Mickey Spillane

our show about jerry lewis was that the first episode shows about jerry oh shows yeah

And about what huge deals Martin Lewis were got me thinking about another dominant cultural figure of the 50s who has mostly completely faded from memory, Mickey Spillane.

I'd love to hear you two talk about the other Spillane movies besides Kiss Me Deadly.

Have you ever seen the one, I think it's the Girl Hunters that Mickey Spillane stars in? No.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm

the Jury from 82 is the one that Larry Cohen wrote and was fired from.

Yes.

For example, he took over the Dick Tracy comic strip when Chester Gould retired in 1977.

He became friends with Mickey Spillane and worked with him on his Mike Hammer and other novels up until his death in 2006.

Last year, Max published Baby, It's Murder, which he says will be Hammer's final adventure.

Max's longest-running series is entirely his own, featuring Nathan Heller, a Chicago-based private eye who's appeared in some 19 novels and many short stories since his arrival in 1983.

Of course I'm going to go there because I've been writing since I was in junior high.

And I took my manuscript of my first book up and found Richard Yates because he was the guy doing the undergraduate workshop.

And I came in bubbling about Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane and James McCain and handed him this book.

And he looked at me and he said, Mr. Collins, we don't do that kind of thing here.

Today's offering is perhaps the strangest film of the 1950s so far, [upbeat music] which is saying something since we started with Robot Monster.

Today's offering is Kiss Me Deadly, based on the novel by Mickey Spillane.

So perhaps this cinematic conversation will feel more literary than our first two Schlocktoberfest discussions this year.

But probably not.

And again, I don't know Mike Hammer's own history.

Was he a former police officer? It's probably in the books.

I should probably read these Mickey Spillane books at some point.

But we don't really get a lot of his own background in this movie.

[laughs]

And I, I, I was like, "We should do something together." And my business partner, Mike Bodin, suggested, "Well, what if..." You know, first he wanted to do Mike Hammer 'cause, 'cause Max Allen Collins is the keeper of the Mike Hammer flame from Mickey Spillane's, uh, he, he took all the rest of Mickey Spillane's outlines for the book he didn't get to write, and Max expanded those and wrote, turned those into books.

So they're billed as being written by both Mickey and Max, but he's been doing that.

So I wanted to do something, and Max suggested his Nathan Heller books.

Television continued to provide some income and exposure for Hunter in the meantime as alter ego Kurt Cannon found his name on the screen as the originator of two stories in the Mike Hammer series in February of 1958 and another the following year.

Apparently whilst working for Scott Meredith, Lombino was sent to meet Mike Hammer author Mickey Spillane, who made an impression on the young literary agent by firing a gun into a waste paper bin to demonstrate its effect.

Several early adaptations of 87th Precinct novels appeared on screen as well in the Climax and Kraft Theatre anthology series and by the close of 1958 the big screen adaptations of Cop Hater and The Mugger had been released.

As the 1950s drew to a close, Evan Hunter was firmly established as an author.

Yeah.

I got to know if your DI went – What do you think you are, Mickey Spillane?

No, I don't think that they knew, maybe they did.

At that point, my gosh, they just treat you like you're all the same and you're all bag nasties is what you call it.

It was...

A, a funny story is that I can remember him coming home one day, and I s- I saw his, his, his bag open, and I reached in and, and there was a Mickey Spillane novel in it.

And I, I picked it up to look at it, and he just looked at me and he said, "Son, not at the moment.

Just put that one down." [laughs]

[laughs]

[laughs]

So of course what that did was, "I'm gonna read as many Mickey Spillane novels as I can."

[laughs]