2/11/1949 Jim Thompson gets the bird

February 11, 1949.  Like any proper noir writer Jim Thompson had a life full of bad luck and weirdness.  But extra points for style, as they say.

On this day he was fired from his job as a reporter at the Los Angeles Mirror.  According to the gossip in the newsroom, he was sent down to the San Diego Zoo to interview a mynah bird, and while he was gone the boss called his wife and told her he was not to come back to the paper.


By happy coincidence, the same date saw the publication of his novel Nothing More Than Murder.

Source: Polito, Robert.  Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson.

11/21/1967 Jim Thompson does Ironside

November 21, 1967.  So, who are the most famous authors to ever create novelizations of TV shows?  Thomas M. Disch did The Prisoner.  Max Allan Collins has done well with CSI.  

But who would have guessed that Jim Thompson, master of mad lawmen and noir endings, would have written a novelization of Ironside, the show about a disabled police detective? 

He did, though, and it was published on this date.  I read it at the time and remember two things about it: that the narrator spent some time in the killer's head (a very Thompsonian touch) and there was a very sexy shower scene.  Neither of these innovations was likely to make it onto NBC prime time.

9/27/1906 Jim Thompson's first night in jail

September 27, 1906.  Jim Thompson, the great noir writer, used to brag that he was born in jail.  To be precise, he was born in a jailhouse.  His father, James Thompson, was the sheriff of Caddo County, Oklahoma, and like many lawmen of the time, his family got free living quarters over the jail, in return for merely providing 24/7 service to the prisoners.

It's worth noting that Thompson's books are full of violent, amoral, and downright crazy sheriffs.

8/22/1931 Jim Thompson plays detective

August 22, 1931.  On this date the first part of "The Car in the Mexican Quarter" appeared in Nebraska Farmer.  It was a rare detective story by Jim Thompson, who made his reputation writing from the bad guy's point of view, (The Grifters, The Killer Inside Me, etc.).  You can read it here.

1/4/1991 The Grifters is released

January 4, 1991.  It was typical of Jim Thompson's luck that his work became hugely popular years after he died.  No better example is this great movie made from his novel The Grifters, a grim tale of a family of con artists.

In his posthumous book The Getaway Car Donald E. Westlake talks about his reluctance to turn the book into a movie.  Director Stephen Frears won him over by explaining that it is the mother's story and he should write it that way. 

Frears also wanted the writer on the set, which is almost unheard of and allowed Westlake to fix a line as soon as he heard an actor having trouble with it. 

The result worked, catching four Academy Award nominations, including ones for Frear, Westlake, Anjelica Huston (who played Lilly, the mother), and Annette Bening.