Loren D. Estleman
How many times should a writer have a book manuscript rejected before he gives up and "retires" the book to a closet shelf? Ten times? Twenty? Fifty?
Loren D. Estleman was born in 1952 in Michigan on the family farm where he contiues to live. He wrote his first book at the age of 15. For the next nine years he tried to get that book published and all he had to show for his hard word was a pile of 160 rejection slips. That's right, 160. But on the 161st submission he sold the manuscript to editor Yvonne McManus and it finally saw the light of day as The Oklahoma Punk (Major Books, 1976).
During that nine years, Estleman graduated from college and became a cartoon editor for an AFL-CIO newspaper and, then, as a reporter and managing editor for various newspapers and magazines in southeastern Michigan. He finally shucked all that to devote his time to writing books.
Since then he has become a best-selling writer of both Westerns and mysteries, including the "Amos Walker" detective series for Houghton Mifflin. He is the author of The Hider (Doubleday, 1978), Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula (Doubleday, 1978), The High Rocks (Doubleday, 1979), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes (Doubleday, 1979), Stampin Ground (Doubleday, 1980), Motor City Blue (Houghton Mifflin, 1980), The Wolfer (Pocket Books, 1981), Angel Eyes (Houghton Mifflin, 1981), Aces & Eights (Doubleday, 1981), Murdock's Law (Doubleday, 1982), The Midnight Man (Houghton Mifflin, 1983), Mister St. John (Doubleday, 1983), This Old Bill (Doubleday, 1984), Sugartown (Houghton Mifflin, 1984), Kill Zone (Mysterious Press, 1984), The Stranglers (Doubleday, 1984), Gun Man (Fawcett, 1986), Mister St. John (Doubleday, 1983), The Glass Highway (Houghton Mifflin, 1983), The Wister Trace: Classic Novels of the American Frontier (Jameson Books, 1987), Lady Yesterday (1987), Bloody Season (Bantam, 1987).
Estleman's quality writing has brought him a large number of awards. The Western Writers of America gave him a Spur Award for his book Aces & Eights for being the best Western historical novel in 1981. He won a Spur in 1987 for "Best Western Short Fiction of 1986" for "The Bandit" in The Best of The West, Joe Lansdale, ed. (Doubleday, 1986). He is a past winner of the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, for his 1984 book, Sugartown. His article, "The Wister Trace Retraced" in the June, 1985 issue of The Roundup won a Stirrup Award for him from the WWA for being the best article in The Roundup during 1985. And the publisher of This Old Bill (Doubleday, 1984) nominated it for a Pulitzer Prize. (See Jean Mead's profile of Estleman in the February, 1985 issue of The Roundup.)
Estleman received another Spur Award at the 1997 WWW Convention in Cheyenne, Wyoming. This time it was "Best Short Fiction" for his story, "The Alchemist," published by Durkin Hayes Publishing, Ltd.
In 1999 Estleman received another Spur Award, this one in the category of "Best Western Novel," for Journey of the Dead -- a novel about Pat Garrett and a Spanish alchemist.
CLICK HERE to go to the official Loren Estleman web site.
Jim Marion Etter
Jim Marion Etter, author and reporter, was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma on Nov. 5, 1932. He was raised in the nearby town of Oktaha.
Jim Marrion Etter worked for newspapers in Muskogee, Oklahoma and in Temple, Texas before becoming a staff writer for the Daily Oklahoman, the largest newspaper in Oklahoma. Although now retired, he still writes occasional pieces for them.
His reporting and photography work won him an Oklahoma UPI award in 1967. He has also had articles published in Oklahoma Today, Persimmon Hill, Cowboy, Western Digest, Country Discoveries, ByLine, Frontier Times, True West and Western Horseman.
Etter's books include Oktaha, A Track in the Sand, Between Me & You & the Gatepost, and Ghost-Town Tales of Oklahoma, The Grains of Time and Thunder in the Heartland.
Jim Marion Etter is a member of the Oklahoma Writers' Federation and the Western Writers of America.
CLICK HERE to visit Jim Etter's own nicely done web site.
Dale Evans
(Deceased)
Dale Evans was born as Frances Octavia Smith, October 31, 1912 in Uvalde, Texas. At the tender age of fourteen, she ran off and married her high school prince charming. And just one year later, as a single parent, she won a job singing and playing piano live on two radio stations in Memphis, Tenn.
Later, she worked on radio station WHAS as a staff singer. And it was there that she adopted the stage name of Dale Evans.
Then it was on to bigger and better things up north in Chicago, Illinois. Dale Evans sang with several bands. Then she was hired as staff singer for radio station WBBM, the local CBS affiliate.
It wasn't long before talent scouts from Paramount Studios discovered her and arranged a screen test in Hollywood, but she didn't get the part. Her agent, however, showed her screen test to 20th Century Fox studios. And they gave her a one-year contract. This resulted in only small parts in two pictures, Orchestra Wives and Girl Trouble.
Dale Evans then signed with the top ranked Chase and Sanborn Show . That radio show was broadcast nationwide. And it featured such people as Don Ameche, Jimmy Durante, Edgar Bergen (Candice Bergen's father) and Charlie McCarthy.
Then Republic Studios signed her to a one-picture contract (Swing Your Partner) with a one-year option. The option was exercised and she was cast in several contemporary movies and one John Wayne western in which her singing was featured.
CLICK HERE
to read Part II
of the life of Dale Evans,
Queen of the West.
Gene Evans
(Deceased)
Gene Evans was born in Holbrook, Arizona, on July 11, 1922. He grew up in Colton, CA. He served in the army during World War II and began his acting career in the army, performing an a theatrical troupe of GIs in Europe.My second grade teacher at Castaic (Calif.) Elementary School, back in about 1949, was married to Gene Evans. He was a stocky, red-haired and usually bearded man who was often cast as a “tough guy.” He had roles in 77 films, and countless TV shows.
In 1947 Gene Evans made his film debut as a character named "Red" in "Under Colorado Skies". The name "Red" stuck and he was equally known by his associates as "Red Evans" and as "Gene Evans".
His other Western movies included "Cattle Queen of Montana" (1954), "Apache Uprising" (1966), "Neveda Smith" (1966), "The War Wagon" (1967), "Support Your Local Sheriff" (1969), "There Was a Crooked Man" (1970), "Ballad of Cable Hogue" (1970), "Support Your Local Gunfighter" (1971), "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" (1973), "The Sacketts" (TV movie, 1979), "The Shadow Riders" (TV movie, 1982), "Once Upon a Texas Train" (TV, 1988).
His appearances on TV Western series included "Gunsmoke," "Alias Smith and Jones," "Cimarron Strip," "Rawhide," "Wagon Train," "Bonanza," "Johnny Ringo," "The Lone Ranger," "The Virginian," and "The Iron Horse." He also played the role of the father in the TV series, "My Friend Flicka".
Gene Evans retired to a farm near Jackson, TN. He was a popular guest at the Memphis Film Festival for some ten years. Red Evans died on April 1, 1998 at the age of 75.
CLICK HERE to see the complete filmography of Gene Evans.
Max Evans
Max Evans was born in Ropesville, Texas in 1925. His grandmother was a Choctaw Indian who taught him the Indian ways. His father was, in Max's words, "a hustler, a trader; he would sell one thing a minute after he traded for it. He built a whole town--Humble--on our ranch. Oil was discovered there. He was a man with a dream."
By the time he was 11, Max was working as a hand on a ranch near Glorieta Mesa, New Mexico. He graduated from high school at Andrews, Texas. And when he was 17, he bought a 4,000 acre ranch in northeastern New Mexico from his aunt for $500.
He is both a writer and an artist. He began his art career in Taos, NM, where he met and married his wife, Pat. He studied painting under Woody Crumbo, Dal Holcomb and Ida Strawn Baker.
Evans saw his first book, Southwest Wind, published in 1958. That was followed by Long John Dunn of Taos (1959) and, then, his famous book, The Rounders (1960), which ultimately became a movie starring Henry Fonda and Glenn Ford (now in 2nd ed., UNM Press, 1983).
Max Evans is also the author of Super Bull and Other True Escapades (UNM Press, 1985), The Hi Lo Country (1961; UNM Press, 1983. Made into a movie starring Woody Harrelson and Sam Elliott), Three Short Novels: The Great Wedding, The One-Eyed Sky, My Pardner (1963), Shadow of Thunder (University of Ohio Press, 1969), The Mountain of Gold (1965; UNM Press, 1983), Three West: Conversations with Vardis Fisher, Max Evans, Michael Straight (1970), Sam Peckinpah, Master of Violence (1972), My Partner (Houghton Mifflin, 1972; UNM, 1984), Bobby Jack Smith, You Dirty Coward! (1974), Xavier's Folly & Other True Stories (UNM Press, 1984), and The White Shadow (1977), The Great Wedding (UNM Press, 1983).
Max Evans won a Spur for Best Nonfiction Short Subject in 1983 from the WWA for his article, "Super Bull" in Seven Horseman Magazine. The National Cowboy Hall of Fame slected his "Showdown at Hollywood Park" as the Best Magazine Article of 1984. His short story, "Xavier's Folly", was purchased by Carrington-Cavendish Producers of London with the intention of making a musical stage play from it. He has written and directed several documentary films. His home state has recognized his contributions by honoring him with a "Max Evans Day" in Hobbs back in 1968 and in Albuquerque on Oct. 22, 1975.
Max Evans teamed with Candy Moulton as editors of Hot Biscuits: Eighteen Stories by Women and Men of the Ranching West (NM: Univ of NM Press, 2002). The book, a long-time dream of Max's, is a collection of stories of working cowboys. The period is in the West after 1920. Each of the contributors has at least five years of experience working in the West, either as paid ranch hands or as women who were raised on ranches or joined their husbands on a double hire-out.
He was nominated for the Saddleman Award given at the Portland convention in 1989. And he was one of the featured speakers at the 1989 Cowboy Symposium and Celebration, sponsored by the Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock, Texas.
An article about Evans appeared in the Oct. 7, 1983 El Paso (Texas) Herald-Post in which the reporter said, "Through his tempestuous life...Max has had a simple style of settling an argument--he pulls his meaty right fist back and sends it blasting into the offender's face.
"`But no more,' Max maintains softly. Slim Pickens wrote of Max Evans that he `is one-quarter Indian, three-quarters cowboy, and all Wooley Booger. He's got horse ____ on his boots; those are sweat-salt stains on his hat band; and them scars on his nuckles ain't from punching a time clock. He's living proof that Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein did not invent cowboys.'
"Violence and adventure, hell-raising and drinking, cowboying and mining, competing in rodeos, paiting and making deals in Hollywood and elsewhere have been so much a part of Max Evans that many people fail to realize that above all the man is a superb writer."
And some night on the "Late Show," don't be surprised if you look up and see Max Evans in the movie, "The Ballad of Cable Webb". The movie stars Jason Robards. But look for Max every time the stagecoach rolls in. Slim Pickins is the stage driver and Max is the shotgun rider.
Hal G. Evarts
Hal G. Evarts, born in Hutchinson, Kan. on Feb. 8, 1915, received his B.A. from Stanford University in 1936. He worked as a screen writer and newspaper reporter. He was a staff member of the Paris editon of the New York Herald-Tribune from 1939-40. Then he went into full-time writing, turning out combat histories, short stories, and juvenile books as well as Westerns. He served as vice-president of the WWA back in 1959-60. Over 100 of his articles have appeared in such magazines as Esquire, Ellery Queen, Collier's and Saturday Evening Post.
Hal G. Evarts' Westerns include Highgrader (1954), Apache Agent (1955), Fugitive's Canyon (a collection of short stories, 1955), Ambush Rider (1956), The Night Raiders (1956), The Man Without a Gun (1957), The Man from Yuma (1958), The Long Rope (1959), The Blazing Land (1960), Turncoat (1962), The Silver Concubine (1962), Massacre Creek (1962), Colorado Crossing (1963), The Branded Man (1965), Smuggler's Road (1968), The Sundown Kid (1969). He also wrote nine novels for juveniles. (See his photo in the May, 1959 issue of The Roundup.)
This listing is far from complete and may contain errors. Therefore, all Western entertainers and/or their agents are requested to submit recommended changes by contacting Stan Paregien through his e-mail address.
The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
--- Bible: Gospel of John 1:14
© 2003 by Stan Paregien, Sr.