American crime novelist
Frank Morrison Spillane
(
; March 9, 1918 – July 17, 2006), better known as
Mickey Spillane
, was an American crime novelist, called the "king of pulp fiction."
[2]
His stories often feature his signature detective character,
Mike Hammer
. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally. Spillane was also an occasional actor, once even playing Hammer himself in the 1965 film
The Girl Hunters
.
[3]
[4]
Early life
[
edit
]
Frank Morrison Spillane was born March 9, 1918, in
Brooklyn, New York
, and primarily raised in
Elizabeth, New Jersey
, Spillane was the only child of his Irish bartender father, John Joseph Spillane, and his Scottish mother, Catherine Anne. During his late adolescence, his family returned to Brooklyn, where he graduated from
Erasmus Hall High School
in 1936.
[5]
He started writing while in high school, briefly attended
Fort Hays State College
in Kansas and worked a variety of jobs, including summers as a lifeguard at
Breezy Point, Queens
, and a period as a trampoline artist for the
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
.
[6]
During
World War II
, Spillane enlisted in the
Army Air Corps
, becoming a fighter pilot and a flight instructor.
[7]
He was first stationed at the air base in
Greenwood, Mississippi
, where he met and married first wife Mary Ann Pearce in 1945.
[8]
He also met two younger writers,
Earle Basinsky
and
Charlie Wells
, who would become his proteges; each published two hardboiled-noir novels in the Spillane style in the early 1950s.
[9]
[10]
Career
[
edit
]
Comic books
[
edit
]
Spillane claims that he started being published as an author of
slicks
where he was credited under
house names
, then went "lower" to the
pulps
,
[11]
then went lower still as a writer for comic books.
[12]
While working as a salesman in
Gimbels
department store basement in 1940, he met tie salesman
Joe Gill
, who later found a lifetime career in scripting for
Charlton Comics
. Gill told Spillane to meet his brother, Ray Gill, who wrote for
Funnies Inc.
, an outfit that packaged comic books for different publishers.
[
citation needed
]
Spillane soon began writing an eight-page story every day. He concocted adventures for major 1940s comic book characters, including
Captain Marvel
,
Superman
,
Batman
, and
Captain America
. In the early 1940s, working for Funnies, Inc., he wrote two-page text stories which were syndicated to various comic book publishers, including
Timely Comics
. At one point, Spillane estimated he wrote fifty of these "short-short stories," which were intended to fulfill a postal regulation requiring comic books to have at least two pages of text to qualify for a second-class mailing permit.
[
citation needed
]
While most comic books writers toiled anonymously, Spillane's byline appeared on most of his prose "filler" stories. 26 stories were collected in
Primal Spillane: Early Stories 1941?1942
(Gryphon Books, 2003). A new, expanded edition of
Primal Spillane
was released by Bold Venture Press in 2018, the new volume contained an additional fifteen stories, including the previously unpublished "A Turn of the Tide".
[
citation needed
]
Novels
[
edit
]
Spillane joined the United States Army Air Corps on December 8, 1941, the day after the
attack on Pearl Harbor
. In the mid-1940s he was stationed as a flight instructor in
Greenwood, Mississippi
, where he met and married Mary Ann Pearce in 1945. The couple wanted to buy a country house in the town of
Newburgh, New York
, 60 miles north of New York City, so Spillane decided to boost his bank account by writing a novel. He wrote
I, the Jury
in just 9 days.
[6]
At the suggestion of Ray Gill, he sent it to
E. P. Dutton
.
[
citation needed
]
With the combined total of the 1947 hardcover and the Signet paperback (December 1948),
I, the Jury
sold 6-1/2 million copies in the United States alone.
I, the Jury
introduced Spillane's most famous character, hardboiled detective
Mike Hammer
. Although tame by some standards, his novels featured more sex than competing titles, and the violence was more overt than the usual detective story. Covers tended to feature scantily dressed women or women who appeared as if they were about to undress. In the beginning, Mike Hammer's chief nemeses consisted of gangsters, but by the early '50s, this broadened to communists and deviants.
[4]
An early version of Spillane's Mike Hammer character, called Mike Danger, was submitted in a script for a detective-themed comic book. "Mike Hammer originally started out to be a comic book. I was gonna have a Mike Danger comic book," Spillane said in a 1984 interview.
[13]
Two Mike Danger comic-book stories were published in 1954 without Spillane's knowledge, as well as one featuring Mike Lancer (1942). These were published with other material in "Byline: Mickey Spillane," edited by Max Allan Collins and Lynn F. Myers, Jr. (Crippen & Landru publishers, 2004).
The Mike Hammer series proved hugely successful during the 1950s and 1960s, but the books were excoriated by the literary establishment.
Malcolm Cowley
of
The New Republic
called Spillane "a dangerous
paranoid
,
sadist
, and
masochist
" and even his own editors sometimes found his novels distasteful. Spillane for his part was unmoved by critics, saying "You can sell a lot more peanuts than caviar" and "The literary world is made of second rate writers writing about other second rate writers." Attractively low prices (25 cents for a paperback copy, later raised to 50 cents) helped sales, and the 1956 informative guide
Sixty Years of Best Sellers
found that the six novels Spillane had written up to that point were among the top ten best selling American fiction titles of all time.
[
citation needed
]
The Signet paperbacks displayed dramatic front cover illustrations. Lou Kimmel created the cover paintings for
My Gun Is Quick
,
Vengeance Is Mine
,
One Lonely Night
, and
The Long Wait
. The cover art for
Kiss Me, Deadly
was by James Meese.
[
citation needed
]
Acting
[
edit
]
Spillane portrayed himself as a detective in
Ring of Fear
(1954), and rewrote the film without credit for John Wayne's and
Robert Fellows
's Wayne-Fellows Productions. The film was directed by screenwriter
James Edward Grant
. Several Hammer novels were made into movies, including
Kiss Me Deadly
(1955). In
The Girl Hunters
(1963) filmed in England, Spillane himself appeared as Hammer, one of the few occasions in film history in which an author of a popular literary hero has portrayed his own character. Spillane was scheduled to film
The Snake
as a follow-up, but the film was never made.
[14]
On October 25, 1956, Spillane appeared on
The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford
, with interest on his Mike Hammer novels.
[15]
In January 1974, he appeared with
Jack Cassidy
in the television series
Columbo
starring
Peter Falk
in the episode "
Publish or Perish
". He portrayed a writer who is murdered.
[16]
In 1995 and 1997, he appeared in the low budget films
Mommy
and its sequel,
Mommy 2: Mommy's Day
.
In 1969, Spillane formed a production company with Robert Fellows who had produced
The Girl Hunters
to produce many of his books, but Fellows died soon after and only
The Delta Factor
was produced.
[17]
During the 1980s, he appeared in
Miller Lite
beer commercials.
[18]
In the 1990s, Spillane licensed one of his characters to
Tekno Comix
for use in a science-fiction adventure series,
Mike Danger
. In his introduction to the series, Spillane said he had conceived of the character decades earlier but never used him.
[13]
Reception
[
edit
]
Early reaction to Spillane's work was generally hostile.
Malcolm Cowley
dismissed the Mike Hammer character as "a homicidal paranoiac."
[19]
John G. Cawelti
called Spillane's writing "atrocious," and
Julian Symons
called Spillane's work "nauseating."
[19]
By contrast,
Ayn Rand
publicly praised Spillane's work at a time when critics were almost uniformly hostile. She considered him an underrated if uneven stylist and found congenial the
black-and-white
morality of the Hammer stories. However, Rand condemned the political views expressed by Spillane in his Tiger Mann novel
Day of the Guns
, describing the book's cynical protagonist and his "semi-governmental gang" as being "shocking and rationally indefensible", as Rand opposed the use of force unlimited by any framework of rights.
[20]
Spillane's work was later praised by
Max Allan Collins
,
William L. DeAndrea
,
[4]
and Robert L. Gale.
[19]
DeAndrea argued that although Spillane's characters were stereotypes, Spillane had a "flair for fast-action writing," that his work broke new ground for American crime fiction, and that Spillane's prose "is lean and spare and authentically tough, something that writers like
Raymond Chandler
and
Ross Macdonald
never achieved."
[4]
German painter
Markus Lupertz
claimed that Spillane's writing influenced his own work, saying that Spillane ranks as one of the major poets of the 20th century. American comic book writer
Frank Miller
has mentioned Spillane as an influence for his own
hardboiled
style.
Avant-Garde
musician
John Zorn
composed a piece influenced by Spillane's writing titled
Spillane
.
[
citation needed
]
Awards and accolades
[
edit
]
In 1983, Spillane received the
lifetime achievement award
from the Private Eye Writers of America.
[21]
He also received an
Edgar Allan Poe Grand Master Award
in 1995.
[22]
[23]
In popular culture
[
edit
]
Walt Kelly
wrote two parodies of Hammer's work which satirized his spare, disjointed style, overblown first person narration, and teetering, barely controlled paranoia: "The Bloody Drip" and "The Bloody Drip Writhes Again", both starring Albert the Alligator as the detective Meat Hamburg. They were published in the following "
Pogo
" collections:
- "The Bloody Drip" by Mucky Spleen (1953, Uncle Pogo's So-So Stories)
- "Gore Blimey: The Bloody Drip Writhes Again" (1955, The Pogo Peek-a-Book)
Spillane was also parodied several times in
Mad Magazine
. The April, 1959 issue carried a piece called "If Mickey Spillane Wrote Nancy" (the comic strip Nancy, by
Ernie Bushmiller
).
[24]
The television show "MASH" had an episode devoted to Mickey Spillane and his books.
In the movie Full Metal Jacket, Gny. Sgt. Hartman, after providing Pvt. Joker with his Marine Corps assignment as a military journalist, questions him stating, "Do you think you're Mickey Spillane? Do you think you are some kind of [expletive] writer?"
In 1987, New York avant-garde jazz musician
John Zorn
published "
Spillane
", an album composed of three "file-card pieces", as well as a work for voice, string quartet and turntables. It is named after mystery writer Mickey Spillane, whose novels featuring detective Mike Hammer provided the basis for the album's title track. Zorn wrote "Spillane" on a series of index cards, each containing an outline or instruction for the musicians that was intended to evoke scenes from one of Spillane's novels.
Personal life
[
edit
]
In 1945, Mickey met and married Mary Ann Pearce. They had four children, Caroline, Kathy, Michael, and Ward. Their marriage ended in 1962.
In November 1965, he married his second wife,
nightclub singer
Sherri Malinou. The marriage ended in divorce (and a lawsuit) in 1983.
Spillane shared his waterfront house in
Murrells Inlet
with his third wife, Jane Rogers Johnson, and her two daughters, Jennifer and Margaret Johnson. They married in October 1983.
In the 1960s, Spillane became a friend of the novelist
Ayn Rand
. Despite their apparent differences, Rand admired Spillane's literary style, and Spillane became, as he described it, a "fan" of Rand's work.
[25]
Later in his life, Spillane became an active
Jehovah's Witness
.
[26]
In 1989,
Hurricane Hugo
ravaged his Murrells Inlet house to such a degree it had to be almost entirely reconstructed. A television interview showed Spillane standing in the ruins of his house.
[
citation needed
]
Death and legacy
[
edit
]
Spillane died on July 17, 2006, at his home in Murrells Inlet, of
pancreatic cancer
.
[27]
[28]
[29]
After his death, his friend and literary executor,
Max Allan Collins
, began editing and completing Spillane's unpublished typescripts, beginning with a non-series novel,
Dead Street
(2007).
In July 2011, the community of Murrells Inlet named
U.S. 17 Business
the "Mickey Spillane Waterfront 17 Highway". The proposal first passed the
Georgetown County
Council in 2006 while Spillane was still alive, but the
South Carolina General Assembly
rejected the plan.
[30]
Novels
[
edit
]
Mike Hammer
[
edit
]
Tiger Mann
[
edit
]
- 1964
Day of the Guns
- 1965
Bloody Sunrise
- 1965
The Death Dealers
- 1966
The By-Pass Control
Morgan the Raider
[
edit
]
Other novels
[
edit
]
- 1951
The Long Wait
- 1959
Me, Hood
A complete novelette printed in the July 1959
Cavalier
magazine
- 1961
The Deep
- 1964
Return of the Hood
- 1964
The Flier
- 1965
Killer Mine
- 1965
Man Alone
- 1972
The Erection Set
? a Dogeron Kelly novel; in the
Jacqueline Susann
mould
- 1973
The Last Cop Out
- 1979
The Day The Sea Rolled Back
- young adult
- 1982
The Ship That Never Was
- young adult
- 1984
Tomorrow I Die
? collection of short stories
- 2001
Together We Kill: The Uncollected Stories of Mickey Spillane
? collection of short stories
- 2003
Something's Down There
? featuring semi-retired spy Mako Hooker
- 2007
Dead Street
? completed by Max Allan Collins and featuring retired
NYPD
Captain Jack Stang, the name of a policeman friend of Spillane's
[31]
- 2015
The Legend of Caleb York
? novelisation by Max Allan Collins (Based on an un-produced movie script by Mickey Spillane)
List of short stories
[
edit
]
- 1989
The Killing Man
? Mike Hammer short story later turned into a full-length Mike Hammer novel published in
Playboy
magazine December 1989, later republished in the book
Byline: Mickey Spillane
in 2004 (
Crippen & Landru
)
- 1996
Black Alley
? Mike Hammer short story later turned into a full-length Mike Hammer novel published in
Playboy
magazine December 1996, later republished in the book
Byline: Mickey Spillane
in 2004 (Crippen & Landru)
- 1998
The Night I Died
? Mike Hammer short story published in the anthology
Private Eyes
? although story was written in 1953, was not published until 1998
- 2003
Primal Spillane: Early Stories 1941-1942
- With an introduction by Collins and
Lynn F. Myers Jr.
? published by Gryphon Books.
- 2004
The Duke Alexander
? Mike Hammer short story published in the book
Byline: Mickey Spillane
first published in 2004 (Crippen & Landru), although it was originally written circa 1956
- 2008
The Big Switch
? Mike Hammer short story; completed by
Max Allan Collins
? published in
The Strand Magazine
, reprinted in paperback in
The Mammoth Book of the World's Best Crime Stories
, 2009
- 2009
I'll Die Tomorrow
? (illustrated, limited edition of the short story, posthumous with Collins)
- 2010
A Long Time Dead
? Mike Hammer short story; completed by Collins ? published in
The Strand Magazine
- 2010
Grave Matter
? Mike Hammer short story; completed by Collins ? published in
Crimes By Moonlight
, ed. Charlaine Harris
- 2012
Skin
? Mike Hammer e-book short story; completed by Collins
- 2013
So Long, Chief
? Mike Hammer short story; completed by Collins ? published in
The Strand Magazine
, Issue XXXIX, Feb. - May 2013
- 2014
It's In The Book
? Mike Hammer e-book short story; completed by Collins
- 2015
Fallout
? Mike Hammer short story; completed by Collins ? published in
The Strand Magazine
- 2016
A Dangerous Cat
? Mike Hammer short story; completed by Collins ? published in
The Strand Magazine
, Issue XLVIII, Feb. - May 2016
- 2016
A Long Time Dead: A Mike Hammer Casebook
? a collection of short stories by Mickey Spillane and Collins ? published by Mysteriouspress.com/Open Road (collection reprints the stories
The Big Switch
,
A Long Time Dead
,
Grave Matter
,
So Long, Chief
,
Fallout
,
A Dangerous Cat
,
Skin
(first time in print format), and
It's In The Book
(first time in print format))
- 2018
A Turn of the Tide
? although written circa 1950, it was not published until 2018 in the expanded and revised edition of
Primal Spillane
by
Bold Venture Press
.
- 2018
Tonight My Love
? Mike Hammer short story; developed by Collins ? published in
The Strand Magazine
, Issue LVI, Oct. 2018 - Jan. 2019 ? story developed from a Mickey Spillane radio-style playlet that was part of a Mike Hammer jazz LP (Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer Story) produced in 1954 by Mickey Spillane. This is the story of how Mike Hammer met Velda.
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Inkpot Award"
.
Comic-Con International: San Diego
. December 6, 2012
. Retrieved
September 16,
2020
.
- ^
Collins, Max Allan and James L. Traylor.(2023)
Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction.
New York: Mysterious Press.
- ^
Gulley, Andrew (January 2006). "Interview: Mickey Spillane".
The Strand Magazine
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
DeAndrea, William L. (1994).
Encyclopedia Mysteriosa: A Comprehensive Guide to the Art of Detection in Print, Film, Radio, and Television
. New York: Prentice Hall General Reference. pp. 336?7.
ISBN
0671850253
.
- ^
Boyer, David.
"Neighborhood Report: Flatbush: "Grads Hail Erasmus as It Enters a Fourth Century",
The New York Times
, March 11, 2001.
Accessed December 1, 2007.
- ^
a
b
Sutherland, John (19 July 2006).
"Mickey Spillane"
.
The Guardian
. Retrieved
17 December
2021
.
- ^
Rippetoe, Rita Elizabeth
Booze and the Private Eye: Alcohol in the Hard Boiled Novel
. McFarland, 2004.
- ^
Debbie J. (14 March 2012).
Biography of Mickey Spillane
. Hyperink. pp. 8?.
ISBN
978-1-61464-730-0
.
- ^
Max Allan Collins; James L. Traylor (30 April 2012).
Mickey Spillane on Screen: A Complete Study of the Television and Film Adaptations
. McFarland. pp. 9?.
ISBN
978-0-7864-6578-1
.
- ^
"Earle Basinsky & Charlie Wells"
.
Murder with Southern Hospitality: An Exhibition of Mississippi Mysteries
. Archived from
the original
on 9 June 2010
. Retrieved
9 February
2020
.
- ^
"Interviewing Mickey Spillane | Crime Time"
.
- ^
Haining, Peter (2002).
The Classic Era of Crime Fiction
. Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Review Press. p. 124.
ISBN
1-55652-465-X
.
- ^
a
b
"Mickey Spillane's State Of Mind"
.
CBS News
. 23 July 2006.
- ^
"Movies: I, the Actor"
.
Time
. 7 June 1963. Archived from
the original
on January 11, 2005.
- ^
"The Ford Show, Season One"
. ernieford.com. Archived from
the original
on November 28, 2010
. Retrieved
December 28,
2010
.
- ^
J. Spurlin (18 January 1974).
"
"Columbo" Publish or Perish (TV Episode 1974)"
.
IMDb
.
- ^
p.77 Baker, Robert Allen & Nietzel, Michael T.
Private Eyes: One Hundred and One Knights : A Survey of American Detective Fiction, 1922-1984 Popular Press, 1985
- ^
"Mickey Spillane dies"
.
The Guardian
. July 18, 2006.
- ^
a
b
c
Robert L. Gale,
A Mickey Spillane companion
Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 2003.
ISBN
0313058482
(ix)
- ^
Milgram, Shoshana (December 21, 2022).
"Ayn Rand Speaks Up for Mickey Spillane"
.
Ayn Rand Institute
. Retrieved
March 10,
2024
.
- ^
Yearley, Clifton K. (2001). "Mickey Spillane". In Kelleghan, Fiona (ed.).
100 Masters of Mystery and Detective Fiction
. Vol. 2. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press. p. 609.
ISBN
0-89356-958-5
.
- ^
Baumgold, Julie (August 1995). "A Wild Man Proper". Mr. Peepers, Esq.
Esquire
. Vol. 124, no. 2. p. 130.
- ^
Stolberg, Victor B. (10 August 2012). "Spillane, Mickey". In Miller, Wilbur R. (ed.).
The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: A-De
.
The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America
. Vol. 4. Los Angeles: Sage. p. 1702.
ISBN
978-1-4129-8876-6
.
- ^
Asher, Levi (2006-07-18).
"If Mickey Spillane Wrote Nancy"
.
Literary Kicks
. Retrieved
2021-07-16
.
- ^
McConnell, Scott, ed., "Mickey Spillane",
100 Voices: an Oral History of Ayn Rand
, 2010, New American Library, pp. 232-239.
- ^
Adam Bernstein (July 18, 2006).
"Mickey Spillane; Tough-Guy Writer Of Mike Hammer Detective Mysteries"
.
Washington Post
. Retrieved
December 19,
2012
.
- ^
"Mickey Spillane, 88, Critic-Proof Writer of Pulpy Mike Hammer Novels, Dies"
.
The New York Times
. 18 July 2006.
- ^
John Sutherland (18 July 2006).
"Mickey Spillane"
.
The Guardian
.
- ^
"Mystery Novelist Spillane Dies"
,
The Washington Times
- ^
Vasselli, Gina (2011-07-11).
"New name coming soon for road in Murrells Inlet"
.
The Sun News
. Archived from
the original
on 2011-12-30
. Retrieved
2011-07-11
.
- ^
Spillane, Mickey.
Dead Street
. Hard Case Crime/Dorchester Publishing, 2007, p. 214.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Collins, Max Allan; Traylor, James L. (2012).
Mickey Spillane on screen : a complete study of the television and film adaptations
. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.
ISBN
9780786465781
.
External links
[
edit
]
- Mickey Spillane
at
IMDb
- Biography of Jack Stang - The Real Mike Hammer
- "'Comics Were Great!' A Colorful Conversation with Mickey Spillane"
,
Alter Ego
vol. 3, #11, November 2001. Accessed September 5, 2008.
WebCitation archive
.
- "The Religious Affiliation of Writer of Hard-boiled Detective Novels Mickey Spillane"
,
Crime Time
August 6, 2001, via Famous Jehovah's Witnesses.
WebCitation archive
.
- Petri Liukkonen.
"Mickey Spillane"
.
Books and Writers
.
- Smith, Kevin Burton.
"Authors and Creators: Mickey Spillane (Frank Morrison Spillane) (1918-2006)"
,
Thrilling Detective
, n.d.
WebCitation archive
.
- Holland, Steve.
"Mickey Spillane: Hardboiled's Most Extreme Stylist or Cynical Exploiter of Machismo?"
,
Crime Time
2.6, December 1999, via MysteryFile.com
- Meroney, John.
"Man of Mysteries: It'd Been Years Since Spillane Pulled a Job. Could We Find Him? Yeah. It Was Easy"
[
dead link
]
,
The Washington Post
, August 22, 2001, p. C01.
WebCitation archive
.
|
---|
Novels
| |
---|
Films
|
- I, the Jury
(1953)
- Kiss Me Deadly
(1955)
- My Gun Is Quick
(1957)
- The Girl Hunters
(1963)
- Margin for Murder
(TV, 1981)
- I, the Jury
(1982)
- Murder Me, Murder You
(TV, 1983)
- More Than Murder
(TV, 1984)
- The Return of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer
(TV, 1986)
- Mike Hammer: Murder Takes All
(TV, 1989)
- Come Die with Me
(TV, 1994)
- Mike Hammer: Song Bird
(
V
, 2003)
|
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Television
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1990
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1991
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1992
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1993
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1994
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1995
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1996
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1997
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1998
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1999
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International
| |
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National
| |
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Academics
| |
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People
| |
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Other
| |
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