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Summary
Author Notes
Mystery writer James Mallahan Cain was born in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1892. He received his B.A. and M.A. from Washington College, and served in the military as editor-in-chief of the official newspaper of the 79th Division, American Expeditionary Forces.
Cain worked as a staff reporter for the Baltimore Sun; he became a professor of journalism in the 1920s; he worked as a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1930s and 40s. Many of his stories, including Double Indemnity (1943), have been made into successful films. Joan Crawford won an Academy Award in 1945 for her portrayal of Cain's Mildred Pierce (1941).
Cain's first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), was said to have inspired Albert Camus' The Stranger, but offended sensibilities in the U.S. and was even tried for obscenity in Boston. The novel was eventually made into a movie in 1946, starring Lana Turner and again in 1981, with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. In all, Cain authored eighteen books.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Cain (18921977), best known for The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce, shows a different, less hard-boiled sensibility in these previously uncollected pieces. PW found the storiesincluding many magazine piecesuneven. (August) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Dedicated to revealing and preserving the human side of one of the preeminent tough guy writers of the 1930's,"" this volume brings together humorous short stories, satiric playlets, but only one work of distinctive (if very modest) quality: the comic novella Career in C Major, which originally appeared in hard-cover in 1943, then in a 1944 collection (Three of a Kind)--but was first sold to the movies. Made first as ""Wife, Husband and Friend"" (1939) and a decade later as ""Everybody Does It,"" the charming story involves a stage-struck wife who is content enough putting up with her husband's lack of success--but can't deal with his out-of-the-blue triumphs as a singer. Elsewhere, in labored sendups of politicians (""The Governor,"" ""The Commissioners,"" etc.) and in Runyonesque tales of Hollywood comebacks and carnival hustlers, the comedy is dated, usually limp, only faintly amusing at best. In contrast to this work of the 1930's, however (much of it published in Redbook), ""The Visitor""--written in 1961, published in Esquire--is briefer, crisper, less effortful: all about what happens when a man wakes one morning to find a tiger by his bed. Very minor work by a minor master, then, more for Cain scholars than general readers--with solid introductory materials by Cain biographer Roy Hoopes. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
