Mickey Spillane

For the gangster, see Mickey Spillane (gangster).

Frank Morrison Spillane (March 9 1918 – July 17 2006), better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American author of crime novels. He was known for the series of novels featuring his signature detective character, Mike Hammer, among other works. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold around the globe.^[1]

Early life

Spillane was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He began his writing career in 1935 submitting stories to illustrated magazines and comic books (nicknamed 'slicks'). Among others, Spillane had written for Captain Marvel, Superman, Batman and Captain America.

The day after Pearl Harbor Day in 1941, Spillane joined the Air Corps of the United States Army. Many of the scenarios with which he was said to partake in his military service later became topic matter for his most popular writing. According to the Guardian^[2], Spillane was not only a fighter pilot and instructed incoming cadets, but he claimed to work briefly as an undercover investigator for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and, upon demobilization from the Army, he found work as a trampoline artist in a traveling circus.

Career

For a time Spillane was one of the most popular authors in the U.S., with seven titles among the ten best-selling American books of the 20th century.

The Associated Press' wrote:

• Mr. Spillane, a bearish man who wrote on a manual Smith Corona, said he didn't care about reviews. He considered himself a "writer," not an "author," defining a writer as someone whose books sell. [1]

An early version of Spillane's Mike Hammer character, called Mike Danger, was submitted in a script for a detective-themed comic book.^[3] Following its rejection, Spillane turned to the novel format. His first novel, written in six days, I, the Jury, was published by E.P. Dutton in 1947 and the paperback version was published by Signet in December 1948. He wrote the book in a tent while he built his first house. I, the Jury introduced Spillane's tough detective Mike Hammer. The violence was more overt than it had ever been in a detective story. His books, although considered tame by current standards, had more than their contemporary competitors in terms of sexual episodes.

Spillane also dabbled in film. He had a chance to play himself as a detective in Ring of Fear in 1954. It was directed by screenwriter, James Edward Grant.

Many of the Mike Hammer novels were made into movies, including the classic film noir Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and The Girl Hunters (1963), in which Spillane himself starred. In The Girl Hunters, Spillane played his creation, Mike Hammer (one of the few occasions in film history in which an author of a popular literary hero has portrayed his own character). It also starred Bond girl Shirley Eaton and actor Lloyd Nolan. He also appeared as a writer who is murdered in the TV series Columbo.

In 1965, he married his second wife, Sherri Malinou, a model who posed in the nude for the cover of his 1972 book The Erection Set. The book was also dedicated to her.

Spillane also appeared in a series of commercials for Miller Lite which parodied his tough-guy image.

Spillane became a Jehovah's Witness in 1951 (NPR Interview).

Death

Mickey Spillane died July 17 2006 at his home in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina from pancreatic cancer.

Criticism of his work

Literary critics hated Spillane's writing, citing high content of sex and violence. In answer to his critics, Spillane had 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.

Russian-American author 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 Mike Hammer stories. She later publicly repudiated what she regarded as the amorality of Spillane's Tiger Mann stories.

German painter Markus Lüpertz claims that Spillane's work influenced his own. He certainly loves to shock his critics by saying that Spillane counts as one of the major poets of the 20th century as far as he is concerned.

References to Spillane in popular culture

• The late writer Charles Bukowski was said to have been inspired to write his 1994 novel Pulp as a parody of Spillane's style of detective novels.
• Avant-garde composer John Zorn wrote and released, in 1987, a twenty-five minute piece based on motifs found in Micky Spillane's work, which Zorn called Spillane.
• The sitcom Sledge Hammer, which ran from 1986 until 1988, was a parody of the Spillane's Mike Hammer character.
• In episode 9.10, Operation Friendship, of the television series M*A*S*H, Corporal Klinger saves Major Winchester's life and, in the process, breaks his nose. At Klinger's request, Winchester reads Spillane's I, the Jury to him, as a way to help repay his debt to Klinger.
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, "Profit and Loss", Quark interrupts Odo in the security office and is surprised to find him reading I, the Jury.
• In the movie Full Metal Jacket, the drill instructor responds to the protagonist's choice to join the "Stars and Stripes Army Newspaper" by saying "You think you're Mickey Spillane? You think you're some kind of a writer?"
• The song "The Friends of Mr. Cairo", by Jon & Vangelis, on the album of the same name, inclues the line in the lyrics "She came, as in the book, Mickey Spillane".
• In the "Lost" Stella short entitled "Bar", while drinking in a bar, Michael Ian Black makes a toast to David Wain and Michael Showalter makes a toast to Black. Each of these is in the style of a limerick and each ends with the line, "He'd have to be Mickey Spillane".

Quotes

See also

• History of crime fiction
• Hard boiled American crime fiction writing

Wikipedia information about Mickey Spillane This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mickey Spillane". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.