..am I alone in thinking this was a real cornball with awful hammy acting?
I love Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo and just about all Bogart's other films but this one was just so stilted and stagey.
'Well I've got two words for you - STFU'
I don't think it's 'real cornball'. Lots of tongue-in-cheek stuff though.
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One problem with the OP's take is he seems not to have noticed that Sam Spade thinks part of his job is acting differently, depending on the situation. This arises early in the film when it becomes clear that both Sam and his partner Archer didn't believe much of Bridget's story, but they neither indicate that to her nor refuse her as a client. Why? Because she paid them a lot of money for the simple tail that seems indicated at first, and they figured they would learn the real story later.
Spade as a character is not a conventional anti-hero. He doesn't have a flawed morality, so much as a kind of get along amorality. He's not self destructive. But he does have elements of the anti-hero. He seeks the truth, but is willing to dissemble to get to it. He has had an affair with his partner's wife despite seeming to not care much about her. And is he really attracted to/in love with Bridget?
Bogart is my favorite actor of all time, and this is my favorite film of his. The editing is spot on, the supporting cast one of the best, the dialogue snappy and clever. The narrative and plot are interesting and feed into the themes of the film quite well - duplicity, avarice, trust and the lack thereof.
Great film. It also gets credit for being an early example of the best of film noir.