Stan Paregien, Editor
Bill Pronzini
Bill Pronzini was born in 1943. He began writing professional in 1969. His published works include over 300 short-stories. He has seen over 60 of his novels published, most of them in the mystery field. And he has edited or co-edited 55 anthologies, some 20 of which have a Western theme. He sometimes uses the pen names of Alex Saxon and Jack Foxx.
Bill Pronzini is the editor of The Arbor House Treasure of Detective and Mystery Stories from the Great Pulps (1983), The Arbor House Treasure of Great Western Stories (1982), Midnight Specials (Avon, 1978), and Wild Westerns: Stories from the Grand Old Pulps (Walker & Co., 1986). He edited with Marcia Muller, She Won the West (William Morrow), an anthology of Western and frontier stories by women. He and Barry N. Malzberg edited The Arbor House Treasury of Mystery and Suspense (1982).
Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg were co-editors on The Railroaders (Fawcett), The Cowboys (Fawcett Gold Medal), The Second Reel West (Doubleday, 1985), The Third Reel West (1986), The Best Western Stories of Wayne D. Overholser (Southern Illinois University Press), The Ethnic Detectives (1985), Great Modern Police Stories (1986), The Best Western Stories of Steve Frazee, The Horse Soldiers (Fawcett, 1987), and The Western Hall of Fame: An Anthology of Classic Western Stories Selected by the Western Writers of America (Morrow, 1984).
Pronzini is the author of The Stalker (1971), The Jade Figurine (1972), Panic! (1972), A Run in Diamonds (1973), The Vanished (1973), Undercurrent (1973), Snowbound (1974), Dead Run (1975), Games (1976), The running of Beats (with Barry N. Malzberg, 1976), Freebooty (1976), Blowback (1977), Acts of Mercy (1977), Twospot (1978), Wildfire (1978), Night Screams (1979), Labyrinth (1980), Prose Bowl (1980), The Cambodia File (with Jack Anderson, 1981), Hoodwink (1981), Masques (1982), The Last Days of Horse-Shy Halloran (M. Evans, 1988), The Hangings (Walker & Co., 1988), Bones (1985), Deadfall (1986), The Gallows Land (1983), Graveyard Plots: The Best Short Stories of Bill Pronzini (1985), Nightshades (1984), Quicksilver (1984), Quincannon (1985), Scattershot (1983), The Snatch (1971, 1984), Undercurrent (1984), The Vanished (1984), Voodoo! (1980), Werewolf! (1979).
James C. Propp
James C. Propp was born in 1918 at Muskogee, Okla. As a young man, he rode in many rodeos around the country. And he wrote hundreds of articles and short stories in the pulp Western magazines of the 1930's to 1950's. He studied under Foster Harris at the University of Oklahoma.
Nell Brown Propst
Nell Brown Propst grew up in Alabama, graduating at age 19 from Samford University with a double-major in English and Speech-theatre. She taught in a public school for two years, then accepted a job as an instructor at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colo. She later earned her M.A. in Theatre at the University of Denver.
It was in Sterling that she met and married a rancher named Keith Propst and settled down on that historic ranch on the South Platte section of the Overland Trail. Propst writes, "The move (to Colorado) changed my life. Instant rapport with the plains country and the people let me know within a week that Colorado was to be my permanent home. Sometimes I half believe that in a former life I must have been one of those westering women whose stories are told in my writing. Never in my southern childhood would I have imagined such a future. Living on the ranch has been the greatest adventure of my life and has colored my writing." She adds that she "cooked many a camp dinner for cowboys working cattle in the sandhill pastures."
As a professional play director, Nell Brown Propst has overseen the production of many plays over the years, including several large historical dramas. One of those historical dramas was her own, Where the Buffalo Roamed, staged in 1959 as an official event of the Colorado Rush to the Rockies celebration and staged in 1987 as an official event of the Logan County Centennial.Propst's articles have appeared in Old West. She is the author of Those Strenuous Dames of the Colorado Prairie (Pruett, 1982), Forgotten People: A History of the South Platte Trail (Pruett, 1979) and The Boys from Joes: A Colorado Basketball Legend (1988).
Barbara Puechner
Ray Puechner proposed to Barbara at the 1986 Western Writers of America Convention in Fort Worth, and they married on Sept. 20, 1986. Barbara Puechner attended Antioch College and the University of Hong Kong.
Barbara Puechner's career includes stints as a photographer, model, cook, fisherman, construction worker and more than 20 years experience as a literary agent. Her articles have appeared in Florida Keys Magazine, Variety, Bangkok World, and The Houston Post. She lived in Puerto Rico for three years and was an associate editor for San Juan Diary, and she wrote for Radio Hong Kong. Her books include a number of adult westerns under various pseudonyms, such as the Powell's Army series for Zebra. She and Ray co-authored 1-2-3 Rhinoceros.
Ray Puechner
(Deceased)
Ray Puechner was born in 1935 and died of cancer in 1987. He was the executive director of Literary Times from 1961 to 1966, then served as a contributing editor from 1966 to 1973. He was a literary agent for several WWA members and a friend to all. He wrote the "Along Publisher's Row" column each month in the Roundup for quite some time. He was the author of The LSD and Sex and Censorship and Vietnam Cookbook (1968), The Whole Sky Burned (as Charles B. Victor, 1968), Cain't Help Being Beautiful (as Charles B. Victor with Jack Tiger, 1972), A Grand Slam (1973), and The Green Recruit (as Ray Peekner, with Gary Paulsen).
Lenore McKelvey Puhek
Lenore McKelvey Puhek's articles have appeared in Yippie-Yi-Yea, Montana Journal, Gold Pan, and Wild West. She won an award from Reader's Digest Assocation in 1995 for a nonfiction historical piece about Montana pioneers published in Wild West magazine. She is a freelance photographer, book reviewer, editor and lecturer.
Denver Pyle
(Deceased)
Denver Pyle, actor, was born Denver Dell Pyle on May 11, 1920 in Bethune, CO. His parents were farmers, but he wanted none of that. So he bounched around Oklahoma and Texas, working first as a roughneck in the oil fields and then as a shrip boat worker.By 1940 he was in sunny Southern California, working as a page at the NBC studio in Hollywood. World War II broke out in 1941 and he served in the Navy, where he was wounded during the Battle of Guadalcanal.
After the War ended, he got a job as a riveter in a plant in Los Angeles. While keeping his day job, he tried his hand at acting in local community theaters. He was eventually discovered by movie executives and appeared in some 75 films.
Audie Murphy and Denver Pyle in "Gunpoint" (1965)Denver Pyle's movie-TV acting career lasted fifty years, from 1947 to 1997. His Western films included "Marshal of Colorado" (1948), "Rim of the Canyon" (1949), "The Old Frontier" (1950), "The Hills of Utah" (1951), "Canyon Ambush" (1952), "Goldtown Ghost Riders" (1953), "Johnny Guitar" (1954), "I Killed Wild Bill Hickok" (1956), "The Lefthanded Gun" (1958), "The Alamo" (1960), "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964), "The Rounders" (1965), "Cahill: U.S. Marshal" (1973), and "Maverick" (1994).
On TV he is best remembered as Briscoe Darling, a hillbilly on "The Andy Griffith Show" (1963-68) and as Uncle Jesse on "The Dukes of Hazzard"(1979-85). He also played Ben Thompson on "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp" (1955) and was the narrator on "The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams."
Denver Pyle died from lung cancer at age 77 on Christmas Day, Dec. 25, 1997, in Burbank CA.
CLICK HERE to see the complete filmography of Denver Pyle.
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.
Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.
--- Psalm 95:1-2
© 2003 by Stan Paregien, Sr.
