James M. Cain

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James Mallahan Cain

James Mallahan Cain (born July 1, 1892 in Annapolis , Maryland , † October 27, 1977 in University Park , Maryland) was an American journalist and writer , especially of crime novels .

Even if Cain always resisted this labeling, he is usually associated with the so-called "hard school" of American crime culture and is considered to be one of the creators of Roman noir .

Life

The descendant of an Irish Catholic family, son of a well-known teacher and an opera singer, he inherited his mother's love of music, but his hopes of embarking on a career as a singer failed when he was told that his voice wasn't is good enough.

After graduating from Washington College in 1917 , Cain enrolled in the Army and spent the last two years of World War I in France , writing for an Army newspaper. Back in the USA , he continued his work as a journalist, later writing plays and finally sticking to the novels through his acquaintance with Henry L. Mencken , Professor of Journalism in Baltimore and screenwriter in Hollywood in 1923/24 .

His novels shine with a naturalistic description of the milieu and convincing psychological studies of instinctual, immoral characters that have a certain logic in themselves. Their exciting, often criminalistic plot has a strong effect on the "tough guy" school of modern novels and films .

Critics, on the other hand, noted that there was a typical recurrence of motives for action in his narratives: with the notable exception of Mildred Pierce , a man of a woman, usually a femme fatale , always declines through them in criminal acts and in the end possibly of you cheated. However, this pattern is typical of the entire genre of classic film noir and its novel bases (see The Killers (1946), Goldenes Gift (1947) etc.). Of the authors of the hard-boiled school , Cain in particular writes about the destructive mistrust between community criminals after the deed is done, a topic to which Émile Zola's novel Thérèse Raquin (1867) was already devoted. The plot is essentially repeated in Cain's novel Double Indemnity (1936). Here, too, it is about an adulterous couple who murder the wife's husband and later want to eliminate each other in order to get rid of the dangerous confidante. Cain is all about sex , crime, and violence . This is why When the Postman Rings Twice (1934) was temporarily on the Prohibited Scriptures Index after its publication in Boston . His novels are always told from the point of view of the criminal offender.

Cain wrote until his death. However, most of the stories he wrote after the 1940s did not match his early successes. Despite being an alcoholic , he still lived to be 85 years old.

He became known to a wide audience as the author of the novel When the Postman Rings Twice (1934), which was to be filmed several times. The first time, however, in a version by the Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti in 1943, which did not even explicitly mention him because the film rights had not been acquired. The second, American, version with John Garfield and Lana Turner is considered a masterpiece of film noir . Today's best-known version with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange turns out to be an uninspired adaptation , which only wins through the skillful play of its actors and the infamous kitchen table scene .

Cain was married four times: in third marriage with the actress Aileen Pringle (1895-1986) and in fourth marriage with the opera singer Florence Macbeth (1891-1966).

Awards

Quote

"I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices and even the gutters of his country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent, and that if I stick to this heritage, this logos of the American countryside, I shall attain a maximum of effectiveness with very little effort. "
( Cain in the preface to " Double Indemnity " )

Works

  • 1926 Crashing the Gate (stage play) - premiered in Stamford, Connecticut
  • 1930 Our Government (collection of dialogues and essays)
  • 1934 The Postman Always Rings Twice (novel)
  • 1936 Double Indemnity
    • Den Haien zum Frass , German by L. Overhoff; Düsseldorf: Dörner 1951
    • also as: double severance payment , German from Sabine Hübner; Munich: Goldmann 1981. ISBN 3-442-05084-7
  • 1937 Serenade (novel)
    • Serenade in Mexico , German by Ernst Weiß ; Amsterdam: Querido 1938
  • 1938 7-11 (stage play) - premiered at the Lyceum Theater in New York
  • 1941 Mildred Pierce (novel)
    • Hatred cannot sleep , by Eleonore Gabrich; Bergisch Gladbach: Bastei-Lübbe 1970
    • also as Mildred Pierce , German by Peter Torberg; Munich: Goldmann 1992. ISBN 3-442-42043-1 ; Revised translation Zurich: Arche Literatur Verlag 2019. ISBN 978-3-7160-2774-5
  • 1942 Love's Lovely Counterfeit (novel)
    • The other power , German from?, Frankfurt am Main: Nest 1959
    • also as the wrong side of love , German by Horst Heuring; 1985
  • 1943 Career in C major
    • Career in C major , German by Friedrich A. Hofschuster; Munich: Goldmann 1981. ISBN 3-442-05256-4
  • 1943 The Embezzler
  • 1946 Past All Dishonor (novel)
    • It began on Sacramento , German by Maja Reithmeier; Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt 1971. ISBN 3-499-11585-9
  • 1947 Sinful Woman (novel)
    • The Sinful Girl , German by Annelie Christian; Bergisch Gladbach: Bastei-Lübbe 1972
    • also as angel face , German by Sophie von Lenthe; Munich: Goldmann 1992. ISBN 3-442-05102-9
  • 1947 The Butterfly (novel)
    • Bloody butterfly , German by Heinz Kausträter; Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt 1971. ISBN 3-499-42231-X
  • 1948 The Moth (novel)
    • The light green butterfly , German by Ulla H. de Herrera; Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt 1971. ISBN 3-499-11817-3
  • 1950 Jealous Woman (novel)
  • 1951 The Root of His Evil (novel)
    • Hatred can't sleep 1970
  • 1953 Galatea (novel)
    • In the darkness of that night , German by Annelie Christian; Bergisch Gladbach: Bastei-Lübbe 1972
  • 1962 Mignon (Roman)
    • A beautiful young widow , German by Werner Peterich; Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt 1971. ISBN 3-499-11743-6
  • 1965 The Magician's Wife (novel)
    • Deadly Desire , German by Alfred Dunkel, Bergisch Gladbach: Bastei-Lübbe 1970
    • New translation Die Frau des Magiers , German by Sabine Hübner; Munich: Goldmann 1982
  • 1975 Rainbow's End (novel)
    • The girl who fell from the sky , German by Helmut Eilers; Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt 1977. ISBN 3-499-42423-1
  • 1976 The Institute (novel)
    • Death has tender hands, by Friedrich A. Hofschuster; Munich: Goldmann 1981. ISBN 3-442-05224-6
  • 1981 The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction (contains short stories and dialogues - Pastorale / The Baby in the Icebox / Dead Man / Joy in the Glory - as well as the 1940 serial novel Money and the Woman , which was later published under the title The Embezzler in published in the anthology Three of a Kind ; with an introduction by Roy Hoopes)
    • The baby in the refrigerator (five stories: Pastoral / The baby in the refrigerator / Dead man / A journey to happiness / The money and women) , German by Friedrich A. Hofschuster; Munich: Goldmann 1983. ISBN 3-442-05244-0
  • 1984 Cloud Nine (novel, posthumous)
  • 1985 The Enchanted Isle (novel, posthumous)
  • 2012 The Cocktail Waitress (novel, posthumous)
  • Between 1928 and 1931, James M. Cain wrote a weekly column for New York World , mostly short skits and dialogues about New York and the New Yorkers. During the same period he wrote dialogues for American Mercury magazine - many of which later appeared in the anthology Our Government - and for Vanity Fair
  • Between 1928 and 1961, published Cain seventeen short stories in magazines such as American Mercury, Redbook, Ladies' Home Journal, Liberty, American, Esquire, Manhunt and Jack London's adventure magazines , later in several anthologies - about The Baby in the Icebox - summarized were.
  • between 1922 and 1947, Cain wrote articles for American newspapers and magazines infrequently; from 1974 to 1977 several articles for the Washington Post

Film adaptations of own works

Scripts for works by other authors

literature

  • David Madden: James M. Cain (1970)
  • Tough Guy Writers of the Thirties , ed. by David Madden (Southern Illinois University Press 1979; ISBN 0-8093-0912-2 )
  • Roy Hoopes: The Biography of James M. Cain (Southern Illinois University Press 1982; ISBN 0-8093-1361-8 )
  • John Allyn: Double Indemnity: A Policy That Paid Off , in Literature / Film Quarterly, 6: 2 (1978)
  • Jochen Schmidt: Gangsters, victims, detectives - a type history of the detective novel (Ullstein 1989; ISBN 3-548-34488-7 )
  • Paul Skenazy: James M. Cain (Continuum, New York 1989; ISBN 0-8044-2821-2 )
  • Tony Hilfer: The Crime Novel. A Deviant Genre (University of Texas Press 1990; ISBN 0-292-71131-X )
  • Günther Grosser: James M. Cain - The Postman Always Rings Twice. The story of a popular novel ; in: Schwarze Beute, thriller magazine 7; ed. by Ruth Rendell; (rororo 1992; p.143ff; ISBN 3-499-43054-1 )
  • Armin Jaemmrich: Hard-Boiled Stories and Films noirs: Amoral, cynical, pessimistic? An analysis of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Cornell Woolrich, WR Burnett, and other authors, as well as major films noirs ; (Frankfurt am Main, 2012. ISBN 978-3-00-039216-0 )

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Cain, James M.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cain, James Mallahan (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Annapolis, Maryland
DATE OF DEATH October 27, 1977
Place of death University Park, Maryland