Saturday, February 11, 2012

The face of Sam Spade

Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The V motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down—from high flat temples—in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.

The above image and description of  Daschiell Hammett's Sam Spade is from the website The Composites. The site is a collection of police composites of literary characters. They are made using descriptions of characters and law enforcement sketch software.

You can suggest a character for a future composite if you include a description of them from the source material.
 

2 comments:

KurtP said...

I have never seen the resemblance between a police composite and a real human, even when they were side by side.

And that pic of Sam looks like a woman without the make-up.

ambisinistral said...

I have to admit I never imagined Sam Spade looking like a young, skinny and mean Ellen DeGeneres.