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James M. Cain

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Author

The Resume

    (July 1, 1892-October 27, 1977)
    Born in Annapolis, Maryland
    Journalist turned novelist
    Reporter for the Baltimore American, Baltimore Sun, New York World and American Mercury
    Wrote ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ (1934), ‘Mildred Pierce’ (1941) and ‘Double Indemnity’ (1943)

Why he might be annoying:

    He was married four times, divorced three times.
    Wife #2, Elina Cain, called him ‘morose, sarcastic and insulting,’ while his third wife, actress Aileen Pringle, called him ‘moody, melancholy and grim.’
    His post-WWII work failed to achieve the same popular or critical success of his earlier novels.
    He disliked being identified with the ‘hard boiled’ school of detective fiction, although his three major successes were all examples of it.
    He never saw the films made from his novels: ‘I just don’t like movies…. [The producers] paid me and that’s the end of it.’

Why he might not be annoying:

    He served as an private in the US Army in France during World War I.
    His three major novels were adapted into classic Hollywood film noirs.
    He said about publishers and movie producers, ‘They don’t know what they want. They only think they do.’
    Tom Wolfe> wrote, ‘Cain is a master of the change of pace,’ adding ‘Nobody else has ever quite pulled it off the way Cain does, not Hemingway and not even Raymond Chandler.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 6 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying