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Mickey Spillane

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For the gangster, see Mickey Spillane (mobster).
Mickey Spillane
Spillane in the "Publish or Perish" episode of Columbo.
Spillane in the "Publish or Perish" episode of Columbo.
BornFrank Morrison Spillane
(1918-03-09)March 9, 1918
Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States
DiedJuly 17, 2006(2006-07-17) (aged 88)
Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, United States
Resting placeCremains scattered in a creek near his home in South Carolina
OccupationNovelist, actor
NationalityAmerican
Period1947–2006
GenreHardboiled crime fiction, detective fiction

Frank Morrison Spillane (/spɪˈleɪn/; March 9, 1918 – July 17, 2006), better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American crime novelist, whose stories often feature his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally. Spillane was also an occasional actor, once even playing Hammer himself.[1][2]

Biography

Born in Brooklyn, New York City, and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Spillane was the only child of his Irish bartender father, John Joseph Spillane, and his Scottish mother, Catherine Anne. Spillane attended Erasmus Hall High School, graduating in 1935.[3] He started writing while in high school, briefly attended Fort Hays State College in Kansas and worked a variety of jobs, including summers as a lifeguard at Breezy Point, Queens, and a period as a trampoline artist for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

During World War II Spillane enlisted in the Army Air Corps, becoming a fighter pilot and a flight instructor.[4] While flying over Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, he said, "That is where I want to live."[5] Later, he would use his celebrity status to publicize the Grand Strand on TV, but when it became a popular resort area and traffic became a problem, Spillane said, "I shouldn't have told people about it."[5]

Photo of Lt. Frank M. Spillane from Greenwood Army Air Field yearbook for 1943.

He was an active Jehovah's Witness.[6] Mickey and Mary Ann Spillane had four children (Caroline, Kathy, Michael, Ward), and their marriage ended in 1962. In November 1965, he married his second wife, nightclub singer Sherri Malinou. After that marriage ended in divorce (and a lawsuit) in 1983, Spillane shared his waterfront house in Murrells Inlet with his third wife, Jane Rogers Johnson, whom he married in October 1983, and her two daughters (Jennifer and Margaret Johnson).

In the 1960s, Spillane became a friend of the novelist Ayn Rand. Despite their apparent differences, Rand admired Spillane's literary style, and Spillane became, as he described it, a "fan" of Rand's work.[7]

In 1989, Hurricane Hugo ravaged his Murrells Inlet house to such a degree it had to be almost entirely reconstructed. A television interview showed Spillane standing in the ruins of his house.

He received an Edgar Allan Poe Grand Master Award in 1995. Spillane's novels went out of print, but in 2001, the New American Library began reissuing them.

Spillane died July 17, 2006 at his home in Murrells Inlet, of pancreatic cancer.[8][9][10] After his death, his friend and literary executor, Max Allan Collins, began the task of editing and completing Spillane's unpublished typescripts, beginning with a Mike Hammer novel, Dead Street (2007).

In July 2011, the town of Murrells Inlet named U.S 17 Business the "Mickey Spillane Waterfront 17 Highway." The proposal first passed the Georgetown County Council in 2006 while Spillane was still alive, but the South Carolina General Assembly rejected the plan then.[5]

He is survived by his wife, Jane Spillane.

Writing career

Comic books

Spillane started as a writer for comic books. While working as a salesman in Gimbels department store basement in 1940, he met tie salesman Joe Gill, who later found a lifetime career in scripting for Charlton Comics. Gill told Spillane to meet his brother, Ray Gill, who wrote for Funnies Inc., an outfit that packaged comic books for different publishers. Spillane soon began writing an eight-page story every day. He concocted adventures for major 1940s comic book characters, including Captain Marvel, Superman, Batman and Captain America. In the early 1940s, working for Funnies, Inc., he wrote two-page text stories which were syndicated to various comic book publishers, including Timely Comics. At one point, Spillane estimated he wrote fifty of these "short-short stories," which were intended to fulfill a postal regulation requiring comic books to have at least two pages of text to qualify for a second-class mailing permit. While most comic books writers toiled anonymously, Spillane's byline appeared on most of his prose "filler" stories. 26 stories were collected in Primal Spillane: Early Stories 1941-1942 (Gryphon Books, 2003). A revised and expanded edition (Bold Venture Press, 2018) reprinted 39 stories, and featured a previously unpublished comic book filler, "A Turn of the Tide."

Novels

Spillane joined the United States Army Air Corps on December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In the mid-1940s he was stationed as a flight instructor in Greenwood, Mississippi, where he met and married Mary Ann Pearce in 1945. The couple wanted to buy a country house in the town of Newburgh, New York, 60 miles north of New York City, so Spillane decided to boost his bank account by writing a novel. He wrote I, the Jury in just 19 days. At the suggestion of Ray Gill, he sent it to E. P. Dutton.

With the combined total of the 1947 hardcover and the Signet paperback (December 1948), I, the Jury sold 6-1/2 million copies in the United States alone. I, the Jury introduced Spillane's most famous character, hardboiled detective Mike Hammer. Although tame by current standards, his novels featured more sex than competing titles, and the violence was more overt than the usual detective story. Covers tended to feature scantily-dressed women or women who appeared as if they were about to undress. In the beginning, Mike Hammer's chief nemesis consisted of gangsters, but by the early '50s, with the onset of the Red Scare, this switched to communists.[2] An early version of Spillane's Mike Hammer character, called Mike Danger, was submitted in a script for a detective-themed comic book. " 'Mike Hammer originally started out to be a comic book. I was gonna have a Mike Danger comic book,' [Spillane] said in a 1984 interview."[11] Two Mike Danger comic-book stories were published in 1954 without Spillane's knowledge, as well as one featuring Mike Lancer (1942). These were published with other material in "Byline: Mickey Spillane," edited by Max Allan Collins and Lynn F. Myers, Jr. (Crippen & Landru publishers, 2004).

The Mike Hammer series proved hugely successful during the 1950s-60s, but the books were excoriated by the literary establishment. Malcolm Crowley of The New Republic called Spillane "a dangerous paranoid, sadist, and masochist" and even his own editors sometimes found his novels distasteful. Spillane for his part was unmoved by critics, saying "You can sell a lot more peanuts than caviar" and "The literary world is made of second rate writers writing about other second rate writers". Attractively low prices (25 cents for a paperback copy, later raised to 50 cents) helped sales, and the 1956 informative guide Sixty Years of Best Sellers found that the six novels Spillane had written up to that point were among the top ten best selling American fiction titles of all time.

The Signet paperbacks displayed dramatic front cover illustrations. Lou Kimmel created the cover paintings for My Gun Is Quick, Vengeance Is Mine, One Lonely Night and The Long Wait. The cover art for Kiss Me, Deadly was by James Meese.

Novels

Mike Hammer

Tiger Mann

  • 1964 Day of the Guns
  • 1965 Bloody Sunrise
  • 1965 The Death Dealers
  • 1966 The By-Pass Control

Morgan the Raider

Other novels

  • 1951 The Long Wait
  • 1961 The Deep
  • 1963 Me, Hood
  • 1964 Return of the Hood
  • 1964 The Flier
  • 1965 Killer Mine
  • 1965 Man Alone
  • 1972 The Erection Set - a Dogeron Kelly novel; in the Jacqueline Susann mould
  • 1973 The Last Cop Out
  • 1979 The Day The Sea Rolled Back - young adult
  • 1982 The Ship That Never Was - young adult
  • 1984 Tomorrow I Die - collection of short stories
  • 2001 Together We Kill: The Uncollected Stories of Mickey Spillane - collection of short stories
  • 2003 Something's Down There - featuring semi-retired spy Mako Hooker
  • 2015 The Legend of Caleb York Novelisation by Max Allan Collins (Based on an un-produced movie script by Mickey Spillane)
  • 2016 The Big Showdown - (A Caleb York Western - Book 2) written by Max Allan Collins based on characters created by Mickey Spillane
  • 2018 The Bloody Spur - (A Caleb York Western - Book 3) written by Max Allan Collins based on characters created by Mickey Spillane
  • 2018 The Last Stand - (The last novel Mickey Spillane completed) - book also includes the previously unpublished novella A Bullet For Satisfaction

List of short stories

  • 1989 The Killing Man - Mike Hammer short story later turned into a full length Mike Hammer novel published in Playboy magazine December 1989, later republished in the book Byline: Mickey Spillane in 2004 (Crippen & Landru)
  • 1996 Black Alley - Mike Hammer short story later turned into a full length Mike Hammer novel published in Playboy magazine December 1996, later republished in the book Byline: Mickey Spillane in 2004 (Crippen & Landru)
  • 1998 The Night I Died - Mike Hammer short story published in the anthology Private Eyes - although story was written in 1953, was not published until 1998
  • 2004 The Duke Alexander - Mike Hammer short story published in the book Byline: Mickey Spillane first published in 2004 (Crippen & Landru), although it was originally written circa 1956
  • 2008 The Big Switch - Mike Hammer short story; completed by Max Allan Collins - published in The Strand Magazine, reprinted in paperback in The Mammoth Book of the World's Best Crime Stories, 2009
  • 2009 I'll Die Tomorrow - (illustrated, limited edition of the short story) (Posthumous) (with Collins)
  • 2010 A Long Time Dead - Mike Hammer short story; completed by Collins - published in The Strand Magazine
  • 2010 Grave Matter - Mike Hammer short story; completed by Collins - published in Crimes By Moonlight, ed. Charlaine Harris
  • 2012 Skin - Mike Hammer e-book short story; completed by Collins
  • 2013 So Long, Chief - Mike Hammer short story; completed by Collins - published in The Strand Magazine, Issue XXXIX, Feb. - May 2013
  • 2014 It's In The Book - Mike Hammer e-book short story; completed by Collins
  • 2015 Fallout - Mike Hammer short story; completed by Collins - published in The Strand Magazine
  • 2016 A Dangerous Cat - Mike Hammer short story; completed by Collins - published in The Strand Magazine, Issue XLVIII, Feb. - May 2016
  • 2016 A Long Time Dead: A Mike Hammer Casebook - a collection of short stories by Mickey Spillane and Collins - published by Mysteriouspress.com/Open Road (This collection reprints the stories The Big Switch, A Long Time Dead, Grave Matter, So Long, Chief, Fallout, A Dangerous Cat, Skin (first time in print format), and It's In The Book (first time in print format))
  • 2003 Primal Spillane: Early Stories 1941-1942 - With an introduction by Collins and Lynn F. Myers, Jr. - published by Gryphon Books.
  • 2018 "A Turn of the Tide" - Children's adventure short story published in the revised and expanded edition of Primal Spillane: Early Stories 1941 - 1942. Although written circa 1950, it was not published until 2018.
  • 2018 Primal Spillane: Early Stories 1941-1942 - With an introduction by Collins and Myers - Revised and expanded edition features an additional 13 stories, and the previously unpublished short story "A Turn of the Tide." - published by Bold Venture Press.

Acting

Spillane portrayed himself as a detective in Ring of Fear (1954), and rewrote the film without credit for John Wayne's and Robert Fellows' Wayne-Fellows Productions. The film was directed by screenwriter James Edward Grant. Several Hammer novels were made into movies, including Kiss Me Deadly (1955). In The Girl Hunters (1963) filmed in England, Spillane himself appeared as Hammer, one of the few occasions in film history in which an author of a popular literary hero has portrayed his own character. Spillane was scheduled to film The Snake as a follow-up, but the film was never made.[13]

On October 25, 1956, Spillane appeared on The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford, with interest on his Mike Hammer novels.[14] In January 1974, he appeared with Jack Cassidy in the television series Columbo in the episode Publish or Perish. He portrayed a writer who is murdered.[15]

In 1969, Spillane formed a production company with Robert Fellows who had produced The Girl Hunters to produce many of his books, but Fellows died soon after and only The Delta Factor was produced.[16]

During the 1980s, he appeared in Miller Lite beer commercials.[17] In the 1990s, Spillane licensed one of his characters to Tekno Comix for use in a science-fiction adventure series, Mike Danger. In his introduction to the series, Spillane said he had conceived of the character decades earlier but never used him.[11]

Reception

When literary critics had a negative reaction to Spillane's writing, citing the high content of sex and violence, Spillane answered with a few terse comments: "Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar... If the public likes you, you're good." Early reaction to Spillane's work was generally hostile: Malcolm Cowley dismissed the Mike Hammer character as "a homicidal paranoiac",[18] John G. Cawelti called Spillane's writing "atrocious",[18] and Julian Symons called Spillane's work "nauseating".[18] By contrast, Ayn Rand publicly praised Spillane's work at a time when critics were almost uniformly hostile. She considered him an underrated if uneven stylist and found congenial the black-and-white morality of the Hammer stories. She later publicly repudiated what she regarded as the amorality of Spillane's Tiger Mann stories.

Spillane's work was later praised by Max Allan Collins, William L. DeAndrea[2] and Robert L. Gale.[18] DeAndrea argued that although Spillane's characters were stereotypes, Spillane had a "flair for fast-action writing", that his work broke new ground for American crime fiction, and that Spillane's prose "is lean and spare and authentically tough, something that writers like Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald never achieved".[2] German painter Markus Lüpertz claimed that Spillane's writing influenced his own work, saying that Spillane ranks as one of the major poets of the 20th century. American comic book writer Frank Miller has mentioned Spillane as an influence for his own hardboiled style. Avant-Garde musician John Zorn composed a piece influenced by Spillane's writing titled Spillane.

See also

References

  1. ^ Gulley, Andrew (January 2006). "Interview: Mickey Spillane". The Strand Magazine. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  2. ^ a b c d William L DeAndrea, Encyclopedia Mysteriosa : a comprehensive guide to the art of detection in print, film, radio, and television. New York: Prentice Hall General Reference, 1994. ISBN 0671850253 (pp. 336-7).
  3. ^ Boyer, David. "Neighborhood Report: Flatbush: "Grads Hail Erasmus as It Enters a Fourth Century", The New York Times, March 11, 2001. Accessed December 1, 2007.
  4. ^ Rippetoe, Rita Elizabeth Booze and the Private Eye: Alcohol in the Hard Boiled Novel. McFarland, 2004.
  5. ^ a b c Vasselli, Gina (2011-07-11). "New name coming soon for road in Murrells Inlet". The Sun News. Archived from the original on 2011-12-30. Retrieved 2011-07-11. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  6. ^ Adam Bernstein (July 18, 2006). "Mickey Spillane; Tough-Guy Writer Of Mike Hammer Detective Mysteries". Washington Post. Retrieved December 19, 2012.
  7. ^ McConnell, Scott, ed., "Mickey Spillane", 100 Voices: an Oral History of Ayn Rand, 2010, New American Library, pp. 232-239.
  8. ^ "Mickey Spillane, 88, Critic-Proof Writer of Pulpy Mike Hammer Novels, Dies". The New York Times. 18 July 2006.
  9. ^ John Sutherland. "Mickey Spillane". the Guardian.
  10. ^ "Mystery Novelist Spillane Dies", The Washington Times
  11. ^ a b "Mickey Spillane's State Of Mind". 23 July 2006.
  12. ^ Spillane, Mickey. Dead Street. Hard Case Crime/Dorchester Publishing, 2007, p. 214.
  13. ^ "Movies: I, the Actor". TIME.com. 7 June 1963.
  14. ^ "The Ford Show, Season One". ernieford.com. Archived from the original on November 28, 2010. Retrieved December 28, 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  15. ^ J. Spurlin (18 January 1974). ""Columbo" Publish or Perish (TV Episode 1974)". IMDb.
  16. ^ p.77 Baker, Robert Allen & Nietzel, Michael T. Private Eyes: One Hundred and One Knights : A Survey of American Detective Fiction, 1922-1984 Popular Press, 1985
  17. ^ "Mickey Spillane dies". The Guardian. July 18, 2006.
  18. ^ a b c d Robert L. Gale, A Mickey Spillane companion Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 2003. ISBN 0313058482 (ix)

Further reading

  • Collins, Max Allan; Traylor, James L. (2012). Mickey Spillane on screen : a complete study of the television and film adaptations. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. ISBN 9780786465781.
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