Hammer and Tongues

Steyn Online ^ | 1o Mar 2018 | Mark Steyn

[Rummyfan]

Her eyes were a symphony of incredulity, an unbelieving witness to truth. Slowly, she looked down at the ugly swelling in her naked belly where the bullet went in.

'How c-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's how Mickey Spillane ended his first Mike Hammer novel. The story of Hammer and his creator begins in Brooklyn exactly one hundred years ago - March 9th 1918 - with the birth of "Frank Morrison Spillane", as his Scots Protestant mother put on the birth certificate. For the baptism, his dad, an Irish Catholic bartender, amended "Morrison" to "Michael". As a kid, he was called "Frank". But Frank Morrison/Michael eventually decided to go for Mickey, and so did the dames. "Women," he claimed, with considerable supporting evidence, "like the name Mickey."

He'd got to test the proposition as a lifeguard at Breezy Point in Queens, as a trampolinist with Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey, and as a World War Two fighter pilot. But he wanted to write, and so he submitted his stories to comic books, and wound up writing for all the big guys - Superman, Batman, the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, Captain America, Captain Marvel. In 1946, he came up with a comic-book detective called "Mike Danger" and a Gal Friday called Holly who was easy on the eyes and fierce in her devotion. Nobody was interested, so the following year he changed Mike Danger to "Mike Hammer" and Holly to "Velda" and put them in a story with no pictures or speech balloons. Mike Hammer talked tough, drank hard, strong-armed dames, and left rats and punks bleeding on sidewalks and barroom floors...

[Rummyfan]

From The Girl Hunters, author takes hands-on approach to his material: Mickey Spillane with Shirley Eaton.

An American original.

[Rummyfan]

I miss the old-school hardboilers. Obviously, it's an invented, stylized, heightened form of dialogue, as artificial as recitative or any other dramatic convention, and with a certain musicality:

HAMMER: You're never around when I need you.

VELDA: You never need me when I'm around.

But it was a plausible and appealing voice for tough guys. Today in the absence of such conventions we have supposed verisimilitude, so that, instead of hard men saying "I've had some punks tougher than you'll ever be on the end of a gun and I pulled the trigger just to watch their expressions change", they say f**k-f**k-f**ketty-f**k all night long, and we think that's what makes it "real".

[grobdriver]

Jack Reacher with a girl friend?

[Mr Ramsbotham]

In 1946, he came up with a comic-book detective called "Mike Danger" ....

Paternal relation of Carlos, no doubt.

[SJSAMPLE]

I prefer Ralph Meeker in “Kiss Me, Deadly.”

[elcid1970]

Shirley Eaton...the Bond Girl in “Goldfinger” (sigh).

[Governor Dinwiddie]

#5: "I prefer Ralph Meeker in “Kiss Me, Deadly.”"

Excellent choice:   Mickey Spillane Atomic Noir (clip)

[Terry L Smith]

Mr. Mickey was one of those authors in my list of reading/learning to write fiction with my own ‘voice’.

The axiom: ‘never use more than two syllables’, was well eomonstrated in his stories.

Hammer’s beloved 1911 was more than just a pistol, with the same reverence as Conan’s father spoke about the sword. Any GI could instantly know what he felt about the piece of hardware that pulled their butt out of the fire.

Mr. Mickey’s tomes are still good reads these days, too.

“Happy Birthday, Mr. Mickey!”