.
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roger
 
  3  
Reply Wed 14 Sep, 2016 01:22 pm
When I was very young, we had a cat named Sam. Not long after Sam had kittens, my parents started calling him Sam Spade.
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contrex
 
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Reply Wed 14 Sep, 2016 02:04 pm
When you think about it, the character needs to be worldly-wise and a not under any illusions about life, so I think that makes him past his 20s, yet still needs to be physically fit and energetic, so I think he would be under 50. 30s or 40s then, and younger rather than older.
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contrex
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Sep, 2016 02:58 pm
You could say that Bogart gets in the way, because the Sam Spade of the books is over six feet, blond, and mischievous.
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Roberta
 
  2  
Reply Wed 14 Sep, 2016 04:16 pm
Late thirties, early forties.
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Blickers
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Sep, 2016 10:27 pm
Only thing is, the Humphrey Bogart image is probably what people are looking for if there a TV series or movie.
izzythepush
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Sep, 2016 04:59 am
@Blickers,
In that case there's an awful Bogart lookalike advertising Heineken right now. He looks more shagged out than anything else.

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