The Maltese Falcon

 In 1941, John Huston wrote and directed the classic film noir, The Maltese Falcon, which starred Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Jerome Cowan, Ward Bond, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet (nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, won by Donald Crisp for How Green Was My Valley).  The film was nominated for Academy Award for Best Picture (also won by How Green Was My Valley).  

The Maltese Falcon is based upon the 1930 novel of the same name, written by Dashiell Hammett.  In 1990, it was listed as the 10th best crime novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association.  

Sam Spade (Bogart), a private investigator in San Francisco, is hired by a female client (Astor) who is worried about the whereabouts and safety of her sister.  Spade's partner (Cowan) agrees to follow her when she is to meet her sister's boyfriend.  Turns out her story is a complete lie and the partner is murdered.  

The real story is that the female client, whose name is O'Shaughnessy, along with two others, Cairo (Lorre) and Gutman (Greenstreet), are desperately seeking an extremely valuable statuette of a bird (The Maltese Falcon).  So valuable that three people are murdered to get their hands on it.

In reality O'Shaughnessy killed Spade's partner and Spade turns her in to the police.  At the end of the book, which I recently finished, Spade meets his late partner's widow.  

In the movie version's ending, a policeman (Bond) holds the statuette (which turns out to be fake).  He asks, "What is it?"

Spade responds, "The...stuff that dreams are made of."  It is one of the most famous last lines in movie history.  

Apparently, Humphrey Bogart suggested this line to John Huston (who was nominated for Academy Award for Best Screenplay, won by Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller for Here Comes Mr. Jordan) who added it to the film's script.  For years I didn't know the whole story behind this line of dialogue.

Thanks to my wife Cristina, we now know that Bogart was paraphrasing a line from Shakespeare's The Tempest.  A character named Prospero says, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on."  Cristina came across this revelation while reading a book about the great French author, Marcel Proust.  

Before going to Hollywood, Bogart was a stage actor on Broadway, appearing in 18 plays from 1922 to 1935.  As such, I believe he must have read The Tempest.