Page B - 2


Gordon Baldwin

(Deceased)
Gordon Baldwin was born in Portland, Oregon in 1909. He received his bachelor and master of arts degrees from the University of Arizona. He received his doctorate in anthropology and archaeology from the University of Southern California in 1941. Dr. Baldwin was an instructor of dendrochronology and archaeology at the University of Arizona in the 1930's. He worked for the National Park Service from 1940 to 1954.

Gordon Baldwin wrote some 25 books--both fiction and non-fiction, on the West, Indians and archaeology. His early fiction included Trouble Range, Trail North, Range War at Sundown, Roundup at Wagonmound.

His nonfiction works included America's Buried Past: The Story of North American Archeology, The Ancient Ones: Basketmakers and Cliff Dwellers of the Southwest, The world of Prehistory, Stone Age People Today, The Warrior Apaches, How Indians Really Lived, Indians of the Southwest, and Pyramids of the New World.

Gordon Baldwin was president of Western Writers of America from 1968 to 1969, and he served as the editor of the monthly "Roundup" magazine from 1962 to 1965. He had also been a member of Westerns International, Southwest Writers, the University of Arizona President's Club, and the Palo Alto Host Lions Club.

He suffered a heart attack in 1974 and retired from writing. He died Dec. 20, 1983 of a heart attack at Mountain View, Calif., where he had lived the last five years of his life. Gordon Baldwin was survived by his wife, Pauline; two daughters, Margie Clarkson of Palo Alto, Calif. and Pat Hutchings of Richfield, Conn.; and six grandchildren.

William E. Bales

William E. Bales is the Editorial Director of American Cowboy magazine, established in 1994. He may be reached at 235 S. Main (P.O. Box 820), Buffalo, WY 82834. Phone 307-684-8600 or Fax 307-684-8634.

The magazine web site iswww.cowboy.com.

Denna Ball


Denna Ball has had more than 40 books published. From 1983 to 1988, she wrote 30 books for Harlequin and Zebra Publishing under the pseudonym of Rebecca Flanders. She had three books published by Silhouette Books between 1988-89, under the name of Donna Carlise. She and Shannon Harper had five books published with Warner Books (1987-89), under the name Leigh Bristol. And she had two books published under her own name, Winners (St. Martin's Press, 1982) and Summer Masquerade (Doubleday, 1982).
The "Texas Trilogy" of Scarlet Sunrise, Amber Skies and Silver Twilight (all by Warner, 1987) captured for Ball and Harper the Romantic Times' "Lifetime Achievement Award").

Eve Ball

(Deceased)
Katherine Evelyn Ball was born in Clarksville, Tenn. on March 14, 1890 and died in Ruidoso, N.M. on Dec. 24, 1984. She received her B.S. in 1918 from Kansas State University and her M.S. in 1928 from the University of Kansas.

Eve Ball moved to Ruidoso in 1949. In fact, as WWA members and interviewers Bobette Perrone and H. Henrietta Stockel discovered in a personal visit with her in 1982, Ball bought that particular piece of property because "it sat along the trail Apaches took as they walked into town from the Mescalero Reservation. ...one of the Indian women stopped at Eve's house to ask for water for her child. After that, Eve placed chairs and a table holding a pitcher of water, iced tea or lemonade by the trail. Occasionally someone sat in one of the chairs."

And after a while the women began to talk about themselves and their families. And, still later, they introduced Eve to their husbands and fathers. And, much later, the men began to open up and tell the stories of the ancient ones.

Eve Ball was a warm and personable individual who spent much of her life teaching young people, first in the public schools in Independence, Kan. (1914-19), then in Dodge City (1946 and 1947), and as a college English teacher from 1968 to 70. She was a popular speaker on the lecture circuit and used her work among the Mescalero Apaches as illustrative material in her speeches and writings about the West.

However, she had a terrific struggle to ever get her work into print. Many commercial and university presses repeatedly turned down her manuscripts. They told her that books by women wouldn't sell unless they were romances, that oral histories were infamously unreliable, and/or that no one was interested in the history of Southwest Indians. Finally, Brigham Young University Press took a chance on her, and the rest really is history.

Eve Ball's books included Indeh: An Apache Odyssey (with Nora Henn and Lynda Sanchez, 1980) , In the Days of Victorio: Recollections of a Warm Springs Apache (1970), Ma'am Jones of the Pecos (1969), Ruidoso: The Last Frontier (1963), and Bob Crosby: World Champion Cowboy (1966). She was also the editor of Lily Klasner's My Girlhood Among Outlaws (1972).

A reporter for the El Paso Times (Dec. 28, 1984) talked with WWA member Leon Metz about Ball and reported that she was known for her patience and dedication. "She nurtured her friendships with sources for many years before writing an article. It took her four years alone to gain the confidence of Asa Daklugie before the old leader would open up to her.

"Daklugie, who was one of Geronimo's warriors, was the primary narrator of Indeh. The story took Ball 30 years to research."

Eve Ball received a Spur Award from the WWA for her 1974 short story, "Buried Money," in True West magazine. And in 1982 the WWA presented her with the prestigious Saddleman Award. In 1984, a joint resolution in the U.S. Senate honored her life's work.

Her memorial service was conducted at the St. Joseph Mission on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, Mescalero, New Mexico. Many of the Apaches knew her, reverently, as "Mrs. White Eyes" and as "the old white lady with many beautiful stories", one who created a better understanding between whites and Indians.

Even late in life, blind and crippled, Eve Ball had plans for publishing at least two more books. (See a tribute to Ball by Leon C. Metz in the February, 1985 issue of The Roundup.)

Toddhunter Ballard

Deceased
Toddhunter Ballard married Phoebe Dwiggins in 1945. He wrote over a thousand articles and short stories for scores of magazines, from Black Mask to The Saturday Evening Post. And he wrote 40 screen and teleplays . His first "sale" was to Hunter, Trader, Trapper when he was only twelve--and his "payment" was 23 copies of the magazine. He won a Spur from WWA for Gold in California (Doubleday, 1965). And his other 100 or so books included Chance Ellison and The Night Riders (1961).

He developed bladder cancer three years before his death on Dec. 27, 1980, in Mount Dora, Florida. William R. Cox wrote a tribute to his old friend in the January, 1981 issue of The Roundup. In it Cox said of Toddhunter Ballard, "He knew the West. He had studied the terrain at first hand, had done his homework in the worthwhile sources of information. A midwesterner by birth, a sojourner in New York State and Florida in later years, he often said that his heart lay west of the Mississippi."

Smith Ballew


(Deceased) Smith Ballew, singer and cowboy movie star, was born as Smith Ballew Orch on Jan. 21, 1902 in Palestine, TX. Pryor to 1950, most radio stations had daily live and local musical broadcasts. That is how Smith Ballew broke into show biz, starting as a singer on a local radio station. Then he formed his own band and performed on radio in the Dallas area, eventually moving on to taller grass in Chicago and then New York City (1928-37) where he led and/or played and sang in bands and full orchestras.

The Smith Ballew Orchestra featured "the big band sound" that played a wide range of styles of music. Some of the members of his band included such future bandleading stars as Joe Venuti, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Jack Teagarden, and Ballew's arranger and band manager--a young guy named Glenn Miller.

Some of Smith Ballew's more famous recordings include "Just You, Just Me," "Painting The Clouds With Sunshine," "Out Where The Blues Begin," and his theme song, "Home".

It is actually Smith Ballew's high barritone singing voice that you hear as you see John Wayne "singing" in the Western series, "Singing Sandy". And he himself starred in Westerns made by both 20th Century Fox and Paramount.

In the mid-1930's Smith Ballew signed a contract for a part in a movie with Frances Langford titled, "Palm Springs". He was smitten with the Hollywood scene and never returned to his orchestra. A handsome blond at 6' 5", Ballew soon became a singing cowboy movie star.

Smith Ballew's movie credits for Westerns include "I Killed Geronimo"(1950) , "Gun Cargo"(1949), "Drifting Along"(1944), "Hawaiian Buckaroo"(1938), "Rawhide" (1938), "Panamint's Bad Man" (1938), "Roll Along, Cowboy" (1937), "Under Arizona Skies," "Western Gold" (1937), and "Racing Lady" (1937). And he also starred in a 15-episode serial called "Tex Granger" (started in 1948).

He retired from acting in 1950 to become an executive with an aircraft manufacturer. Smith Ballew died at the age of 82 on March 12, 1984, in Fort Worth, TX

Donald Eugene Balluck


(Deceased)
Donald Balluck was born in Cleveland, Ohio on June 25, 1929. His parents were Joseph and Mary Balluck. He was active in theatrical productions there at theaters such as Cain Park and Karamu. So, with some 80 acting roles to his credit, in 1955 he took the big step and moved to New York. There he not only acted but became a playwright.

By 1960 he was married to actress Riki Gordon and they had one child and another on the way. That's when they moved to Los Angeles, where he wrote a number of dramas for "CBS Repertoire Workshop".

Then in 1964 he sold a script to the "Doctor Kildare" series and got great reviews from the critics, but he still had to work on the side by doing technical writing for several electronics firms. Soon, though, he became a staff writer for the "Peyton Place" series. And then he began to sell regularly to other TV shows, such as "Little House on the Prairie, " "Beauty and the Beast," "Here Come the Brides," "Run For Your Life," "Cimarron Strip," "Daniel Boone," "Streets of San Francisco," "Room 22," "Chopper One," "Starsky and Hutch," "Police Woman," "Father Murphy," "Barretta" and "Hawaii Five-O".

Donald and his wife divorced in 1973 (She died in Montana of cancer some years later). He became a full-time single-parent, caring for his daughters Pamela Jo and Cynthia Jane.

In the 1980's Donald Balluck was an executive story consultant during the last two years of "High Chaparral", and for the series "Fantasy Island". He also served as the executive story consultant for "Little House on the Prairie" for two years. He was, in fact, the principal writer (behind star-writer-director Michael Landon) for the show, with 25 episodes to his credit from 1977 to 1983.

Donald Balluck would go on to write episodes of "Magnum, P.I., "The New Mike Hammer," and "Beauty and the Beast". By the end of his career, Balluck had written more than 125 viewing hours of episodic television. Balluck was a member of the Western Writers of America ( see his photo and a profile of him by Jean Mead in the March, 1984 issue of "The Roundup"). WWA awarded him a Golden Spur Award in 1982 for an episode of "Father Murphy".

Don Balluck was also a member of the Writer's Guild of America. He served on the Board of Governors of the Television Academy.

Don Balluck was living in Valley Village, California at the time of his death. He died on April 7, 2000, while being treated for lung cancer and emphysema, at the St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, CA. His body was cremated at his request.

(My thanks to Pamela Jo Balluck, one of Mr. Balluck's daughter's, for much of the information listed above.)

You may view a database of Don Balluck's film credits by clicking HERE.

This listing is far from complete and may
contain errors. Therefore, all Westerners and/or their
agents are requested to submit recommended changes
by contacting Stan Paregien through his e-mail address.

Why don'tcha say "Howdy"?

© 2003 by Stan Paregien, Sr.