Lash LaRue
(Deceased)
Lash LaRue was born as Alfred Wilson on June 15, 1917 in Michigan, that according to B-Western movie historian Bobby Copeland [ email to me on Dec. 9, 2009].
Alfred Wilson attended St. John's Military Academy in Los Angeles, CA. Afflicted with a speech impediment, he enrolled at College of the Pacific in Stockton, CA. and took up drama to help him overcome it. After all, he wanted to be a lawyer. That, of course, never happened.Instead, after leaving college he went to Hollywood and made the rounds of screen tests with various studios. Finally he connected with the folks at Universal Studios and started getting small parts in 1944.
It was in 1945 that he appeared in "Song of Old Wyoming" starring Eddie Dean and Jennifer Holt (Tim Holt's sister). He played the part of a bad guy turned good just before being killed off. But it didn't kill his career. It kick-started it.
In that movie, as the Cheyenne Kid, he dressed in black and used . . . ah, yes . . . a whip. And that solid black outfit and whip were to become his trademarks.
What many people don't know is that brash Alfred LaRue didn't know a bullwhip from a beanbag when he interviewed for that role. He lied enough to convince them that he could handle a whip and do a couple of scheduled tricks. Then he went out and rented two whips. And he never beat himself to death learning how to use the bullwhip. But he did it.
Of course, the studio finally learned the truth. And they hired Snowy Baker, a real expert on the bullwhip, to teach LaRue the finer points of using it. LaRue took it from there, often seeking out other bullwhip experts for tips.
In 1946 the studio decided to create a new Western hero, "Lash LaRue". And you-know-who got the part. And they teamed him with veteran comic and actor Al "Fuzzy" Knight as his sidekick. They made seven movies the first year.
In the early 1950's he shot a TV series, "Lash of the West." It didn't last long.
By 1953 the "B-Western" movie was dead. And Lash LaRue turned to personal appearances at rodeos, fairs, carnivals and just about anywhere a paying crowd could be assembled. In 1959 he appeared in the TV show, "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp".
It was in the early 1960's that, while living with his tenth wife in Reno, Nevada, he embraced Christianity. And he spent a great deal of time speaking to churches and other groups about this new-found facet of his life. His wife was not thrilled with this new direction, and they soon parted company. He set up the "Lash LaRue Evangelistic Association" in Long Beach, CA.
In 1966 Lash LaRue was arrested in Miami, Florida and charged with vagrancy. He only had 35 cents to his name. By the early 1970's he had moved to St. Petersburg, Florida.
Lash LaRue (sometimes spelled "La Rue") was in 38 movies during his career, almost all of them Westerns. And, of all things, he was a man who loved to write poetry.
Lash Larue died on May 21, 1996 in Burbank, CA.
REFERENCE MATERIAL:
Chuck Thornton and David Rothel, Lash LaRue: The King of the Bullwhip (Madison, NC: Empire Publishing Inc., 1988). I have an copy of this book autographed by the late Lash LaRue.CLICK HERE to see the complete filmography of Las LaRue.
David Lavender
Born in Telluride, Colorado in 1910, David Lavender grew up in the middle of the cattle and mining industries.His father worked as a freighter, driving horse-drawn wagons from town to town, until he saved enough money to buy a ranch on Colorado's western slope.He graduated from Princeton University with a law degree in 1931, then studied at Stanford University. He then returned to manage the family ranch, only to see it go broke. So he became a copy writer for an advertising agency in Denver.
From there David Lavender moved to California and wound up as a teacher at Thacher School, a prestigious private male prep school in Ojai, Calif. He was there from 1941 to 1970, when he retired as head of the English department. And during those years he traveled his beloved West, researched its history and wrote about it. And he wrote well.
His first book, One Man's West (1943), told of his early life and the forces at work in the cattle and minining industries and the Western culture. He also wrote The Big Divide (1948) and Bent's Fort (1954), the latter being the first nonfiction book to receive a Spur Award from WWA. He then wrote Land of Giants: The Drive to the Pacific Northwest(1958), which was nominated for a Pulitzer price. He also wrote Westward Vision: The Story of the Oregon Trail (1963), The fist in the Wilderness (1964), The Great West (1965), The Rockies (1968), The Great persuader (1970), Nothing Seemed Impossible (1975), California: A Bicentennial History (1976), Winner Take All: A History of the Trans-Canada Canoe Trail (1977), The Southwest (1979), Colorado River Country (1982), The Way to the Western Sea: Lewis and Clark Across the Continent (1988). His book, Let Me Be Free: The Nez Perce Tragedy (1992) earned him a second Spur from WWA in 1993.
David Lavender's awards are many. WWA selected him as the recipient of the 1996 Owen Wister Award for lifetime contributions to the literature of the West, and it was presented to him at the annual convention in Albuquerque, N.M. He was awarded the Wallace Stegner Award from the University of Colorado at Boulder, given annuall to an individual who has made a sustained contribution to the cultural identify of the American West through the literature, art, history, lore or understanding of the West. He received four Commonwealth Club of California Medals, each in a different decade, for his books. He also was honored by receving a Western hreitage Award from the national Cowboy Hall of Fame, the Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local history, and the Award of Merit from the California Historical Society. And in 1989 he was elected as a fellow of the Historical Society of Southern California.
Steven Law
Steven Law is the pen name for Steven Anderson.Steven Anderson was reared on a farm in southern Iowa. And he worked for a time on his family’s cattle ranch in Missouri. Thus was born his love of the American West. His own interest in Western fiction prompted him to become the webmaster of ReadWest.com . That web site is now a popular online magazine, as well as a source for information on books and authors of the American West.
Steven Anderson, aka Steven Law, is a member of the Western Writers of America, the Austin Writers League, and is a past member of the Kansas City Writers Group. He works from his home near Springfield, Missouri.
Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence
(Deceased)
Dr. Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence was born on Oct. 1, 1929 to Dr. Warren G. Atwood, prominent Fall River (Massachusets) surgeon for whom the Atwood Wing of Charlton Memorial Hospital was named, and Leila M. (Redavat) Atwood.
She married Robert P. Lawrence on June 8, 1957. Dr. Lawrence holds the distinction of being both a veterinarian (VMD from the University of Pennsylvania) and a cultural anthropologist (B.A., Mount Holyoke College; M.A. and Ph.D., Brown University). Her field of research and teaching as an professor in the Environmental Studies Department of the School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University is in human-animal relationships.Her special interest was the study of interactions with nature and animals in the American West, particularly among native Americans and ranchers and rodeo participants. She started writing about the West in 1974 with her study of Crow Indians and Their Horses, Past and Present.
Dr. Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence was the author of numerous articles for professional journals. And she had three published books to her credit. The first, Rodeo: An Anthropologist Looks at the Wild and the Tame, was published by the University of Tennessee Press in 1982 (paperback, University of Chicago Press, 1984). Her second book, Hoofbeats and Society: Studies of Human-Horse Interactions was published in 1985 by Indiana University Press. Her third book, His Very Silence Speaks: Comanche--The Horse Who Survived Custer's Last Stand, was published in 1989 by Wayne State University Press. The latter book, we should point out, is about the horse who survived Custer's Last Stand; but it was not Custer's horse.
Her awards included the 1976 Elsie Clews Parsons Award of the American Ethnological Society for a manuscript on the horse in Crow Indian culture. In 1980 she received the James Mooney Award of the Southern Anthropological Society for her manuscript, "The Wild and the Tame: Nature and Culture in American Rodeo". In 1988 she won the Mount Holyoke College Sesquicentennial Ward. In 1987 she was the recipient of the Bustad Companion Animal Veterinarian Award for Massachusetts (sponsored by the Delta Society and American Veterinary Medical Association).
In 1988 the Association for Woman Veterinarians named Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence the Outstanding Woman Veterinarian of the Year. And in 1989 the Delta Society gave her their first "International Distinguished Scholar Award".
Dr. Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence died at age 74 on Nov. 12, 2003 at New England Baptist Hospital in Boston, MA. She and her husband were long-time residents of Westport, MA. He was serving as the pastor of the First Congregational Church in nearby Fall River. They had been married for 46 years.
She was a professor emeritus of veterinary medicine at Tuffs University, having joined the university in 1979. She developed a course in human-animal interactions which she taught for twenty years, and which became a model course now offered at other veterinary schools across the country.
Robert Laxalt
Robert Laxalt grew up in Carson City, Nevada. He graduated from the University of Nevada (Reno). During World War II, he served with the American Foreign Service in what as then called the Belgian Congo. He was a UPI staff correspondent for five years before joining the University of Nevada in 1954 as the Director of News and Publications. He later founded and became the Director of the University of Nevada Press. He retired from UNR in 1983, and was designated Director Emeritus of the University Press.
His articles have appeared in Nevada and National Geographic Traveler. And his article "The Other Nevada," published in National Geographic, won a Spur from WWA for the best non-fiction story of 1974. Reader's Digest republished his article about the gaucho horsemen of South America, retitling it "The Gauchos: Proud Horsemen of the Pampa," and distributing it in 19 languages.
Robert Laxalt's list of published books include A Man in the Wheatfield,an allegorical novel which was selected by the American Libr
ary Association as one of six notable works of American fiction for 1964. It has been republished in England and in a Spanish language edition in Mexico City. He also wrote In a Hundred Graves: A Basque Portrait (1972), Nevada: A History (Norton, 1977), and A Cup of Tea in Pamploma (1985), all by University of Nevada Press. The latter book was accepted for possible nomination for the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He was awarded the Tambor de Oro 1986 by the Center for Attraction and Tourism in San Sebastian, Spain. Laxalt is probably best known for his book, Sweet Promised Land (Harper & Row, 1986).It is a memoir of his father's nostalgic return to his native Basque country after nearly a lifetime as a sheepherder in the American West. It was republished in England, Germany and France. It has been purchased by Hollywood for production as a movie.
Robert Laxalt's honors include being named in 1978 as a recipient of a "Decade Award" from the Nevada State Council on the Arts for his contribution to the arts. That same year he was cited by Gov. Mike O'Callaghan for exemplary service to the State of Nevada. In 1
982, he was named "Distinguished Nevada Author" by the Friends of the University of Nevada, Reno Library. In 1983, he was named a Reynold's Distinguished Visiting Professor for UNR's Department of Journalism. The Board of Regents of the University of Nevada named him a "Distinguished Nevadan" in 1984. And in 1986, he was named the Edward W. Scripps II Visiting Professor in Journalism.
This listing is far from complete and may contain errors.
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Therefore, all Western entertainers and/or their agents
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At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a
good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God
demonstrates his own love for us in this:
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
--- Bible: Romans 5:6-8
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[ This page last revised on Feb. 11, 2010 ]
