A Lost Mickey Spillane Story
— Found—
On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Mike Hammer’s first appearance in I, the Jury (1947), we are including with the novel The Menace, as a bonus feature, the short story The Duke Alexander, which bears upon two key aspects of Mickey Spillane’s storytelling career.
During our friendship — which began in 1981 when we appeared together at the 1981 Bouchercon, the annual convention for mystery fans and professionals — Mickey shared various things with me from his files that he thought I might get a kick out of. These included two Mike Hammer manuscripts, each of which represented the first third of an unpublished novel. As it happened, I would eventually complete both (The Big Bang, 2010, and Complex 90, 2013) after his passing.
Another partial manuscript he shared was of the very first Mike Hammer novel (Killing Town, 2018), pre-dating I, the Jury and never completed by Mickey, and the unpublished, unfinished sequel to The Delta Factor (The Consummata, 2011). Again, I would eventually complete those works for him, honoring a request he made of me a few weeks before his death in 2006.
Mike Hammer was, obviously, Mickey’s signature character (his “bread and butter boy,” as he put it) but, strangely, he never published a short story about his famous private eye, other than condensations (by other hands) of his last two Hammer novels. Though Mickey frequently published short fiction, none of it starred his most famous character.
On one of my trips to his home in South Carolina, Mickey handed me the “The Duke Alexander,” saying it was something he prepared in the 1950s for Mickey Rooney (and indeed a notation on the folder containing the pages specified it as such). I was astounded to find it was a Hammer story, but became confused when I read it, because it didn’t seem like Mike Hammer at all.
For one thing, it was a humorous yarn told in a Damon Runyon-style voice Mickey never employed elsewhere. The crime aspects were minimal, and the dual identity situation at its core brought to mind The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), the swashbuckler by Anthony Hope that Mickey considered one of his three favorite books. The other two, in a similar vein, were The Three Musketeers (1844) and The Count of Monte Cristo (1844), both by Alexandre Dumas. Mickey’s The Erection Set is a modern reworking of the latter, and the former bears upon the shocking finale of The Three Musketeers (also, Mickey claimed in his comic-book scripting days to have written the scripts for the Classics Comics versions of both Dumas novels).
And for another thing, in “The Duke Alexander,” Hammer asks a woman who is not Velda to marry him!
Curiouser and curiouser.
As was par for the course, Mickey didn’t recall (or at least pretended not to) anything beyond “Duke” being something he put together for Mickey Rooney... who would have made an offbeat choice to play Mike Hammer, to say the least.
The manuscript was difficult to make out — a faded mimeograph — but as the only existing (and unpublished) Hammer short story, it was of course worth the effort. But when I set out with my fellow Spillane enthusiast Lynn Myers to put together a collection for Crippen & Landru of mostly non-fiction by Mickey, we decided (for commercial reasons if nothing else) to include “The Duke Alexander.”
The shape of the manuscript, however, meant a lot of educated guesswork was required. Both Lynn and I worked hard at deciphering it, and Spillane expert James Traylor took a swing at it, too. We all three did our best, and it was published as part of Byline: Mickey Spillane (2004).
Shortly before his death, Mickey asked his wife Jane to round up all of his unpublished material for me. Among these extensive materials, I ran across a different, earlier version of “The Duke Alexander.” What I came upon was — is — a typescript with Mickey’s own minor revisions and corrections in pen.
In this, the original version, Hammer is not the protagonist — which explains why the story as Lynn and I published it just didn’t sound like Mike. The hero here is Joe Moran, who runs a small-town garage and is on vacation.
It’s likely when Mickey Rooney requested something from Mickey Spillane, the former Andy Hardy insisted that it star Mike Hammer. In any event, in creating a version of the story for Mickey Rooney, the major thing Mickey Spillane did was substitute Hammer’s name and replace the garage with the detective’s office and swap out the small town for Mike’s Manhattan.
As the Rooney connection indicates, for a good portion of his career Mickey was very focused on Hollywood, even though he said he hated the place. He had a genuine interest in producing films, starting with a (lost) Mike Hammer test film he wrote and directed himself in the early 1950s featuring his friend Jack Stang, an ex-Marine and (then) current cop. Mickey was also involved on the producing end of The Girl Hunters (in which he starred as Hammer) and the screenplay for The Menace indicates his continued interest in producing and possibly directing film as late as the early ’80s.
With the exception of some minor editing (spelling, missing words, etc.), this version of The Duke Alexander restores the original, and demonstrates that while Lynn and I (and Jim) did pretty well guessing when the mimeograph got too faded to read, we didn’t always get it right.
As for Mike Hammer short fiction, there is now a volume (A Long Time Dead, 2016), collecting seven of the nine Hammer stories I completed from fragments in Mickey’s files. The other two are included as bonus material with the 75th anniversary Hammer novel, Kill Me If You Can, published by Titan Books.
For now, however, The Duke Alexander is (as Rod Serling used to say) submitted for your approval as the one and only Joe Moran tale.
Finally, we are including a second bonus feature by way of a rare Spillane excursion into true crime, published in 1952 at the height of Mickey’s Mike Hammer success. Essentially a lost story itself, The Too-Careful Killer has not been seen since its appearance in the Sunday supplement section, American Weekly.
M.A.C.
June 2021
The Duke Alexander
I’m only minding my own business, see? I’m sitting there next to the window crouched down behind a magazine so the porter would get the idea and go away. All morning long he’s been on my back, bringing me water, steering me to the diner and even shaving me. Yeah, he hauls me in the lounge outside the men’s room and gives me a lather and blade job before I wake up even.
Sure, I slip him a buck and he says, “Thank you, Duke, sar.” Then I go back to my seat with him standing so close I can reach out and touch him. Nobody else gets this treatment. Just me. The guy’s got everybody turning around to look and I feel like a bug in the customer’s potatoes.
If I go to move, he’s right there with, “Somethin’ I can do, Duke, sar?” and no matter what I say he does it anyway. Can’t even comb my hair. Duke, sar. That’s all the guy knows. I told him my name was Joe and if he’s gotta call me anything, call me that. So what happens.
“Yes, sar, Joe Duke sar,” he says.
What a train. What a vacation.
Anyway, like I said, I’m only minding my own business when along comes this bozo. He looks like a lampshade in a double-breasted suit that doesn’t fit and waddles up the aisle like a duck. Every time he passes a seat he looks at the guy sitting there, shakes his head, then moves on. That is, until he gets to me. He gives one peek at me behind my magazine and his eyebrows shoot up to his hatband.