CHAPTER 15
I was flying to New York to meet with Dino De Laurentiis, the Italian financier and producer. On the plane I recognized the short, stocky, tough-looking man sitting next to me. He’d been starring in Miller Lite commercials for ten years, but I would have known him anyway. He wasn’t an actor; he was a writer. When I was a teenager, his racy pulp gumshoe novels had thrilled me endlessly. Three of them had become detective classics—I, the Jury; My Gun Is Quick; and Kiss Me, Deadly—and his fictional detective, Mike Hammer, was one of my heroes. The man was Mickey Spillane.
Once airborne, I said, “‘She walked toward me, her hips waving a happy hello.’”
Mickey looked at me, not quite knowing what to say.
I threw out some more quotes: “‘Women stuck to him like lint on a blue serge suit.’ . . . ‘You know how to punch a woman? You hit her in the mouth with your lips.’”
He laughed, probably thinking, “This guy’s a nut, but at least he’s read my books.”
I had, all of them, and so had millions of other people. At that time, Mickey was the fifth-most-translated author in the world, behind Lenin, Tolstoy, Gorky and Jules Verne. Some publishers called Ian Fleming the English Mickey Spillane, but Spillane was compared to no one.
I introduced myself. The instant I mentioned Hollywood, Mickey said, “I don’t like Hollywood, and I’ve never met anybody from Hollywood that didn’t try to put the screws to me.”
Mickey was not the personification of Mike Hammer, his fictional hero. Where Mike was hard-boiled, Mickey was a pussycat. Mickey thought things out, but Mike worked on instinct. What Mickey had were preconceived ideas drawn from his essential conservatism. He was blunt and to the point. When Cagney & Lacey became a hit on CBS Television, Mickey told TV Guide, “It’s a good show, but it’s not realistic. You’re looking at fantasy. I’m not macho, but I just take exception to watching women cops. That’s a job for guys.”
I agreed with Mickey. You could exaggerate reality on television, but there was a limit. Charlie’s Angels had been escapist entertainment, but Cagney & Lacey was trying to make people believe its stories.
“In the old days,” said Mickey, “I always tried to keep Hammer my current age. That way I could relate to his experiences. But look at me now! I’m sixty-five. Who in hell wants a sixty-five-year-old detective running around solving crimes. That ain’t very sexy!”
He reminded me of an aging actor, like William Holden, who was always looking for that last great script with a role that would close out his career on a high note. Mickey hadn’t written a Mike Hammer novel in years, but he still thought about it. “I’m going to do one more,” he said, “the big one. It’ll be my swan song.”
To Mickey, Mike Hammer was a state of mind, an ideal. “Ya see, we don’t have heroes anymore,” he explained. “Look at the drug users among ballplayers today. What kind of role models are they? There are no political models. Every time I take a look at a guy like Tip O’Neill, well, I wouldn’t buy a used car from him. He’s a backroom dealmaker, not a leader.” It was as though I was talking to myself.
Mickey had no pretensions. He was born in Brooklyn and reared in New Jersey, the only child in a family of modest means. When it came time for him to go to college, he knew he would have to pay for it himself. He enrolled in Rutgers, but “they wanted me to be a jock, playing ball and swimming and stuff. I didn’t have time for scholarship duties, so I switched to Kansas State because it was cheaper. I was already writing because I had to support myself.”
His greatest disappointment was the movie and television industry. “It’s all garbage. Think of what kids have to look at, and if you’re an adult and watch it, then you’ve got a loose screw. Who wants to waste the time? People watch it because it’s free. There ain’t no responsibility in Hollywood. It lures young people because it offers a dream. Their eyes get big and wide at the prospects, and when it’s too late they suddenly discover they’re one of a million out-of-work actors. It’s a shame. What most actors make wouldn’t pay my beer bill.” He was even harsher on producers and directors: “The guys who tried to translate my work to the screen were idiots and incompetent slobs.”
By the time we were halfway through the flight, we were friends. When the plane landed, we were partners. We made a one-dollar deal that gave me the right to develop and produce Mike Hammer movies for screen or television. The deal had three caveats: Hammer had “to wear a snap brim hat, have short hair and carry a .45, not a sissy .38.”
I didn’t have a dollar bill. I tried to give him a five. “No, just send it to me,” he said. As with Bogart and Rains in Casablanca, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Back in Hollywood, I pitched Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer to the networks. No one was interested. Motion pictures and television shows reflect the mood of the times; politicians—usually the president—make the mood. CBS and NBC turned me down (this was before cable), saying the Hammer character was too rough and tough for contemporary audiences. Jimmy Carter was president and the national mood was soft on violence. Current detective shows portrayed cream puffs as private eyes, like Barnaby Jones and Cannon. The network hotshots thought gumshoes should be like Buddy Ebsen, avuncular if not downright grandfatherly. I pitched Mike Hammer as Dirty Harry with a sense of humor, an old-fashioned detective who solved cases the cops didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t, and then laughed about it. The problem was, I didn’t have Clint Eastwood. I put Hammer on the shelf and decided to wait for a better day.
I eventually did find my Mike Hammer. It was in the form of one of America’s purest actors—Stacy Keach. I can easily summarize in a few sentences my adventures with Stacy Keach. And I love to tell the story. It’s a happy story. It’s a story about the star of one of the hottest television series in America. About an actor who became a star, who learned his lesson, who then helped America broaden what we will accept to give people another chance, who then goes on to have a wonderful family, a wonderful life and a wonderful career. Like me, Stacy was a fighter. He had heart and the man never gave up. He never quit. But I am getting a little ahead of myself.