Mickey Spillane

American writer who began selling his stories in 1935 to slick and pulp magazines. In 1947 he published "I, The Jury" the first of the Mike Hammer, tough-guy private eye series that made him one of the best-selling and best-paid novelists in the 1950s. He also did TV Miller Lite Beer commercials for 16 years.

Spillane was the only child of John Joseph "Jack" and Ann Spillane. Shortly after his birth the family moved to Elizabeth, NJ, where his dad worked in the hardware business and later joined Merck chemicals. Always an avid reader, Spillane finished the works of Alexandre Dumas by the time he was 13. In high school he was a pugnacious jock, as freestyle swimmer and football quarterback and halfback. At the end of his junior year his family moved back to Brooklyn where his dad opened a bar. Spillane hated the move to the city but the gritty underbelly of Brooklyn provided the perfect setting for his stories.

When he was 17 he sent his first script, a "Blue Bolt" comic book story to an agency called Funnies Inc., which accepted it. Despite this early success as a writer, he planned to study law, and after high school he spent three years at Fort Hays State University in Kansas. The attack on Pearl Harbor ended his legal ambition, and he became an aviation cadet, winning his wings and gold bars. Spillane made 313 parachute jumps and logged in 11,000 hours as a pilot. He proved so adept a fighter pilot that he won an assignment as an instructor for the duration of the war. There in Greenwood, MS, he met Mary Ann Pearce, a secretary on the base.

In 1945 they married and moved to Newburgh, NY where he went back to comic-book writing. He earned enough money to buy some land but couldn't afford a dwelling to go with it. Forced to live in a tent that first summer and fall, he wrote a private-eye novel in 1946 in hopes of raising the necessary $1,000 to add a house. The book, published in 1947 was "I, The Jury," where he introduced tough guy Mike Hammer.