Albert Maurice Hackett was an American actor, dramatist and screenwriter most noted for his collaborations with his partner and wife Frances Goodrich. Their film work includes the first three instalments in the Thin Man series, It's a Wonderful Life, Easter Parade, Father of the Bride and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. They won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics' Circle award for their play The Diary of Anne Frank. They received four nominations for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Also wrote as Peter Collinson, Daghull Hammett, Samuel Dashiell, Mary Jane Hammett Dashiell Hammett, an American, wrote highly acclaimed detective fiction, including The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Thin Man (1934). Samuel Dashiell Hammett authored hardboiled novels and short stories. He created Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse) among the enduring characters. In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett "is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time" and was called, in his obituary in the New York Times, "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell...