GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #47

MICHAEL SHAYNE

Created by Brett Halliday, Miami's most famous private detective began his literary career in 1939.  His backstory places him in New York in 1935 working as a detective for the Worldwide Agency.  Following the death of his wife Phyllis in 1943, Shayne temporarily deserts Miami and sets up an office in New Orleans.  Mike Shayne is a rugged 6'1" redhead who, though adept at the cerebral side of detection, is best known as a two-fisted operative, always extricating himself from danger.  In "A Taste for Violence" Shayne settles a long-lasting Kentucky coal mine strike, cleans up a corrupt government, catches a murderer, and accepts an appointment as reform police chief for six months.  Shayne's loyalty extends not only to his clients but also to his small circle of friends - his secretary Lucy Hamilton; his friend Timothy Rourke, reporter for the Miami Daily News; and Will Gentry, chief of Miami detectives.  When Shayne crosses the causeway to Miami Beach, however, he is generally met with hostility by Peter Painter, chief of detectives there.  Although Shayne rescues the officious Painter from kidnappers in "Murder in Haste", there is little improvement in their relationship.  Shayne's wife Phyllis provided some comedy, but creator Halliday realized that she was a limited character, so he killed her off in what many consider to be the best book in the series, "Blood on the Black Market".  Once Phyllis was disposed of, Halliday introduced Lucy Hamilton as Shayne's secretary and sometime romantic interest.  Despite their lengthy courtship, Shayne was never married off again.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brett Halliday was the pseudonym of Davis Dresser (1904-1977).  Dresser was born in Chicago but grew up in west Texas where he lost an eye to barb wire as a boy and had to wear a patch the rest of his life.  At age 14 he ran away from home and enlisted in the U.S. Cavalry Regiment at Fort Bliss, followed by a year of Border Patrol duty on the Rio Grande.  In search of adventure he traveled through the Southwest working as a mule skinner, farm hand, deck hand on a freighter in the Gulf, and laborer in the California oilfields.  He based Mike Shayne on a man he met while working in Mexico on an oil tanker.  He turned to writing in 1927 and sold stories to the pulps, writing as Asa Baker, Matthew Blood, Kathryn Culver, Don Davis, Hal Debrett, Anthony Scott, Anderson Wayne, and Brett Halliday.  His first Michael Shayne novel was rejected by 21 publishers before being accepted by Henry Holt Company in 1939.  By 1958 Dresser, as Halliday, had stopped writing the Shayne series and the stories for the Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine, and employed ghost writers for the remainder of the years.  He was married to mystery writer Helen McCloy 1946-1961.  The Shayne series ended with Halliday's death in 1977 in Santa Barbara, California.

NOVELS (and magazine adaptations)

1939 "Dividend on Death"/  1940 "The Private Practice of Michael Shayne"/  1940 "The Uncomplaining Corpses" (Triple Detective Summer 1947)/  1941 "Tickets for Death" (Triple Detective Spring 1948)/  1941 "Bodies Are Where You Find Them"/  1942 "The Corpse Came Calling"/  1943 "Murder Wears a Mummer's Mask"/  1943 "Blood on the Black Market"/  1944 "Michael Shayne's Long Chance"/  1944 "Murder and the Married Virgin"/  1945 "Murder Is My Business" (Mystery Book Magazine July 1945)/  1945 "Marked for Murder"/  1946 "Blood on Biscayne Bay" (Mystery Book Magazine July 1946)/  1947 "Counterfeit Wife" (Mammoth Detective June 1947)/  1948 "Blood on the Stars" (Mystery Book Magazine Summer 1948)/  1948 "Michael Shayne's Triple Mystery" (3 novelettes)/  1949 "A Taste for Violence"/  1949 "Call for Michael Shayne" (The Evening Citizen Oct. 22, 1949)/  1950 "This Is It, Michael Shayne" (Star Weekly Jan. 14, 1950)/  1951 "Framed in Blood"/  1951 "When Dorinda Dances"/  1952 "What Really Happened"/  1953 "One Night with Nora" (Bluebook Feb. 1953)/  1954 "She Woke to Darkness"/  1955 "Death Has Three Lives"/  1955 "Stranger in Town"/  1956 "The Blonde Cried Murder" (Manhunt Mar. 1956)/  1957 "Weep for a Blonde"/  1957 "Shoot the Works"/  1958 "Murder and the Wanton Bride"/  1958 "Fit to Kill"/  1959 "Date with a Dead Man"/  1959 "Target: Mike Shayne"/  1959 "Die Like a Dog"/  1960 "Murder Takes No Holiday"/  1960 "Dolls Are Deadly"/  1960 "The Homicidal Virgin"/  1961 "Killer from the Keys"/  1961 "Murder in Haste"/  1961 "The Careless Corpse"/  1962 "Pay-Off in Blood" (Argosy Jan. 1962)/  1962 "Murder by Proxy"/  1962 "Never Kill a Client"/  1963 "Too Friendly, Too Dead"/  1963 "The Corpse That Never Was" (Argosy May 1963)/  1963 "The Body Came Back" (Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine Dec. 1963 - Feb. 1964)/  1964 "A Redhead for Mike Shayne" (Argosy Mar. 1964)/  1964 "Shoot to Kill" (Argosy July 1964)/  1964 "Michael Shayne's 50th Case"/  1965 "The Violent World of Michael Shayne"/  1966 "Nice Fillies Finish Last"/  1966 "Murder Spins the Wheel"/  1966 "Armed...Dangerous..."/  1967 "Mermaid on the Rocks"/  1967 "Guilty as Hell"/  1968 "So Lush, So Deadly"/  1968 "Violence is Golden"/  1969 "Lady Be Bad"/  1970 "Six Seconds to Kill"/  1970 "Fourth Down to Death"/  1971 "Count Backwards to Zero"/  1971 "I Come to Kill You"/  1972 "Caught Dead"/  1973 "Kill All the Young Girls"/  1973 "Blue Murder"/  1974 "Last Seen Hitchhiking"/  1974 "At the Point of a .38"/  1976 "Million Dollar Handle"/  1976 "Win Some, Lose Some"

SHORT STORIES

"Death Rides a Winner" (Detective Fiction Weekly Jan. 6 - Feb. 3, 1940)/  "Corpse on the Loose" (Detective Fiction Weekly July 5 - Aug. 2, 1941)/  "Death Goes to the Post" (Detective Story Magazine Jan. 1943)/  "A Taste for Cognac" (Black Mask Nov. 1944)/  "The Dead Don't Cry" (Thrilling Detective Dec. 1944)/  "Don't Fence Me out" (Mammoth Detective Aug. 1945)/  "Dead Man's Diary" (Black Mask Sept. 1945)/  "The Vanishing Blonde" (Mystery Book Magazine Dec. 1945)/  "Dinner at Dupre's" (Mystery Book Magazine Sept. 1946)/  "Murder Before Midnight" (Popular Detective Mar. 1950)/  "Dead Man's Code" (This Week Nov. 28, 1954)/  "The Reluctant Client" (Manhunt June 1955)

Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine began publication in September 1956.  hundreds of short stories were printed within it's pages, from the first issue to the last in August 1985.

FILMS

"Michael Shayne, Private Detective" 20th Century Fox, 1941.  Lloyd Nolan (Shayne), Marjorie weaver, Douglas Dumbrille, Walter Abel.  Director: Eugene Forde.  Based on "The Private Practice of Michael Shayne".  A practical joke of Shayne's backfires when the blood-soaked body of a racketeer is found inside the car owned by a girl he had been hired to watch.

"Sleepers West" 20th Century Fox, 1941.  Nolan, Lynn Bari, Mary Beth Hughes, Louis Jean Heydt, Don Douglas.  Director: Forde.  Based on "Sleepers East" (1933) by Frederick Nebel.  Shayne is on the San Francisco-bound express guarding an important witness at a murder trial.  Also aboard are a private detective who has been paid to kill Shayne's charge, and a girl reporter who was once in love with Mike.

"Dressed to Kill" 20th Century Fox, 1941.  Nolan, Hughes, Sheila Ryan, William Demarest.  Director: Forde.  As Shayne is leaving the marriage license bureau with his girl (Hughes), he hears a scream and turns his attention to a double murder during which two guns were fired but only one shot was heard.  At the end of the film, Shayne is stood up.

"Blue, White and Perfect" 20th Century Fox, 1941.  Nolan, Hughes, George Reeves, Helen Reynolds, Steven Geray.  Director: Herbert I. Leeds.  German spies smuggle uncut diamonds out of the country and Shayne follows the gems on board a ship heading to Honolulu.

"The Man Who Wouldn't Die" 20th Century Fox, 1942.  Nolan, Marjorie Weaver, Reynolds, Paul Harvey, Henry Wilcoxon.  Director: Leeds.  Based on the 1939 novel "Footprints on the Ceiling" by Clayton Rawson.  On the grounds of a sinister mansion, at night, a body is placed in a pit.  Shayne learns that the supposed victim was one of the few professional magicians to have mastered the "buried-alive" trick.

"Just Off Broadway" 20th Century Fox, 1942.  Nolan, Weaver, Janis Carter, Phil Silvers.  Director: Leeds.  Shayne gets a 60-day jail sentence for violating courtroom rules when, as a juror, he solves the murder of a witness who is killed while testifying during a trial.

"Time to Kill" 20th Century Fox, 1942.  Nolan, Heather Angel, Ethel Griffies, Ralph Byrd, Richard Lane.  Director: Leeds.  Based on Raymond Chandler's "The High Window" (1942).  A rare coin is missing and Shayne suspects the owner's high-strung secretary - who is sure that she has committed murder.

"Murder Is My Business" PRC, 1946.  Hugh Beaumont (Shayne), Cheryl Walker, George Meeker, Lyle Talbot, Ralph Dunn.  Director: Sam Newfield.  Shayne is hired by a wealthy woman to cope with a playboy who is trying to blackmail her.  Soon, both the client and the playboy are murdered.

"Larceny in Her Heart" PRC, 1946.  Beaumont, Walker, Dunn, Gordon Richards, Paul Bryar.  Director: Newfield.  Shayne postpones a vacation with his girl (Walker) when a civic leader asks him to locate his stepdaughter.  The girl's double is killed in Shayne's office, but the real missing girl is actually locked in a madhouse - to which Shayne has himself committed.

"Blonde for a Day" PRC, 1946.  Beaumont, Kathryn Adams, Cy Kendell, Marjorie Hoshelle, Sonia Sorel.  Director: Newfield.  Shayne involves himself in a series of neighborhood apartment murders when he tries to uncover why one of his friends, a newspaperman, was shot.  He tangles with some dangerous ladies.

"Three on a Ticket" PRC, 1947.  Beaumont, Walker, Dunn, Gavin Gordon, Douglas Fowley, Louise Currie.  Director: Newfield.  A private investigator dies in Shayne's office, a baggage ticket in his pocket.

"Too Many Winners" PRC, 1947.  Beaumont, Trudy Marshall, Claire Carlton, Byron Foulger, Grandon Rhodes.  Director: William Beaudine.  A blackmailer offers to sell Shayne information about how racetrack pari-mutuel tickets are being forged.

RADIO

"Michael Shayne, Private Detective" was a 30-minute drama series that began airing October 16, 1944, on the Don Lee Network.  (The Don Lee was a regional network in California).  Wally Maher portrayed Shayne on the series.  The show remained regional through September 30, 1946, after which it went national on Mutual from October 8, 1946, to January 14, 1947.

"The New Adventures of Michael Shayne" with Jeff Chandler as Shayne remained on Mutual from July 22, 1948 until June 12, 1949.

"The Adventures of Michael Shayne" aired on ABC radio with Donald Curtis as Shayne from October 1952 through July 1953 for a total of 39 episodes.

THEATER

"Murder Is My Business - A Mystery Drama in Three Acts" was staged in 1958.  Written by James Reach, it was based on the 1945 novel.

TELEVISION

A pilot for a proposed series appeared September 28, 1958 on the NBC anthology series "Decision".  The half hour episode was titled "Man on a Raft" and starred Mark Stevens as Shayne with Merry Anders as Lucy Hamilton.

"Michael Shayne" was a one-season series that aired September 30, 1960 - May 19, 1961.  It produced 32 one hour episodes with Richard Denning as Shayne, Patricia Donahue as Lucy Hamilton, Herbert Rudley as Lt. Gentry, and Jerry Paris as Tim Rourke.  The series adapted several of the Halliday novels, including "Dolls Are Deadly", "A Night with Nora", "Die Like a Dog", "Framed in Blood", "Call for Michael Shayne", "Shoot the Works", "This Is It, Michael Shayne", "Blood on Biscayne Bay" and "Murder and the Wanton Bride".  Guest stars on the show included Julie London, Rita Moreno, Beverly Garland, Ross Martin, Burt Reynolds, Lola Albright, Donna Douglas, Warren Oates, and Adam West.

COMICS

Dell Comics published three issues as a TV-tie-in, though the art by Lee Ames and Edd Ashe wasn't based on the actors of the show.  Furthermore, the comic books were faithful adaptations of the novels which dealt with adultery, pre-marital sex, and death in childbirth.  When the Comics Code was implemented in 1955, Dell never joined the other publishers.  Mostly because Dell published humorous, non-offensive titles, and didn't feel they needed to be part of the organization.  This permitted Dell to publish the adult-themed Shayne series.  "The Private Practice of Michael Shayne" was published November 1961, "Bodies Are Where You Find Them" February 1962, and "Heads...You Lose" (aka "Blood on the Black Market") September 1962.