Stan Paregien, Editor
Robert Skimin
Robert Skimin is a retired Army officer. He has written short guides to El Paso, Juarez and San Antonio. He is the author of Chikara! A Sweeping Novel of Japan and America (St. Martin's, 1985), which won the Ohioan Book Award for Fiction.
Robert Skimin also wrote The Rhodesian Sellout (Libra, 1978) and five novels in the "Soldier for Hire" series for Zebra: Zulu Blood (1981), Trojan in Iran (1981), U.N. Sabotage, Bloodletting!, and Libyan Warlord. And he has written a Civil War novel, Gray Victory (St.Martin's Press) in which the South wins the war!
Mark Slade
Mark Slade, actor, born Mark Van Barcom Slade on 1 May 1939 in Worcester, Massachusetts. He grew up in and around Danvers, MA.
From the moment he laughed his way through his first Charlie Chaplin movie as a child, he was fascinated with movie-making. In 1956, he enrolled in the Worcester Academy, intending to become a cartoonist, but after he filled in for a sick classmate, playing the role of an English professor in the play, The Male Animal, he knew he was destined to be an actor.
Mark Slade's first TV of film credit was in a 1959 episode of the TV show "Bonanza". He also appeared in Wild, Wild West and in Rawhide. He was in several episodes of "Gomer Plye".
However, his best-known role was in another Western. In 1967 he got the part of Billy Blue Cannon, son of ranch patriarch John Cannon on "The High Chaparral," through his electric performance in producer David Dortort's office, even after the part had been temporarily assigned to another actor.
He made a few movies and then disappeared from the acting scene, as well as the public, in 1985.
CLICK HERE to see the complete filmography of Mark Slade.
Richard Slotkin
Richard Slotkin is a professor of American Studies at Wesleyan University, where he has taught English, film studies and American studies since 1966. And though he has never lived in the western U.S., he writes extensively about it. He told a reporter for the Hartford (Conn.) Courant, "I was raised with cowboy movies and cowboy comics in Brooklyn, New York. In my head, I was a cowboy."
Richard Slotkin's articles have appeared in Journal of the West, Culture and Violence, Buffalo Bill and the Wild West, American Quarterly, Saturday Review, The New York Times Book Review, and others. His article "Nostalgia and Progress: Theodore Roosevelt's Myth of the Frontier" in American Quarterly (33:5, 1981, pp.608-637) won the Don D. Walker Prize for best article on Western American Literature.
His book Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Wesleyan University Press, 1973; second ed., 1987)won the Albert J. Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association as the "best book in the history of the Americans for 1973" and it was nominated for a National Book Award in History.
Richard Slotkin also wrote So Dreadful a Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip's War (Wesleyan University Press, 1978), a novel set in the Civil War and titled The Crater (Atheneum, 1980; a selection of the History Book Club), and a novel about the West's most active bank robber, The Return of Henry Starr (Atheneum, 1988).
Joe A. Small
(Deceased)
Joe Small was the editor and publisher of True West, Real West and Frontier Times magazines for many years. (See article & photo in the Jan., 1973 issue of The Roundup.)
Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley was born in 1949 in Los Angeles, CA. Her family only lived there for one year before they moved to St. Louis, and that is where she grew up. She graduated from Vassar in 1971, then attended graduate school in Iowa.
Jane Smiley is the author ten books of finction, including Horse Heaven, Moo, A Thousand Acres, and The Greenlanders. It was for A Thousand Acres that she won the coveted Pulitzer Prize in 1992.
In 1999 she won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for her book, The All-True Travels and Adventures of Liddie Newton. It won in the category of "Best Novel of the West".
Smiley has also written many nonfiction essays for U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, and other publications.
Jane Smiley taught creative writing for fifteen years at Iowa State University. She left there in 1996 to live and write full-time in northern California. She is also a passionate horseback rider.
She has been married three times --- to John Whiston (1970-1975), William Silag (1978-1986), and Stephen M. Mortensen (1987-1997). She has two daughters, Phoebe Silag (1978), Lucy Silag (1982) and one son, AJ Mortensen (1992).
Dean Smith
Dean Smith, Hollywood stunt man and actor, was born and reared in Texas. He played football and track in high school. He served in the U.S. Army, then played professional football for the Los Angeles Rams and, later, the Pittsburgh Steelers. And along the way he also performed as a professional rodeo cowboy, a champion bareback rider, and a calf roper.Dean Smith then became a widely used stunt man in Hollywood, appearing in place of stars during the dangerous scenes in such Western movies as The Alamo, The Comanceros, How The West Was Won, McClintock, Rio Conchos, Big Jake, and El Dorado. He also appeared in such Western TV shows as Tales of Wells Fargo, Maverick, Gunsmoke, Lawman, Have Gun Will Travel, and Walker Texas Ranger.
Dean Smith is a member of the Stuntman's Hall of Fame, and also the University of Texas Hall of Fame. In 1997 he was named "All American Cowboy". And in 1998 he received a Golden Boot Award. He owns two ranches and raises Longhorn cattle.
Chris Adam Smith
Chris Adam Smith, who lives in England, is the former editor of a motion picture magazine. He has sold six novels to London publisher, Robert Hale.
Monte Smith
Monte Smith is the author of Quill and Beadwork of the American Indian (Eagles View, 1984) and The Technique of North American Indian Beadwork (Eagles View, 1983). Smith is the editor of Deon DeLange's More Techniques of Beading Earrings II (1985), of William C. Orchard's The Technique of Porcupine Quill Decoration among the Indians of North America (1985), of Harold L. Peterson's American Indian Tomahawks, and of William Wildschut and John Ewars's Crow Indian Beadwork (1985).
Phyllis Smith
Phyllis Smith graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1949 with the B.A. degree, and earned her secondary teaching credential at San Francisco State College in 1953. She is the author numerous nonfiction articles for the Boulder (Colo.) Daily Camera, Colorado Daily and Town and Country Review. Her books include Once a Coal Miner: The Story of Colorado's Northern Coal Field (Pruett Publishing Co., 1989) and A Look at Boulder: From Settlement to City (Pruett Publishing, 1981; 4th ed., 1988).
Phyllis Smith's writing awards include first place awards in 1977 and 1978 from the Colorado Press Women for articles on popular history. The Colorado Authors' League presented her with the Top Hand Award in 1984 for an adult nonfiction article, another in 1987 for specialty writing, and a third in 1988 in the same category.She is a member of the Bozeman Writers, Colorado Authors' League, Lafayette (Colorado) Historical Society, Gallatin County (Montana) Historical Society, Montana Historical Society and the Western History Association.
Rex Alan Smith
Rex Alan Smith is the author of Moon of Popping Trees (University of Nebraska Press, 1981) and The Carving of Mount Rushmore (Abbeville Press, 1985). He and Philip Kaplan wrote One Last Look: A Sentimental Journey to the 8th Air Force heavy Bomber Bases of World War II in England (Abbeville Press, 1983).
Robert Barr Smith
Robert Barr Smith is the author of Daltons! (University of Oklahoma Press) and Raid on Coffeyville. His articles have appeared in Civil War Times Illustrated and in Wild West.
William Smith
William Smith, actor, was born in 1934. While not many people know his name, they instantly recognize his face, his deep raspy voice, and his muscle-man physique. A great character actor, he generally plays not just bad guys---but psychotic, sadistic sociopathic types. For example, he played "Jack Wilson," Clint Eastwood's nemesis and compadre, in the movie, Any Which Way You Can (1980). William Smith stays extremely busy. He has been in more than 300 movies and television shows.
Smith has always done his own fight sequences and has been called on to do plenty of them. He also does his own riding, whether horses or motorcycles.
William Smith is also a cowboy poet. He has recited his poety at a number of western events.
CLICK HERE to go to the official William Smith Fan Club page.
CLICK HERE to see the complete filmography of William Smith.
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.
As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord's love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children's children--
with those who keep his covenant
and remeber to obey his precepts.
--- Bible: Psalm 103:15-18
© 2003 by Stan Paregien, Sr.