Mickey Spillane

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Frank Morrison Spillane (March 9, 1918 – July 17, 2006), better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American crime novelist whose stories often featured Mike Hammer, his signature detective.

His books have been selling around the world for more than 225 million copies.

Spillane was also an occasional comedian, once playing Hammer himself.

Early life

Frank Morrison Spillane was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on March 9, 1918, and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where 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. While in high school, he began writing, attended Fort Hays State College in Kansas for a short time, and performed 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.

Spillane enlisted in the Army Air Corps during WWII, becoming a fighter pilot and a flight instructor. He was first stationed at the air base in Greenwood, Mississippi, where he met and married first wife Mary Ann Pearce in 1945. Earle Basinsky and Charlie Wells, two younger writers who would be his protégés, appeared in two Spillane books in the early 1950s; both were also mentors.

Personal life

Mickey and Mary Ann Spillane had four children (Caroline, Kathy, Michael, Ward). Their union came to an end in 1962. In November 1965, he married Sherri Malinou, a nightclub singer. Spillane and his third wife, Jane Rogers Johnson, who married in October 1983 and her two children (Jennifer and Margaret Johnson) shared their waterfront house in Murrells Inlet, which culminated in divorce (and a lawsuit) in 1983.

Spillane became a friend of author Ayn Rand in the 1960s. Despite apparent inconsistencies, Rand adored Spillane's literary style, and Spillane became, as he put it, a "fan" of Rand's work. Spillane became a very active Jehovah Witness later in his life.

Hurricane Hugo wreaked havoc on Murrells Inlet home, to the point that it had to be rebuilt almost entirely. Spillane was seen standing in the ruins of his house in a television interview.

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Career

Spillane claims to have started out as an author of slicks where he was first recognized under house names, then went "lower" to the pulps and then fell even more as a writer for comic books. Joe Gill, a retired Gimbels department store basement salesman, met tie salesman Joe Gill, who later discovered a lifetime of scripting for Charlton Comics. Gill invited Spillane to visit his brother, Ray Gill, who wrote for Funnies Inc., an organization that sold comic books for different publishers.

Spillane soon began writing an eight-page story every day. Captain Marvel, Superman, Batman, and Captain America were among the major 1940s comic book characters created by him. He wrote two-page text stories in the early 1940s while working with Funnies, Inc., which were syndicated to many comic book publishers, including Timely Comics. Spillane said he wrote fifty of these "short stories" that were intended to satisfy a postal law requiring comic books to have at least two pages of text to qualify for a second-class mailing permit at one point.

Spillane's byline appeared on the majority of his prose "filler" stories, which surprised most comic book writers anonymously. In Primal Spillane: Early Stories 1941-1942 (Gryphon Books, 2003), 26 stories were collected. Bold Venture Press' latest, expanded edition of Primal Spillane was published in 2018. The new volume contained an additional fifteen stories, including the previously unpublished "A Turn of the Tide."

Spillane joined the United States Army Air Corps on December 8, 1941, the day after the assault 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. Spillane wanted to buy a country house in Newburgh, New York, 60 miles north of New York City, so the pair decided to raise his bank account by writing a book. In just nine days, He wrote I, the Jury. Ray Gill suggested that it be sent to E. P. Dutton, who then suggested it.

I, the Jury sold 6-1/2 million copies in the United States alone, despite the total weight of the 1947 hardcover and the Signet paperback (December 1948). Mike Hammer, Spillane's most popular character, appeared on Spillane's most popular story. Although tame by some standards, his books were more sex than competing ones, and the brutality was more overt than the ordinary detective story. Sctily-dressed women or women who appeared as if they were about to undress were favored to be on cover. Mike Hammer's main nemesis was gangsters at the start of the century, but by the 1950s, communists and deviants had risen to communists and deviants.

In a script for a detective-themed comic book, an early version of Spillane's Mike Hammer character, Mike Danger, was submitted. "Mike Hammer was originally intended to be a comic book." In a 1984 interview, Spillane said, "I was going to have a Mike Danger comic book." In 1954, two Mike Danger comic-book stories were published without Spillane's knowledge, as well as one featuring Mike Lancer (1942). These were mixed with other content in "Byline: Mickey Spillane," edited by Max Allan Collins and Lynn F. Myers, Jr. (Crippen & Landru publishers, 2004).

During the 1950s-60s, the Mike Hammer series was extremely popular, but the literary establishment had debated the book. Spillane's "a volatile paranoid, sadist, and masochist," the New Republic's Malcolm Cowley characterized him as "a tumultuous writer." Even his own reviewers often found his books distasteful. Spillane's role was unmoved by critics, who said, "You can sell a lot more peanuts than caviar" and that "the literary world is populated by second rate writers who write about other second rate writers." Spillane's six novels, which were among the top ten best-selling American fiction titles of all time, were at attractively low prices (25 cents for a paperback copy that was later raised to 50 cents).

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

Spillane portrayed himself as a detective in Ring of Fear (1954) and rewrote the film without mention for John Wayne's and Robert Fellows' Wayne-Fellows Productions. James Edward Grant, a screenwriter, produced the film. Several Hammer novels were turned into films, including Kiss Me Deadly (1955). Spillane himself appeared in The Girl Hunters (1963), one of the few times in film history in which an author of a well-known literary hero has portrayed his own character. Spillane had intended to film The Snake as a sequel, but it was never made.

Spillane appeared on The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford, with a keen interest in his Mike Hammer books on October 25, 1956. In the episode Publish or Perish, he appeared with Jack Cassidy in the television series Columbo starring Peter Falk. He portrayed a writer who has been assassinated in a story. He appeared in the low budget films Mommy and its sequel, and finally on Mommy's Day in 1995 and 1997.

Spillane formed Robert Fellows in 1969 to produce several of his books, but Fellows died soon after, and only The Delta Factor was released.

He appeared in Miller Lite beer commercials in the 1980s. Spillane granted one of his characters to Tekno Comix in the 1990s for use in a science-fiction adventure story, Mike Danger. Spillane said he had imagined the character decades before but never used him in his introduction to the series.

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