Becky Dawidziak’s Cuyahoga Falls class project – a photo of her father, Mark Dawidziak, in a Dashiell Hammett/Sam Spade pose – made the PD and former PD TV/movie critic famous . . . again.

Mark does quite well on his own, with his books about Peter Falk (“Columbo”) and Jim Tully and his portrayals of Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain (an eerily uncanny resemblance as BJ’s Mark ages and needs less and less white powder on his hair).

But Becky’s photo shed a film noir light on Mark. 

As Don Herron, who has been leading Dashiell Hammett tours in San Francisco ($20 today for 4-hour tour) since 1977, wrote: 

“I think she nailed it. Thanks, Becky.”

Herron leads tourists to addresses mentioned in Hammett’s crime novels – Sam Spade (“The Maltese Falcon”), whose apartment was 891 Post Street; Nick and Nora Charles (“The Thin Man”), played in the movies six times by William Powell and Myrna Loy; and the Continental Op (“Red Harvest” and “The Dain Curse”).

Humphrey Bogart played Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon” with such lines as the bird statue being “The, uh, stuff that dreams are made of” and “When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it” and “I hope they don't hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. If they hang you, I'll always remember you.”

Samuel Dashiel Hammett (1894-1961) was born in Saint Mary’s County, Maryland and died in New York City. Dashiel is the Anglicized version of the family’s French de Chiel.

Dashiel married nurse Josephine Dolan. They had two daughters, Mary Jane and Josephine.

Specific streets and locations in San Francisco are frequently mentioned in his stories, setting up Herron's profitable tours.

From 1929 to 1930 Dashiell was romantically involved with Nell Martin, an author of short stories and several novels. He dedicated “The Glass Key” to her and she dedicated her novel “Lovers Should Marry” to Hammett.

In 1931, Hammett embarked on a 30-year affair with playwright Lillian Hellman.

He wrote his final novel in 1934, and devoted much of the rest of his life to left-wing activism, which caused Hammett to serve time in a West Virginia federal penitentiary where he was assigned to cleaning toilets.

The last four years of his life he spent with Hellman. Hammett died in New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital of lung cancer.