Louis L'Amour facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Louis L'Amour
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L'Amour in 1970
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| Born | Louis Dearborn LaMoore March 22, 1908 Jamestown, North Dakota, U.S. |
| Died | June 10, 1988 (aged 80) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park |
| Pen name | Tex Burns |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story writer |
| Genres | Western, science fiction, adventure, non-fiction |
| Spouse | Kathy (widowed 1988) |
| Children | 2 |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance | United States |
| Service/ |
United States Army |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
Louis Dearborn L'Amour (born LaMoore; March 22, 1908 – June 10, 1988) was a very popular American writer. He is best known for his exciting Western novels, which he called "frontier stories." He also wrote other types of books, including historical adventures like The Walking Drum, science fiction like The Haunted Mesa, and non-fiction.
Many of his stories were turned into movies. His books are still widely read today, and most of his 105 works were still being printed when he passed away. He was one of the world's most popular writers.
Contents
Louis L'Amour's Early Life and Adventures
Growing Up in North Dakota
Louis Dearborn LaMoore was born in Jamestown, North Dakota, on March 22, 1908. He was the seventh child of Emily Dearborn and Louis Charles LaMoore. His father was a veterinarian and also worked in politics and farm equipment. Louis's family name was originally spelled L'Amour, but his father changed it.
Even though Jamestown was mostly farmland, cowboys and their cattle often passed through the town. Louis loved to play "Cowboys and Indians" in his family's barn. He also spent a lot of time at the local library, reading books by 19th-century British author G. A. Henty. Louis once said that these books taught him a lot about history and politics.
Traveling Across the Country
When Louis was a teenager, many banks failed, which caused big money problems in the Midwest. Because of this, Louis's family had to travel to find work. In the winter of 1923, Louis and his adopted brother John left school and headed south with their parents.
For the next seven or eight years, they worked many different jobs. They skinned cattle in Texas, baled hay in New Mexico, and worked in mines in Arizona, California, and Nevada. They also worked in sawmills in the Pacific Northwest. In these interesting places, Louis met many different kinds of people. Some of them were real people from the American Old West who were still alive in the 1920s and 1930s. He later used these people as models for the characters in his books.
Louis traveled all over the United States and even visited other countries like England, Japan, China, and Egypt. He worked as a mine worker, a professional boxer, and a sailor on merchant ships. Sometimes he traveled with his family, and sometimes he traveled alone. In the early 1930s, he settled in Choctaw, Oklahoma. There, he changed his name back to the original French spelling, "L'Amour," and decided to become a writer.
Starting His Writing Career
Louis L'Amour first found success writing poetry and articles about boxing. He also helped edit parts of a guide book about Oklahoma. However, it was hard for him to get his short stories published.
Finally, one of his stories, Death Westbound, was published in a magazine called "10 Story Book." A few years later, he got paid for his first story, Anything for a Pal, which appeared in True Gang Life. After a couple of slow years, his stories started appearing regularly in "pulp magazines" in 1938. These were popular, inexpensive magazines that often featured adventure and crime stories.
L'Amour created a character named Jim Mayo, a sea captain who was a mercenary (someone who works as a soldier for money). He wrote nine stories about Jim Mayo between 1940 and 1943. Before World War II, he only wrote one Western story, called The Town No Guns Could Tame, in 1940.
Louis L'Amour's War Service and Later Success
Serving in World War II
Louis L'Amour continued to travel and work as a merchant seaman (a sailor on a commercial ship) until World War II began. During the war, he served in the United States Army as a lieutenant. He was part of the 362nd Quartermaster Truck Company. Before he went to Europe, L'Amour wrote stories for Standard Magazine.
After World War II, L'Amour kept writing for magazines. His first story after the war was Law of the Desert Born, published in Dime Western Magazine in 1946. He also wrote several Hopalong Cassidy novels under the name "Tex Burns." These books were based on the original Hopalong Cassidy character, but L'Amour wasn't happy with how the publishers changed the character in print. Because of this, he later said he didn't write those novels.
Becoming a Novelist
In the 1950s, L'Amour started selling his novels. His first novel published under his own name was Westward The Tide in 1951. A short story he wrote, The Gift of Cochise, was published in Colliers magazine in 1952. The famous actor John Wayne and producer Robert Fellows saw the story and bought the rights to make it into a movie for $4,000.
The movie was called Hondo, and L'Amour was allowed to write a novel based on the movie's script. This novel, also called Hondo, was released on the same day the movie came out in 1953. John Wayne even said that Hondo was "the finest Western Wayne had ever read." Throughout the rest of the 1950s, L'Amour wrote many novels. He also took many of his earlier short stories and expanded them into full-length books.
Working with Bantam Books
Many publishers in the 1950s and 60s didn't want to publish more than one or two books a year by the same author. But Louis L'Amour was writing much more than that! Finally, an editor at Bantam Books convinced his company to offer L'Amour a special contract to publish three books a year. After 1960, L'Amour's book sales with Bantam really took off.
His career grew even more in the 1960s. He started writing a series of novels about a made-up family called the Sacketts. The first book, The Daybreakers, came out in 1960. This series eventually grew to include stories about other families and covered four centuries of North American history. It was a huge project, and some stories he planned to write about the Sackett family history were not finished before he died. L'Amour also wrote other types of books, like the historical adventure The Walking Drum, the modern thriller Last of the Breed, and the science fiction story The Haunted Mesa.
Louis L'Amour eventually wrote 100 novels and over 250 short stories. By 2010, more than 320 million copies of his books had been sold! By the 1970s, his writings were translated into more than 10 different languages. All of his books are still available today.
Louis L'Amour's Stories as Audio Dramas
Louis L'Amour wanted his old short stories to be more than just someone reading them aloud. He worked with Bantam Audio Publishing to create "Radio Drama" style productions. These audio dramas used many actors, sound effects, and music to bring each story to life, just like old radio shows.
His son, Beau L'Amour, helped produce these audio dramas. Between 1986 and 2004, over sixty-five of these dramatized audio productions were made. Sometimes, the stories were directly turned into scripts for the actors. Other times, screenwriters and playwrights adapted the stories more freely.
Most of these productions were made in New York City. Actors from the New York stage, film, and advertising worlds would come together to rehearse and record the shows. Sound effects were often created right in the studio as the actors spoke their lines. Later, some of these audio dramas were even played on over two hundred radio stations as part of "Louis L'Amour Theater." Some of the scripts have also been performed as live plays.
The audio drama project is still going on, but at a slower pace. In 2004, Beau L'Amour and Paul O'Dell released Son of a Wanted Man, which was the first Louis L'Amour novel to be turned into a drama. This production was very complex, with over twenty Hollywood actors, special music, and sound effects recorded in many different places.
The Shalako Town Idea
In the 1960s, Louis L'Amour had a dream to build a real town that looked like a 19th-century Western frontier town. It would have buildings with false fronts, wide sidewalks, watering troughs, and hitching posts. The town was going to be called Shalako, after a character in one of his novels.
He planned for the town to have all the typical businesses, like a barber shop, a hotel, a dry goods store, saloons, a church, and a one-room schoolhouse. His idea was that Hollywood movies about the Wild West could use Shalako as a filming location. However, the money needed for the project didn't come through, so Shalako was never built.
Louis L'Amour's Awards and Recognition
Louis L'Amour received many honors for his writing.
- In May 1972, he was given an Honorary PhD degree by Jamestown College for his contributions to literature and society.
- In 1979, he received the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement.
- His novel Bendigo Shafter (1979) won the U.S. National Book Award in the Western category in 1980.
- In 1982, he received the Congressional Gold Medal, which is one of the highest awards given by the U.S. Congress.
- In 1984, President Ronald Reagan gave L'Amour the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.
- L'Amour also received North Dakota's Roughrider Award and the MPTF Golden Boot Award.
Louis L'Amour's Death
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Louis L'Amour passed away from lung cancer at his home in Los Angeles on June 10, 1988. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. His autobiography, Education of a Wandering Man, which tells about his years traveling and working in the West, was published after he died in 1989. He was survived by his wife Kathy, their son Beau, and their daughter Angelique.
Movies Based on Louis L'Amour's Books
Many of Louis L'Amour's stories and novels have been made into movies and TV shows:
- Crossfire Trail, 2001 (TV movie) starring Tom Selleck.
- The Diamond of Jeru (2001) (TV movie).
- Shaughnessy (1996) (TV movie) based on The Iron Marshal.
- Conagher (1991) (TV movie) starring Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross.
- The Quick and the Dead (1987) (HBO TV movie) starring Sam Elliott and Kate Capshaw.
- Louis L'Amour's Down the Long Hills (1986) (TV movie).
- Five Mile Creek (TV Series, 1983–1985) based on The Cherokee Trail.
- The Shadow Riders (1982) (TV movie).
- The Cherokee Trail (1981) (TV movie).
- The Sacketts (1979) (TV movie) based on The Daybreakers and Sackett.
- The Man Called Noon (1973).
- Cancel My Reservation (1972) based on The Broken Gun.
- Catlow (1971).
- Shalako (1968).
- Hondo (TV series, 1967).
- Hondo and the Apaches (1967) (TV movie) based on The Gift of Cochise.
- Kid Rodelo (1966).
- Taggart (1964).
- Guns of the Timberland (1960).
- Heller in Pink Tights (1960) starring Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren.
- Stagecoach West (1960) (TV Episode).
- Apache Territory (1958) based on Last Stand at Papago Wells.
- The Tall Stranger (1957) based on Showdown Trail.
- Maverick (TV Episode, 1957).
- Sugarfoot (TV Episode, 1957).
- Utah Blaine (1957).
- The Burning Hills (1956).
- Blackjack Ketchum, Desperado (1956) based on Kilkenny.
- Stranger on Horseback (1955).
- Treasure of Ruby Hills (1955).
- Four Guns to the Border (1954).
- Hondo (1953) starring John Wayne and Geraldine Page.
- East of Sumatra (1953).
See also
In Spanish: Louis L'Amour para niños
- Sackett Family
- Hopalong Cassidy
- Louis Masterson
