Brigid O’Shaughnessy (The Maltese Falcon)

Brigid O’Shaughnessy is a deceiver, murderer, and femme fatale.
She appears in the 1941 version The Maltese Falcon, written
and directed by John Huston.
We meet Brigid at the beginning of the movie when Effie
Perine (Lee Patrick), the receptionist for Same Spade (Humphrey Bogart) and his
partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) announces that there is a girl named
Wonderly here to see you.
Effie Perine: There's a girl wants to see you. Her name's
Wonderly.
Sam Spade: Customer?
Effie Perine: I guess so. You'll want to see her anyway.
She's a knockout.
Sam Spade: Shoo her in, Effie darling, shoo her in.
Miss Wonderly as it turns out is really Brigid O'Shaughnessy,
who is a 1941 version of a knockout, thin as a rake with large wanton eyes and
dressed in fox furs and wearing a small black velvet half hat with veil and
feathers and a gown with puffed shoulders.
Brigid gives Sam Spade a fake name and tells him a fake story about her 17-year-old younger sister running off with a bad man Floyd Thursby.
Brigid plays the chaste Ingenue character to the hilt. Biting her lower lip and holding back tears while speaking to telling her story
Sam’s partner Miles Archer seeing Brigid (the 1940s knockout) wonders into the room jumps in to take the case.
After Brigid leaves, Archer and Spade talk.
Spade: What do you think of her?
Archer: Sweet. (guffaws suddenly) Maybe you saw her first, Sam, but I spoke first.
While on the case Miles is shot dead.
Spade is called by the policemen and shows up on the murder sight.
Later Spade finds out from the police that Floyd Thursby has also been shot and Spade is the suspect.
Miss Wonderly comes to live with Spade which, because of the heavy self-censorship of the time by the Hays office, is only hinted at.
Spade is now trying to clear his name and trying to solve
the mystery of Archer and Thursby during the day while bedding the femme fatale behind both killings at night. 
Spade soon finds out that Brigid is involved with a group of
evil men who are trying to get their hands on the Maltese Falcon, a golden statue of a falcon covered in lead to hide its value.
Spade figures out the scheme and is able to escape. His
lover, Brigid pleads for her life but Spade unmoved turns her over to the
police.
Trivia:
Samuel Dashiell Hammett 1894 –1961) was an American author
of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter
and political activist.
Hammett was a private detective having worked for the
Pinkerton National Detective Agency from when he left school when he was 13
years old.
Hammett had written and published over 30 short stories before
he published The Maltese Falcon in 1929. The book as originally serialized in
the magazine Black Mask beginning with the September 1929 issue.
This was the first appearance of Hammett’s main character Same
Spade.
The Hays Code - The Motion Picture Production Code was the
set of industry moral guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was
applied to most United States motion pictures released by major studios from
1934 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Will H. Hays,
who was the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of
America (MPPDA) from 1922 to 1945.
This version of the Maltese Falcon is the third remake. 
The Maltese Falcon (1931), the first version, a pre-Code
production was also written by John Huston and starred Ricardo Cortez as a very
charismatic Sam Spade and Bebe Daniels as Brigid O'Shaughnessy. Because of the Hays Code which were applied in
1934 in In 1936, Warner Brothers attempted to re-release the film but was
denied approval by the Hays Production Code censors because of its
"lewd" content. The affair between Sam Spade and Brigid O’Shaughnessy
was made clear. Brigid was even seen taking a bubble bath in Sam’s apartment.
The next remake of The Maltese Falcon novel was entitled
"Satan Was a Lady" and released in 1936. This was a more comical version
of the story starring Bette Davis and Warren William, with Sam Spade becoming
"Ted Shane". The film received poor reviews, and Davis later referred
to the film as "junk".
John Huston remade the film after he had seen how poorly the
first adaptation was. He though the 1931 movie was poorly cast and directed. Huston
cast his old friend Humphrey Bogart in the lead role. Bogart was completely wrong
for the part, in the book Sam Spade is tall and blond and Bogart isn’t, but
Bogart was a very strong actor with a larger than life screen personality so
most people today think of him as “the” prototype Sam Spade.
Mary Astor has very notorious reputation in her day. It is rumoured
that John Huston was one of her many lovers.
The Maltese Falcon is considered to by one of the first Film Noir movies.
Category:1940s
Category:Brunette
Category:Callous
Category:Conspirator
Category:Deceiver
Category:Femme Fatale
Category:Freud Buster
Category:Greedy
Category:Hero's Friend
Category:Hero's Lover
Category:Live Action Villainess
Category:Murderer
Category:Pistol
Category:Sex
Category:Villainous Reveal
Category:Wetlook
Category:Fate: Arrested