Directors were Victor Saville (as Phil Victor) known for another Spillane non Hammer based Noir The Long Wait (1954), and George White more known more as an editor for Noirs The Sellout (1952), The Phenix City Story (1955), and Shack Out on 101 (1955). The writing credits go to Mickey Spillane (novel), Richard Collins and Richard Powell for the screenplay and Richard Powell for the screen story. But I can tell you straight off the only connection with Spillane's novel is the use of the Mike Hammer Character and opening scene in the greasy spoon, the rest is all Collins and Powell.
Cinematography was by Harry Neumann and the percussive score was by Marlin Skiles.
The film stars Robert Bray (an actor probably recognized by most people as the bus driver in Marilyn Monroe's Bus Stop. The six foot-three actor was in quite a few Westerns and also in a handful of uncredited parts and some supporting performances in Classic Noirs, notably The Clay Pigeon, and Shield for Murder, as Mike Hammer. He plays Hammer in a very believable human manner.
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| Mike Hammer (Robert Bray) |
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| Red (Jan Chaney) |
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| Velda (Pamela Duncan) |
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| Mile and Pat Chambers (Booth Colman) |
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| Maria Teresa Garcia (Gina Core) |
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| Nancy Williams (Whitney Blake) |
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| Colonel Holloway (Donald Randolph) |
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| Louis (Richard Garland) |
Title Sequence
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| The Follies Burlesque at Burbank Theater 548 S. Main St., Los Angeles |
It sort of looks like Times Square. It's not. It's Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. Mike Hammer is transposed for the second time to The City Of Angles. The first time was in the iconic Kiss Me Deadly. It's Hammer with a sort of West Coast Dutch angle.
My Gun Is Quick (1950) was Mickey Spillane's second Mike Hammer novel following 1947's I, The Jury. Hammer was a New York based detective. The book's beginning has Hammer buttoning up a three day lost manuscript case and then trying to drive back to his apartment house. Mike wakes up to blaring horns. He's fallen asleep stopped at a red light.
He spots a greasy spoon under the el (which in 1950 would only be the 3rd Avenue el). He parks and goes in grabs a stool and meets the prostitute Red. They hit it off. One of her seeming clients, Feeney Last (Louis in the film) comes in looking for Red, he wants something and he treats her roughly, grabbing her by the arm, Mike smacks him around. Last pulls a knife. Mike pulls his .45 automatic points it at Lasts forehead and tells Last that he'll blow his head off if he tries to also go for the gun Mikes spots in his waistband.
Mike gives Red $150 and tells her "Do something for me will you Red?, Get off the street. Tomorrow you go uptown and buy some decent clothes. Then buy a morning paper and hunt up a job. This kind of job is murder." In both novel and film Mike notices an out of place antique Baroque ring on Reds finger. Red seems genuinely touched. She kisses her finger and puts it to Mikes cheek. He notices the ring has a fleur de lis pattern. After Red splits, Mike drags Last out of the dog wagon to a police call box out on the street. Mike has his own key to it. He has a squad car pick Feeney Last up for possibly having an unlicensed gun, a Sullivan Act violation.
The next day Mike spots the Jane Doe hit and run headline in the paper the photo is Red. Mike heads to police headquarters to get the details. When he finds out that her broken neck injury was unusual for a hit and run Mile suspects foul play, and makes it personal. They view Red's corpse at the morgue. He doesn't tell Pat that his open and shut hit-and-run case is all BS. Mike noticed that Red's ring is missing.
In the novel Hammer snoops around discovering Red's flop and finds her room tossed, mattress slashed, the works, he also checks out Feeney Last who in the novel works as a bodyguard for a Long Island millionaire. He next looks up a pimp he knows and braces him about what he knows about Red. From the pimp he gets the address of a whorehouse. He checks that out but finds it burned down recently. At a bar on the corner of the street with the burned out whorehouse he runs into Lola. She is described as a tipsy brunette wearing a little black dress with a plunging neckline and a matching large hat
Lola is a hooker and a former friend of Red. They worked that same whorehouse. Lola didn't get caught in the fire because she got a dose of the clap and was in the hospital getting the cure. Lola and Mike hit it off. Lola and Mike head to Rockaway Point where one thing leads to another and they screw on the beach. Lola spills that originally she and Red were high class call girls at one point and that that racket was run out of the Zero Zero Club on 6th Avenue. Lola tells Mike that Red besides being a call girl, also worked at the club as a souvenir photo "Quick Pic" gal at the club. Lola and a club hostess named Ann Morin are combined in the novel into the stripper character Maria Teresa Garcia. BTW this being Mike Hammer story Mike also has sex with Ann, lol....
Mike eventually finds out the Red was setting up an expose of the call girl racket complete with pictures of wealthy and politically connected big shots as the clients. It's other than the original opening setup scene, nothing like the film.
Robert Bray puts in a passable portrayal as Mike Hammer he's Hammer-esgue but with the action once again moved to California it's got a slight fish out of water quality if you are at all familiar with the novels. It's not quite up to Aldrich's polished film noir masterpiece. It took a couple of viewings for me to realize that directors Victor Saville and George White do a decent job with what they had. None of the cast are A-listers or even B-listers for that matter, but they do a pretty good job of working downtown L.A, of Bunker Hill, the oil derricks of Signal Hill and the Eisenhower freeway system into the film.
The broads, Whitney Blake as Nancy Williams, Patricia Donahue as Dione, Pamela Duncan as Velda, Jan Chaney as Red the prostitute, and Genie Coree as stripper Maria Teresa Garcia are all "hammer-tommically" correct but again as in both I The Jury (1953), and Kiss Me Deadly (1955) the slightly gratuitous sexuality which should be a touchstone in any Mike Hammer based film is PG-13 if even that. To put it bluntly in the novels the hammer babes (save for Velda) peal for Mike at every opportunity. Hammer was basically Detective Porn.
Back now to the film. Mike, after passing the burlesque theater slips into a hole-in-the-wall lunch counter, and grabs a stool near a red headed stripper/hooker, the film leaves her profession up in the air. The MPPC must have objected to Hammer dealing with a storyline about hookers and the call girl prostitution racket so that fact is blurred and the tale seques into a story about strippers, rival crooks all looking for a cache of jewels stole during WWII.
Red the girl must not be good at it, She's just a kid and looks beat. The soles of her shoes have holes. Mike orders himself a chopped egg sandwich to go and a cup of coffee. Mike takes pity on Red and asks her if she wants something to eat.
As in the novel Red's "associate" comes in looking for her. He is called Louis in the film (in the novel he is Fenney Last). Anyway, he proceeds to get rough with Red. Mike slaps him around.
He pulls a knife Mike pulls a gun. Mike tells him he'll blow his head off.
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| Add caption |
Now in the film Red tells Mike she's from Nebraska, Mike slips Red his address and gives her money to go back there. He tells her to drop him a line when she is settled.
Red takes off. After Mike surrenders Last to the squad car he called over the police call box, he heads to his office where he gives the chopped egg sandwich to a concerned and patiently waiting Velda.
In the film the story line is streamlined. Red is found dead of a hit and run the next morning, Mike's card is in her pocket. LAPD Pat Chambers calls Mike into headquarters. Mike takes it personally. The ring he noticed on her finger was not among her personal effects.
Mike knows it wasn't an accident. He tells Pat about Louis and describe the ring. The description jogs a memory in Pat. That description matches a ring in a cache of Italian jewels the Venacci Jewel collection that were stolen during WWII.
Mike heads back to the hole-in-the-wall and questions the proprietor about Red and about Louis. He spills that Red used to hang out at a nightclub down the block that featured strippers.
At the club Mike speaks with stripper Maria Teresa Garcia (who replaces Lola the hooker in the novel). Mike likes what he sees. Maria likes what she sees. Mike and Maria hit it off.
In this PG film they don't go to bed and it's really emphasized. Maria tells Mike that Red got the ring from a deaf mute who works as the clubs janitor. It all leads to Noirsville where various crooks are all after the same hidden cache of jewels.
Noirsville
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| Casa Alta - Bunker Hill |
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| Hotel Astoria, Olive St., Bunker Hill |
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| hammer-tomically correct |
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| 1957 Ford Fairlane - tail fins |
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| tail fins |
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| Terminal Island |
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| comotion on Clay Street |
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| One of Holloways bimbos hammer-tomically correct |
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| Long Beach |
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| tail fins |
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| hammer-tomically correct |
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| hammer-tomically correct |
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| tail fins |
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| Astoria Hotel - Bunker Hill |
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| Bunker Hill, Third Street and Olive Street with Angels Flight Cafe to right. |
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| tail fins |
This low rent Hammer actually delivers in some respects even though it doesn't follow the novel at all It's parallel universe Hammer. The acting talent are basically B and C listers. It delivers especially if you have low expectations. It falls way short of delivering if you expect it to follow Mike Hammer's libido.
Here are my thoughts, Spillane wrote Mike Hammer as a traditional hard boiled Pulp/Noir Detective but he pushed the bubble with over the top sexuality of the women going basically 20 years ahead of his time. The Motion Picture Production Code wouldn't allow films to be that explicit to do Hammer justice until the independent Sexploitation films of the mid to late 60s where the crisp black and white cinematography would do justice to Spillane's descriptive images of Mike Hammers in flagrante delicto assignations with various babes. By then the ability to do stylized Classic Noir in its chronological time period along with its complementary stable of character actors was almost gone, it's like two ships passing in the night.
You wish the creators of My Gun Is Quick would have had the freedom to do Spillane justice, and look more like these gritty screencaps below from The Girls on F Street (1966) a Sexploitation flick made just a decade later and shot in some of the same general locations with some of the same basic subject matter, Main Street downtown Los Angeles, Bunker Hill, hookers (as in the novel) and strippers as in the film.
Main St. Los Angeles
Bunker Hill
Strippers
Noir Atmosphere
Angels Flight
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| The last days of Bunker Hill most buildings demolished. |
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| interior ads Angels Flight |
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| Angels Flight at night |
Hookers
See what I'm getting at? What's missing is the sewer. The Mike Hammer character and his world were never fully exploited during the brief window of opportunity when it could have been. A shame.
The archival location cinematography in My Gun Is Quick depicts Los Angeles as is circa 1957, with its new freeways and 1950s Mid Century-Modern “less is more” design style characterized by a prolific use of industrialized steel exposed brick, aluminum, plastic and glass. This new is all juxtaposed by the old, the clutter of oil derricks on Signal Hill and the last decade of Bunker Hill.
Available to stream on Amazon Prime, 7/10
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