RIP, Mickey Spillane
For more clips like this, and a most enjoyable guide to pop culture, visit the blog for the NYC cult cable-access show Media Funhouse, located here:
www.mediafunhouse.blogspot.com
The last of the great tough-guy writers is gone. Mickey Spillane possessed none of the elegance of Chandler or Hammett, none of the plotting skills of James M. Cain, none of the demented genius that drove the Big Three Noir Gods (Woolrich, Thompson, and Goodis), but he sure wrote a damned good yarn. And his prose was addictive, no two ways about it. You could scoff at a sentence like "The sky burped and burped, and then threw up, and a new day began." (The Erection Set, which had an awesome early '70s babe-photo cover.) But there was no mistaking this kind of machine-gun prose:
The roar of the .45 shook the room., Charlotte staggered back a step. Her eyes were a symphony of incredulity, an unbelieving witness to the truth. Slowly, she looked down at the ugly swelling in her naked belly where the bullet went in. A thin trickle of blood welled out.... Her eyes had pain in them now, the pain preceding death. Pain and unbelief.
"How could you?" she gasped.
I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
"It was easy," I said.
That was the end of his 1947 novel I, The Jury, the first of his Mike Hammer novels. Perhaps the Mick learned his trade all too well while toiling at Timely Comics (the company that eventually wound up being Marvel) -- whatever it was, he had the gift of machine-gun rat-a-tat-tatting out long crazy, discursive sentences that drew you in, no matter how much you resisted. Mike Hammer's friends and lovers all wound up dead (the reason Mike plugs the gal in the above passage is because she did in an old buddy of his); years before Ian Fleming kept disposing of James Bond's girlfriends, Spillane's readers always knew anyone who showed any affection for Mike -- outside of a stray newspaper dealer, cabbie, Pat Chambers the stock police detective, and the faithful secretary to end all faithful secretaries, Velda -- had to wind up dying a grisly death for which Mike could seek revenge. A man who recognized literary stylists on impact, the great god Terry Southern, said Mickey wrote "in a manner which made Malapart, Celine, and other high priests of the roman noir look like a bunch of pansies."
I had thought of offering a clip from Mick's work as Mike Hammer in the very so-so vanity project The Girl Hunters (1962), where the world found out his voice was a bit high for a hard-berled detective, but decided the above few minutes of clips from a latter-day Dick Cavett show (circa 1987) revealed more about him. Cavett was hosting a mystery-writers panel, and so Mick appears with Robert Parker (mustached gent), Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain, checked jacket), and (no kidding) a nun who was writing decently selling mysteries at the time. Spillane is in top form, telling the tale of the immortal last line from Vengeance is Mine (he never i.d.s the book), talking about what Mike Hammer looked like, proudly reading his worst reviews, and giving credit where credit was due: plugging one of his favorite writers, the much-neglected Frederick Brown.
The "gritty" novelists of today can't hold a candle to this very canny wordsmith who wielded a manual typewriter as ruthlessly as his character did a .45. Farewell, Mick.
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There will never be another. Mickey Spillane, RIP always.
I met Micky when I was 14 he lived behind my best friend Renee and I had no idea who he was but my mom sure did. my mom had read all his books and everything else she could, she was quite the book worm. I could tell when I met and spoke with him he was a nut a crazy personality. He did love beer, lol. I also loved living in Murrells Inlet, that was about 1979, one of my great memories !
I had no idea this was posted on KZread. Thanks a lot. I love Spillaine and I have all his books. He's a very inspirational writer. Long live Mike Hammer, film noir, and pulp magazines!
great writer,i began reading with his books,he is realastic writer, he wrote sbout our dayly life .we really missed him.
My mom actually went to his house all the time when she was a kid
Mickey was very different than MJ. I knew Mickey personally, we went to the same Kingdom Hall (when I used to be a JW). I thought the world of him and I miss him greatly. I tried several times to get him to sell his Jaguar X-T40 but he never would do it. It was a gift from John Wayne and although he never drove it, it still had sentimental value to him. He drove a 1988 Ford Pickup truck until the day he died. He was so humble.
The best. Honestly speaking.
the greatest: mickey spillane. 🔥
Real man, right there. Don't find many anymore.
I read several MS books in my youth. They made me a tougher man, and I don't mind adding I learned to pick a lock or two with my key....wink wink.
my favoite writer,
@ltux Thank you so much 'ltux' for that info. I'll check Robert B. Parker out now. This is a great bunch of crime writers, having a lively discussion. What a shame there aren't many of these today? There should be more interviews of Spillane , Evan Hunter and Parker on KZread. This is the only one I could find where we get to see how Spillane and Hunter talk.
'fabulous clip'
I'm currently re-reading his early works after 15 years. Very enjoyable. He reminds me a bit of Curly Howard (that's a complement btw) Without MS. Frank Miller probably wouldn't have the same inspiration to come up with the whole look & grit of Sin City.
Man, The Big Kill is such a great, tough, crazy book. That one's on my short list of books everybody interested in hard-boiled crime fiction should read. Spillane was one of a kind.
A Miller Lite Polo?
Rip
You could probably make a similar case for Spillane!
Im currently working on a mickey spillane tribute video
Is this the same Mickey Spillane that ruined a game of To Tell the Truth back in 1957?
He was a "good writer" for about 10 books. Unfortunately he wrote 50 or 60.
Good writer but made a poor Mike Hammer when he played the-part.
I met Micky when I was 14 he lived behind my best friend Renee and I had no idea who he was but my mom sure did. my mom had read all his books and everything else she could, she was quite the book worm. I could tell when I met and spoke with him he was a nut a crazy personality. He did love beer, lol. I also loved living in Murrells Inlet, that was about 1979, one of my great memories !