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Saturday 26 May 2018

Les Savage Jr. - Western author

Recently found this biography of one of my favorite western authors. The biography is by Jon Tuska, and has a photo I've never seen before. On the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of his untimely death, here it is for you:

"Les" Savage Jr. reading what looks like Don't Cry for me by William Campbell Gault



One of the best series he wrote was Senorita Scorpion (disable adblocker to see links):





Apart from that, a lot of collections of his shorter work (short stories and novellas) are available. Sample below(disable adblocker to see links):


Saturday 19 May 2018

E.B. Mann - Biography of western author

Found a biography of author E.B. Mann while looking for something else. He started his pulp career in 1928 with a story in Ranch Romances, went on to be published in the main Western magazines - Ace-High, Western Story, Wild West Weekly, Dime Western and Star Western. His pulp career ended in 1933 with about 80 stories published in the pulps, and 8 movies based on his stories.




Adventure, January 1937 issue with E.B. Mann story featured on the cover Image courtesy the FictionMags Index
Adventure, January 1937 issue with E.B. Mann story featured on the cover
Image courtesy the FictionMags Index

The following is biographical information from the Camp-Fire column in the Adventure, January 1937 issue where Mann had his only story but getting the cover nevertheless for The Comanche Kid.

...
E. B. Mann makes his first appearance in our magazine—a new member of the Writers’ Brigade which has marched for twenty-six years and included most of the noted American men authors in its ranks. Mann lives in Florida. His story you will judge for yourself, and I hope you will like the people in it as well as I did. Mann makes this introduction of himself to the Camp-Fire circle.

I would have said, if asked, that my life so far had been an interesting one. I’ve found it interesting, and amusing, and even—from time to time—exciting. Yet when I come to setting it down on paper it seems insipid stuff, like last night’s beer. . . . Perhaps it’s asking too much to expect a fictioneer to stick to facts!

I was born in Kansas in 1902; was graduated from Decatur County (Kansas) High School in 1920, and for some time after that I traveled—mostly as a non-paying passenger—from Butte to the Brazos and to and fro. The trails my father had traveled in a covered wagon I traveled in boxcars and in Pullmans, working on ranches here and there, following the wheat harvest, wielding a billiard cue, setting type in various print-shops, earning a little, learning a little. I heard the lingo and the legends of the west from childhood on, and read omnivorously.

I came to Florida with the birth of “The Boom” but I went to college while the other boys sold subdivisions. They made more money than I did, but they lost more too when the bubble burst. I had played football in high school and baseball afterward; in college, I played politics and found the game more fun, if not more profitable.

I arrived in New York City in 1927 and within a month I knew men in scores of fine offices all up and down Manhattan Island. They had said, “No,” when I asked them for jobs. One gentleman finally said, “Yes,” and I became an advertising man.

I sold my first story in March, 1928, and bought an overcoat. I needed it.

Some six months later I said goodbye, with some regrets, to advertising and devoted all my time to the writing of the franker forms of fiction.

Was married in 1928 to Helen Frazier Cubberly.

Children: none.
Recreations: Tennis; shooting.
Hobby: guns.

Ambitions? To live pleasantly; to acquire a backhand drive; to shoot a shotgun as well as I do a pistol; to have a hand in the redemption of the western story from its past and present low estate.

And the article i found, that has a photo and a much longer biography, is here:

Saturday 12 May 2018

Beautiful covers #4 - Jekyll/Hyde covers

Inspiration for the Batman villain, Two-Face, perhaps Detective Fiction Weekly, November 26, 1932, Cover artist not known
Inspiration for the Batman villain Two-Face, perhaps
Detective Fiction Weekly, November 26, 1932, Cover artist not known


Can someone who's read the issue tell us if this is the hero or the villain? And maybe the cover artist if that's in the table of contents.

Another cover from the same magazine, November 27, 1937.

Another Jekyll/Hyde cover from Detective Fiction Weekly, November 27, 1937, Cover artist not known
Another Jekyll/Hyde cover from Detective Fiction Weekly, November 27, 1937, Cover artist not known
If you know other similar covers, leave a comment with magazine and issue date.



Saturday 5 May 2018

W.H.B. Kent - Forest ranger, Western Author

I became interested in this author as a result of reading one of his stories in Great Stories of the West edited by Edmund Collier. Thought his life was interesting and decided to share it with you.

Thanks to James G. Lewis of the Forest History Society for providing some of the background information in this article.

W.H.B. Kent c. 1905, photo courtesy US Forest Service
W.H.B. Kent c. 1905, photo courtesy US Forest Service