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| Subject: Mickey Spillane, 88, Critic-Proof Writer of Pulpy Mike Hammer Novels | |
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Author: South Carolina |
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Date Posted: July 18, 2006 1:31:53 EDT Mickey Spillane, the creator of Mike Hammer, the heroic but frequently sadistic private detective who blasted his way through some of the most violent novels of the 1940’s and 50’s, died yesterday at his home in Murrells Inlet, S.C. He was 88 and had homes in South Carolina and New York City. His death was confirmed by Brian Edgerton of Goldfinch Funeral Home in Murrells Inlet, a village south of Myrtle Beach. Other details were not immediately available. Scorned by many critics for his artless plots, his reliance on unlikely coincidence and a simplistic understanding of the law, Mr. Spillane nevertheless achieved instant success with his first novel, “I, the Jury,” published in 1947. He cemented his popularity over the next few years with books like “Vengeance Is Mine,” “My Gun Is Quick,” “The Big Kill” and “Kiss Me, Deadly,” which became the best of the several movies based on his books, in 1955, with Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer. As the books kept coming, some critics softened toward him. The Times Literary Supplement of London described his 1961 novel, “The Deep,” as “nasty” but nevertheless exhibiting “a genuine narrative grip.” Mr. Spillane referred to his own material as “the chewing gum of American literature” and laughed at the critics. “I’m not writing for the critics,” he said. “I’m writing for the public.” He described himself as a “money writer,” in that “I write when I need money.” “I have no fans,” he told one interviewer. “You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends.” His customers remained loyal even after the Hammer character became much imitated and later generations of pulp writers produced books filled with even more violence than Mr. Spillane’s. Mr. Spillane’s mother was a Presbyterian and his father a Catholic; when he was coming into his own as a fiction writer, Mr. Spillane liked to say that he was “christened in two churches and neither took.” But in 1951, he became a Jehovah’s Witness, and he persuaded his mother and his first wife to convert. Instead of writing, he spent most of his time going door to door, spreading the message of the Bible. He wrote no books from 1952 to 1961, and those he wrote later, some fans said, lacked the vintage sadism of the first five, in which a total of 48 people were killed. Mr. Spillane’s marriages to Mary Ann Pearce and Sherri Malinou ended in divorce. He married Jane Rodgers Johnson in 1983. His children, all by his first wife, were Kathy, Mark, Mike and Carolyn; he also had two stepchildren from his third marriage, Britt and Lisa. Details about survivors were not immediately released. Mr. Spillane took issue with those who complained that his books had too much sex. How could there be sex, he asked, when so many women were shot? He noted the conspicuous role women played among his victims: Mary (abandoned), Anne L. (drowned in a bathtub), Lola (fatally stabbed), Ethel (whipped before she was shot), Marsha (shot) and Ellen (like Mary, given the heave-ho). And then there was Velda, Mike Hammer’s blond, beautiful and patient companion in several novels. Hammer made no advances toward her and all she got for her trouble was being shot, assaulted, strung up naked and whipped. In “I, the Jury,” Hammer became so angry at a female psychiatrist that he shot her in her “stark naked” stomach. (“Stark naked” was a phrase that Mr. Spillane rather liked.) As she died, she asked, “Mike, how could you?” To which Hammer replied, “It was easy.” The Saturday Review of Literature summarized the book as “lurid action, lurid characters, lurid plot, lurid finish.” Anthony Boucher, reviewing it for The New York Times, called it “a spectacularly bad book.” But it enjoyed enormous sales and convinced Mr. Spillane that he could earn a living as a writer. He bought some land near Newburgh, N.Y., 60 miles north of New York City, built a cinder-block house there and proceeded to churn out his special brand of carnage. One bad guy was shot to death by a year-old baby, and in another book Mike Hammer wounded a malefactor just badly enough that he could watch him burn to death. Frank Morrison Spillane was born on March 9, 1918, in Brooklyn, the son of John J. and Catherine A. Spillane; Mickey was a nickname for his baptismal name, Michael. He was educated in schools in Brooklyn and in Elizabeth, N.J., and graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn in 1935. During his school years, he entertained friends by telling them his own ghost stories. He attended what is now called Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kan., without graduating. During the 1930’s, he worked as a lifeguard at Breezy Point, Queens; during the 1940 Christmas season, he sold $1 ties at Gimbels department store. There he met Joe Gill, another Brooklynite, whose brother, Ray, was an editor at Funnies Inc., a comic-book producer in Midtown Manhattan. Mr. Spillane convinced Ray that he could write comic books. The day after Pearl Harbor was attacked, Mr. Spillane enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces and became a fighter pilot. To his dismay, he was stationed in Florida and Mississippi for the duration of the war, training others to be fighter pilots. After the war, he returned to Funnies Inc., but soon tired of comic-book writing and turned to novels. Aside from his detective stories, he wrote two well received, nonviolent children’s books, “The Day the Sea Rolled Back” (1979), which won a prize from the Junior Literary Guild, and “The Ship That Never Was” (1982). Among his other novels were “The Long Wait” (1951), “The Girl Hunters” (1962), “Day of the Guns” (1964), “The Death Dealers” (1965), “The Twisted Thing” (1966) and “Body Lovers” (1967). He also was a writer of a screenplay based on “The Girl Hunters,” produced by Colorama Features in 1963. Mr. Spillane’s most famous hero became the protagonist of two successful television series. The first, “Mike Hammer,” with Darren McGavin, ran from 1956 to 1959. “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer,” with Stacy Keach, ran from 1984 to 1987. Mr. Keach also starred in “Mike Hammer, Private Eye,” from 1997 to 1998. Mr. Spillane also did some acting; he played Mike Hammer and other “tough detective” roles and parodies on television and in movies. He also appeared in more than 100 Miller Lite beer commercials. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
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