Mickey Spillane

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Frank Michael "Mickey" Morrison Spillane (* 9. March 1918 in Brooklyn , New York ; † 17th July 2006 in Murrells Inlet , South Carolina ) was a US -American crime writer and comic - lyricist .

Life

Mickey Spillane began before the Second World War as a comic book writer for Captain America , Batman and Submariner, among others , and wrote short stories for dime books . During the war he joined the Air Force and became a fighter pilot instructor. In order to get enough money to start a business after the war, he wrote his first novel in 1947 with his most famous hero, private detective Mike Hammer. Over 200 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide. The last novel in this series was published in 1996, almost 50 years after the character was introduced.

Mickey Spillane worked in the 1950s as a trampoline artist and "living cannonball" at the circus, as a racing driver, treasure diver and film actor. In 1963 he played his own hero Mike Hammer in a production. In 1974 he had a guest appearance as Alan Mallory on Columbo in the episode "Write or Die".

Spillane is said to have worked briefly for the American FBI . In any case, a secret agent named Tiger Mann was the hero in four of his novels from 1964 to 1966, his only other character in the series who took into account the agent boom surrounding James Bond at that time.

He also worked as an author in the genre of children's and youth books. The book "The Day the Sea Disappeared", published in 1979, in which he tells a story about a natural phenomenon he experienced himself, was awarded the Junior Literary Guild Award .

Mickey Spillane received the highest honor, the Grand Master Award, from the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) in 1995 for his special achievements in crime literature . In 2007 the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) awarded a new literary prize for the first time for the best series character in crime novels: The Hammer , named after Mickey Spillane's protagonist.

His motto “Live wild, fast and dangerous” also became known. Spillane was an avowed Jehovah's Witness .

The New York avant-garde musician John Zorn created a musical memorial for Mickey Spillane and his character Mike Hammer with the concept album Spillane .

Mike Hammer

Hammer is based on a previous Spillane comic book character named Mike Danger and is a sequel to die-hard American city snoopers à la Sam Spade ( Dashiell Hammett ) and Philip Marlowe ( Raymond Chandler ). He is more uncompromising and unscrupulous than his predecessors and his adventures (in 13 books) are characterized by an often criticized violence. The author justifies this by saying that he is writing for the war veteran clientele who know how to deal with the brutality.

While Spillane's first novel Ich, der Richter started slowly and only really started as a paperback, the other hammer adventures became huge successes and attracted millions of audiences by the dozen. By 1965, seven of his books were among the 30 best-selling books of the 20th century in the United States, despite a hiatus between 1953 and 1961.

Mike Hammer brought it to several film adaptations with changing actors. The first film adaptation took place in 1953 under the title Der Richter bin ich ( I, the Jury , directed by Harry Essex) as a 3D film . In the movie , the killer is killed ( The Girl Hunters , 1963) has Spillane directed by Roy Rowland even shown his detective for yourself. The best-known embodiment of the detective happened but by Stacy Keach , who played him from 1984 to 1987 and the late 1990s in a total of 72 episodes of a US television series and in television films . The most important Spillane adaptation is the 1955 film noir classic Kiss Me Deadly ( Rattennest ) by Robert Aldrich , in which Ralph Meeker fights a conspiracy as Mike Hammer and also has to do with a mini atomic bomb.

Works (selection)

Mike Hammer

  • I, the Jury , 1947 (Eng. I, the judge / The death carousel )
  • My Gun Is Quick , 1950 (German: The Wasp's Nest / My Revolver sits loosely )
  • Vengeance Is Mine , 1950 (German Revenge is my / late guests )
  • The Big Kill , 1951 ( Jackpot / The Black Nights of Manhattan / The Big Blow )
  • One Lonely Night , 1951 ( rain in the night / manhunt in Manhattan / in lonely night )
  • Kiss Me, Deadly , 1952 (German rhapsody in lead / The lost keys / Kiss me, death )
  • The Girl Hunters , 1962 (German The Girl Hunters / The Daughters of the Night )
  • The Snake , 1964 (dt. The snake )
  • The Twisted Thing , 1966 ( Eng . Verkorkst / Die .45er / Das Unding )
  • The Body Lovers , 1967 (German beloved corpse / dead in New York )
  • Survival ... Zero! , 1970 (the preliminary end of the series, German escape is pointless / no chance )
  • The Killing Man , 1979 (the first comeback, German dead know no mercy / killer / me, the avenger )
  • Black Alley , 1996 (the second comeback, German death with interest )
  • The Goliath Bone , 2008 (with Max Allan Collins; published posthumously; no German edition yet)
  • The Big Bang , 2010 (with Max Allan Collins; published posthumously; no German edition yet)
  • Kiss Her Goodbye , 2011 (with Max Allan Collins; published posthumously; no German edition yet)
  • Lady, Go Die , 2012 (with Max Allan Collins; published posthumously; no German edition yet)
  • Complex 90 , 2014 (with Max Allan Collins; published posthumously; no German edition yet)
  • King of the Weeds , 2014 (with Max Allan Collins; published posthumously; no German edition yet)

Tiger man

  • The Day of the Guns , 1964 (German: the tiger is loose )
  • Bloody Sunrise , 1965 ( blood in the sun )
  • The Death Dealers , 1965 (Eng. Three eyes )
  • The By-Pass Control , 1966 ( The One Man War )

Other "heroes"

  • The Long Wait (Johnny McBride) , 1951 ( comeback of a murderer )
  • The Deep (Panther) , 1961 (German: The Panther Returns )
  • The Flier (Cat Fallon) , 1964 (Eng. A bullet rarely comes alone )
  • Me, Hood and Return of the Hood (Ryan) , 1964 (German gangster )
  • The Delta-Factor (Morgan) , 1967 (German: The Delta-Factor )
  • The Last Cop Out (Gillian Burke, The Gill) , 1973 (German death squad )
  • The Erection Set (Dogeron Kelly) , 1973 (German sex bomber )

Short stories

  • The Veiled Woman , 1952 (German death of an immortal )
  • Everybody's Watching Me , 1953 (Eng. This city is mine )
  • The Girl Behind the Hedge , 1963 (dt. Behind the Hedge )
  • The Bastard Bannerman , 1964 (Ger. The Bastard Bannerman )
  • Killer mine , 1965 (German without a German title in the book Ein Loch zuviel im Kopf )
  • Man Alone , 1965 (German without a German title in the book Ein Loch zuviel im Kopf )
  • Kick It or Kill , 1968 ( where carrion is )

The following short stories were published in 1984 in the Tomorrow I'll be dead issue (Bastei Lübbe, ISBN 3-404-19116-1 ). Unfortunately, the date of creation is not known:

  • Tomorrow I Die (German tomorrow I will be dead )
  • Stand up and Die! (Eng. get up and die )
  • The Pickpocket (German pickpocket )
  • The Screen Test of Mike Hammer (German Mike Hammers test recording )
  • Sex is my Vengeance ( sex is my revenge )
  • Trouble ... Come and Get It! (Eng. Trouble is my business )
  • The Gold Fever Tapes (German gold fever )

Children's books

  • The Day the Sea Rolled Back , 1979 (Eng. The day the sea disappeared )

Film adaptations

  • 1953: I am the judge
  • 1954: The long wait
  • 1955: rat nest
  • 1957: My gun is quick
  • 1963: The Killer Is Killed (The Girl Hunters)
  • 1970: The Delta Factor (The Delta Factor)
  • 1980: Mike Hammer (Mike Spillane's margin for murder)
  • 1981: I, the judge (I, the jury)
  • 1983: Mike Hammer - One murder is not enough (Mike Hammer: more than murder)
  • 1983: Mike Hammer - Murder me, murder you
  • 1986: Mike Hammer - Kidnapping in Hollywood (The return of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Spillane, Mickey
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Spillane, Frank Michael Morrison
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American crime novelist
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York City, New York, United States
DATE OF DEATH July 17, 2006
Place of death Murrells Inlet , South Carolina, United States