Some time back I watched a film on late night TV.It was the well-known THE MALTESE FALCON featuring Humphrey Bogart together with Mary Astor and an excellent supporting cast including Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre whilst the direction was by John Huston
The omission of one particular supporting actor in THE MALTESE FALCON was a personal disappointment to me, for when I was living -as a schoolboy-in Malta during the immediate pre-war period and was addicted to the gangster films of Warner Brothers, you could always depend on the presence of a particular "heavy" in the person of Joseph Calleja and he was deservedly popular in the island because he was of Maltese origin. That he was not included in the cast of THE MALTESE FALCON was inexcusable.
I served, during and after the Second World War, in the British Royal Air Force and in 1942 I was an Aircraft Apprentice at a place called Halton in the English county of Buckinghamshire and it was there that I first saw this film which was released in Britain at the same time as Malta itself was suffering the bombardment that earned it the George Cross, awarded by King George VI in that same year.
As the opening credits rolled on that black and white film,I was disconcerted to read that the famed Knights of Malta were the Templars whilst they were in fact the Hospitallers.
The Templars had been brutally suppressed in the year 1312, a disgrace that they probably did not deserve for the last Grand Master Jacques de Molai solemnly denied all extorted confessions and perished at the stake in an island of the Seine in 1314. The Sovereign Order Of the Knights of St.John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and (later) Malta had inherited much of the Templars' possessions.
According to the film, the Knights had procured a statuette of a falcon, stuffed it with treasure and dispatched it in the year 1539 to their landlord who was King Charles I of Spain. The bird had been hijacked by pirates and the theme of the film was of it turning up in San Francisco four hundred years later.
The highlight of the film was the eventual appearance of the falcon and the expressions on the faces of those present as it was forced open to reveal - nothing! The actual statuette as used in the film still exists with the scratches of its opening very visible.
All a load of hokum of course but the idea had some basis in fact.
On the 24th March 1530, King Charles was in Bologna where he had gone to be crowned by the Pope as Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire and it was on that day that he signed the Deed which entrusted the Knights with responsibility for the defence of Malta, Gozo, Comino and the outpost of Tripoli. The document was confirmed by the Pope on May 23rd and with its great seal attached is still on display in Malta's capital Valletta.
The rent which the Order had to pay for the group of islands was indeed a falcon but a live one, that was to be presented to the King/Emperor annually on All-Saints Day.
Of such stuff are legends made.
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