Michael "Mike" Shayne is a fictional private detective character created during the late 1930s by writer Brett Halliday, a pseudonym of Davis Dresser. The character appeared in a series of seven films starring Lloyd Nolan for Twentieth Century Fox, five films from the low-budget Producers Releasing Corporation with Hugh Beaumont, a radio series under a variety of titles between 1944 and 1953, and later in 1960–1961 in a 32-episode NBC television series starring Richard Denning in the title role.

Lloyd Benedict Nolan was an American stage, film and television actor who rose from a supporting player and B-movie lead early in his career to featured player status after creating the role of Captain Queeg in Herman Wouk's play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial in the mid-1950s. Nolan won a Best Actor Emmy Award reprising the part in 1955 TV play based on Wouk's tale of military justice.