James Myers Thompsonwas born on September 27th, 1906 in Anadarko, Oklahomawhere his father, James Sherman Thompson, lived as the sheriff of Caddo county. His father ran for Congress in 1906, but was resoundingly defeated, according to the explanation given in both Bad Boyand King Blood,the landslide defeat rested almost exclusively on the shoulders of the campaign manager who had the candidate's full name, James ShermanThompson painted on banners across three train cars. According to Thompson, the band chose that moment to strike up the popular tune "Marching Through Georgia". In Confederatefriendly Oklahoma, the connection could not be missed, and Thompson's father was never considered for public office again. Particularly because shortly thereafter, some "accounting irregularities" were discovered in the sheriff's office, amounting to some $31,000, a healthy supplement to the $1,500 he earned through wages during the same period.

 The Thompson family moved to Texason the back of a million dollar oil fortune which his father quickly squandered and lost.

 In his thinly veiled autobiographical novel Bad Boy, Thompson highlights some of his more "interesting" childhood experiences, including several surreptitious excursions with his grandfather to burlesque shows in Dallasat age thirteen. His grandfather also insisted that Thompson learn to smoke cigars and drink whiskey, part of what his grandfather felt were necessary steps to manhood.

 He began writing at a young age, and managed even to get several things published by the age of fourteen, mostly jokes and short sketches to magazines such as Judgeand Life Magazine.

  It was in Fort Worthhowever, that Thompson began working the night shift as a bellhop in the large Hotel Texas. His experiences in the hotel can be found recounted in a variety of his novels, such as Now and On Earth, Wild Town, Bad Boy, The Getaway, Texas By the Tail,and Swell-Looking Babe.Full of corruption, vice and graft, yet nonetheless an elegant hotel, the Hotel Texas which Thompson describes as "a city unto itself" ,has housed such famous guests as John F Kennedy,who stayed in Suite 850 on the night of November 21, 1963. It stands to this day, now the Fort Worth Hyatt Regency.

 Thompson quickly adapted to the needs of the hotel's guests, busily catering to tastes ranging from questionable morality to directly and undeniably illegal. Thompson's profits from these activities quickly outpaced his hotel salary, to the point where it was more profitable to bribe the bell captain to not assign him any actual arriving guests, such was his reputation for being able to produce a bottle of whiskey (mind you, it was the Prohibition)at any time of day or night. For those guests whose tastes ranged a bit more exotic, Thompson would "....dip down into the Mexican Quarter.... for grass, coke, or heroin."

  Thompson's $15 a month bellhop salary was hardly noticeable, as at times he pulled in as much as $300 per week from tips, gambling profits and various scams. It was during this period that he earned the nickname "Dolly", due to his predilection for expensive, fashionable clothing, imported shoes, and the like.

  Thompson was not overly fond of school, and his work schedule began to take a toll on him. He was a talented student, however, like many intelligent self-taught people, he saw little use for completing assignments and other monotonous rigors of the high school curriculum.

  After 2 years of working all night, attending high school by day, smoking 60 cigarettes a day, and untold pints of whiskey, Thompson suffered a "nervous collapse." He was 19. It took him nearly a year to recover.

  Thompson left Fort Worth in the Spring of 1926 and began working in the oil fields, working jobs ranging from laying pipe to reclaiming timber from abandoned oil derricks. His mother joined him for a short while, helping him run a cook shack for several months. Later, Thompson's father would join him in the oil fields, where they started a wildcat drilling operation under the name Thompson and Son, all financed by Thompson's earnings. After a series of hard luck failures, they decided the company was a failure, and as Thompson writes in Texas By the Tail,

"The kid announced that he had gone his limit; He had nothing left but his ass and his pants, and they both had holes in them...."

  It was in the oil fields that Thompson met 'Haywire' Mac, who is memorialized as the character Strawlegs Martin in his novel Bad Boy.Haywire is singularly responsible for convincing Thompson to return to Dallas and continue his education, as well as seriously pursue writing at this point.

 Thompson returns to Dallas, and resumes his position at the Hotel Texas, this time, however, he has to pay a bribe of over a hundred dollars to get his job, such was the money that was being earned there.

  It was through the editor of the magazine, Peter Molyneaux that Thompson learned of and was accepted into a collegiate program through the University of Nebraska that was designed for gifted students with untraditional educational backgrounds.

  At the University of Nebraska, Thompson joined the College of Agriculture, partly influenced by the boys in the Ag fraternity, which he joined, in part to gain the supposed secure and practical future career as an agricultural writer.

  For the Fall semester of 1931, Thompson only managed to pay his tuition by borrowing thirty dollars from one of his professors. However the Great Depressionran interference to those plans, and October 1st, 1931 marked the end of his formal education.

 The reasoning behind this was two-fold. First off, they (correctly) feared parental opposition to the marriage, and secondly, they wished to keep the marriage secret because the telephone company where Alberta wished to continue working maintained a strict no married women policy.

  Thompson's mother-in-law would never really accept him, not considering him good enough for Alberta who had been previously engaged to a doctor and a lawyer.

  By April 6th, 1932, when the Thompsons renewed their vows in a Catholic church, they were already expecting their first child.

  Thompson made ends meet for a few years by writing pieces for true crime magazines, even going to the point of posing as victims, criminals, and investigative detectives for the photo illustrations. His wife and sister would comb the newspaper archives, looking for murders, which Thompson would then rewrite into a popular set of first-person view point articles. It was here that Thompson cut his teeth and honed his sinister style. At the height of their popularity, in the 1930's, these magazines (with titles like True Detective, Master Detective, and Intimate Detective) paid very, very well, $250 for a 6000 word article, the exact rate they now offer in the 1990's.

 Around 1935, Thompson joined the Communist party,a decision he explains in his first published novel, Now and On Earth,as being attracted to the "good conversation,"and being "pretty disgusted with the old-line parties." Thompson's first contact with communists was through the Oklahoma Federal Writers Project, a part of the Federal relief project which aided writers during the Depression. Several other regional writers were on this project, perhaps most notably, Louis L'Amour,famed Western writer. He quickly became an important asset to the Project, and eventually became an editor of an Oklahoma car travel guide book that the Project was compiling, consisting of intra-state road tours, city-by-city guides, and the compilation of Oklahoma region folklore. Joining the Communist party was not terribly unusual, keeping in mind that this was the height of the Depression, and in states like Oklahoma, the American Communist Party began to bend a sympathetic ear.

  He had left the Communist Party by 1938

  Thompson got his first novel, Now and On Earthpublished in 1942. Largely autobiographical, it lacks much of the 'crime' element that would Thompson would later become famous for, focusing largely on a fictionalized account of his work in an aircraft factory during WWII,as well as his chaotic home life. In it as well, is an account of Thompson's FBIinterview while working at the plant, investigating the possibility that Thompson's political affiliations had led him to become a saboteur. The accusations were of course, nonsense, and Thompson was left to carry on working there.

 In 1984, Barry Giffordthe author of such modern noir tales as Wild At Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula(adapted into a filmby David Lynch), Perdita Durango,(adapted into the graphic novel Neon-Lit: Perdita Durango), Wild Life of Sailor and Lulaand most recently (May 1998), Sinaloa Story,started the publishing house Black Lizard Pressand reprinted Thompson's The Getaway, Hell of a Woman,and Pop.1280.He continued successfully reprinting Thompson's books for the next three years, until Random Housepurchased the company, and they have continued the Black Lizard imprint under the aegis of Vintage Books.To date, nearly all of Thompson's previously published novels are in print, thanks to the Black Lizard/Vintage Crime imprint.

Complete Bibliography

• Now and On Earth(1942)
   

• Heed the Thunder(1946)
   

• Nothing More Than Murder(1949)
   

• The Killer Inside Me(1952)
   

• Cropper's Cabin(1952)
   

• Recoil(1953)
   

• The Alcoholics(1953)
   

• Savage Night(1953)
   

• Bad Boy(1953)
   

• The Criminal(1953)
   

• The Golden Gizmo(1954)
   

• Roughneck(1954)
   

• Swell-Looking Babe(1954)
   

• Hell of a Woman(1954)
   

• Nothing Man(1954)
   

• After Dark, My Sweet(1955)
   

• The Kill-Off(1957)
   

• Wild Town(1957)
   

• The Getaway(1959)
   

• The Transgressors(1961)
   

• The Grifters(1963)
   

• Pop.1280(1964)
   

• Texas By the Tail(1965)
   

• South of Heaven(1967)
   

• Ironside (1967) [novelization] [currently out of print]
   

• The Undefeated (1969) [novelization] [currently out of print]
   

• Nothing But a Man (1970) [currently out of print]
   

• Child of Rage (1972) [currently out of print] aka White Mother, Black Son
   

• King Blood, (1973) [currently out of print]
   

• The Rip-Off (1985) [currently out of print]
   

• Fireworks : The Lost Writings of Jim Thompson (1989) [currently out of print]

Complete Filmography (source: Internet Movie Database)

• Every Dog Has Its Day (1997)(novel)
   

• Hit Me (1996)(novel: Swell-Looking Babe)
   

• This World, Then the Fireworks (1996)(story)
   

• (novel)
   

• Sweet Poison (1991/I) (TV)(novel)
   

• After Dark, My Sweet (1990) (novel)
   

• (novel)
   

• (novel)
   

• Coup de Torchon (1981)(novel Pop.1280) ... aka Clean Slate (1981) :: video:: DVD
   

• Serie Noire (1979)(novel: Hell of a Woman)
   

• Killer Inside Me, The (1976) (novel)
   

• Getaway, The (1972) (novel)
   

• Paths of Glory (1957)
   

• Killing, The (1956)(dialogue)

In 1975, Thompson appeared as Mr. Grayle in the filmadaptation of the Dashiell Hammettnovel Farewell, My Lovely.

Current Internet Movie Database linkto all films based on Jim Thompson material.

Biographical Material

• Savage Art: A Biography of Jim ThompsonBy Robert Polito

Net Links

• www.moviemaker.com/issues/22/thompson/thompson.html
  Jim Thompson's Hollywood Years, article in Moviemaker by DavidGeffner (issue 22)
   
  

• www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jthompso.htm
  Short Jim Thompson Bio (contains someinaccuracies, according to biographical sources I've found)
   

• www.coyotebooks.com/bl1.html
  Black Lizard Press info
   

• www.bluedevil.com/bz/twttf2.htm
  An excerpt from "This World, Then the Fireworks", the latest Thompson work to be adapted to film.
   

• www.filmscouts.com/films/thi-wor.html
  This World, Then the Fireworks review
   

• www.sundancechannel.com/festival97/webcast/s-1994393570.
  Sundance Film Festival '97: This World, Then the Fireworks info