Mike Hammer

The most hard-boiled of all hard boiled private detectives in popular fiction has to be Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. He is not necessarily the best looking guy around and his manner is barely civilized. Yet, there is something about the brutal alpha male inside of him that attracts women like a powerful aphrodisiac. His personal secretary, Velda, is a smart, loyal, efficient knockout who is also a very, very, very close friend.

Hammer has lots of friends, including a police captain named Pat Chambers who keeps him out of trouble with the D.A.’s office. Considering the high body count of Hammer's friends, you have to wonder why anyone would want to be close to him. Considering the high body of his foes you’d wonder how he stayed out of prison, kept his P.I. license and his license to carry a gun if you didn’t know about his relationship with Chambers.

Mike Hammer can be a snappy dresser who lives in a swank apartment in L.A., who drives a fancy sports car. He can also be a throwback to primitive man in a beat-up fedora and trench coat who struggles to pay his bills. The primitive inner man is a constant in all of his incarnations over five decades. It’s hard to say whether he puts more people in the hospital or the morgue. It’s easy to say that his primary technique for getting information out of men he doesn’t like is to threaten them with great bodily harm or to beat them into submission. He can show kindness and compassion but not remorse.

The actor best known for his portrayal of Mike Hammer in the ’80s and ’90s is Stacy Keach, starting in the 1983 Murder Me, Murder You series pilot. Guest stars included Tom Atkins ,   Michelle Phillips and Delta Burke. Then he was a former combat solder with the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division. Later in the series he’s an ex-Marine. He has an office on E. 22nd Street in New York City.  He carries a M1911 Army Colt .45 semi-automatic pistol named “Betsy.” He uses it often in the name of truth, justice and righteous revenge. Because of the scrutiny he gives to his self-administered death penalty cases and his unerring gut feelings, he always gets the right guy.

 

Stacy Keach as Hammer          Don Stroud  as Chambers         Tanya Roberts as Velda

If you heard what Michael McClinton said about his gun on the audio recording of the Palace Station incident in Las Vegas and what he said unnecessarily on the witness stand about the round he “chambered,” you might have thought of Mike Hammer. Given his criminal record involving robbery, assault and kidnapping before the incident, you might also have wondered how he stayed out of prison and got his license to carry a gun. You might wonder what relationships he had with the Las Vegas Police on March 21, 1994 when Robert C. Hurd was beaten to death with a hammer. And you might wonder why his story telling in court sounds so much like Mark Fuhrman.

Eight other actors played Hammer on film or television prior to Hurd’s unsolved murder. You never know when or how they will fit in with something else.

1.   Biff Elliot in I, the Jury (1953)

2.   Ralph Meeker in Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

3.   Robert Bray  in My Gun Is Quick (1957)

4.   Darren McGavin in Mike Hammer (1958) (TV)

5.   Mickey Spillane  The Girl Hunters (1963)

6.   Kevin Dobson Margin for Murder (1981) (TV)

7.   Armand Assante I, the Jury (1982)

8.   Mark Christensen Clue?? (1988) (video)

--Jasper