Mon 11 Feb 2008
Dear Steve,
I am aware of “Gun-Witch of Hoodoo Range” by Emmett McDowell [mentioned in the comments posted after my last letter to you] and even have read it. The title, supplied by Fiction House, was derived from “Gun-Witch from Wyoming” by Les Savage, Jr., in Lariat Story Magazine (11/47). Based on the underlying correspondence, Malcolm Reiss was desperate to get another Señorita Scorpion story from Savage, and this was meant as an interim attempt to keep interest in the character because Savage at the time was writing his first novel.
Savage’s first three Señorita Scorpion stories do work as a trio of interrelated stories, similar to the trios of short novels Max Brand had written for Western Story Magazine, and for this reason could be combined into a stand-along book as we did initially. After “Secret of the Santiago,” Savage no longer wanted to do more stories, and only “The Curse of Montezuma” preserved the principal characters introduced in the first three short novels. After the fourth story, Savage introduced other characters, excluded Chisos Owens as he went along, and the sixth story even has a first-person narrator who is a new character to the series. For this reason, among others, we never thought it a good idea to collect these later four stories into a single volume.
The ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FRONTIER AND WESTERN FICTION (McGraw-Hill, 1983) is the primary reason Golden West Literary Agency came into being. Bill Regier, then director of the University of Nebraska Press, in 1989 proposed that Vicki and I prepare a second edition of this reference book. We set about contacting Western writers or their estates to update our bibliographies. We also added several authors who were not included in the first edition.
T.V. Olsen, who I had known for years, urged me to include Les Savage, Jr., and lamented he had not been included in the first edition. He felt Savage was one of the most talented Western writers and deserved an entry. I read a number of Savage’s stories and agreed. I then contacted Marian R. Savage, Les’s widow, for biographical and bibliographical information. She pleaded with me to find an agent for Les’s work.
The same thing happened with L. P. Holmes’s son. Lew Holmes had died after the first edition came out and he had been most helpful with his entry. Contacting New York agents, I was amazed that no one wanted to represent a deceased author unless he had been a client while alive. In the end we had such a number of client estates that needed representation that we founded Golden West to represent them. T.V. Olsen became our first living client.
Until 1994 we still planned on doing the second edition, but Bill Regier had left Nebraska, and with the launch of the Five Star Westerns, our hardcover Western fiction series co-published by Thorndike Press, then a division of Macmillan, we no longer had the time to work on the second edition. Now it would be impossible to do it simply because there still is no time.
We edit and co-publish twenty-four new Western titles a year in the Five Star Westerns and three new Western titles in the Circle V Westerns. Some of the material we prepared for entries in the second edition has been used instead as Forewords to Five Star Westerns editions, for example that which I wrote for RANGE OF NO RETURN: A WESTERN DUO by D.B. Newton, with a Foreword by Jon Tuska. [Dec 2005].
In the end, I think this decision not to continue with the second edition was the right one. We both changed from the passive rôle of being literary historians to the active rôle of being publishers of and agents for Western fiction in the present and future.
All Savage would have had would have been a first-time entry in the second edition. Instead, we have been doing one and two new books by him every year, beginning with FIRE DANCE AT SPIDER ROCK by Les Savage, Jr. with a Foreword by T.V. Olsen [Nov 1995]. Instead of being a footnote in the literary history of the Western story in the 1940s and 1950s, Les Savage’s work is being read and enjoyed by readers who were not alive when he was, and so has won a longevity for himself that his early death would otherwise have precluded.
We have also introduced new authors to readers of Westerns and represent some of the most talented of the current generation such as Johnny D. Boggs, Stephen Overholser, and William A. Luckey. We have restored many of Zane Grey’s finest Western stories in authentic texts based on his holographic manuscripts and have several yet to go; we publish six new Max Brand titles a year (some of these also restorations), have launched publishing programs for Will Henry, Frank Bonham, Lauran Paine, Ray Hogan, T.T. Flynn, Peter Dawson, Robert J. Horton, Dane Coolidge, Lewis B. Patten, Wayne D. Overholser – the list goes on and on. Almost six hundred Western titles are sold by Golden West every year worldwide.
Jon
February 11th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Thanks Jon for your comments as to why there will be no 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia of Frontier and Western Fiction. I’m disappointed of course because it’s an excellent book, but then again I’ve bought many of your Five Star Western books over the past few years, mainly for the interesting editorial and historical introductions, but I enjoy the stories also. Harry Noble and I have complained to each other for 20 years about the lack of an updated 2nd edition, so now we can stop complaining and I have to admit your reason and answer is a good one. Harry just died recently, but I know he would have agreed. Hope you can keep up the good work.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Jon: Thanks both for your response on Les Savage, Jr. and also for all your efforts in publishing Five Star Westerns.
In your “Star Western” anthology, in your notes to “Beyond the Law Frontier” by Ray Nafziger you said ‘Ray Nafziger’ was really Robert Dale Denver. I was told the other way around by Leonard Robbins some years back. Whichever is right, the author also wrote under ‘Robert Denver’ and several other by-lines. I was also told the author lived in Texas for some part of his life.
I would appreciate any biographical details you might know about Ray Nafziger or Robert Dale Denver. Thank You
March 30th, 2011 at 3:23 pm
Dear Jon: Some years ago, I found your book, “Filming of the West”, at the library. I found it well researched and entertaining. However, you made the statement that Jennifer Holt was dubbed in her singing scenes that she did with Johnny Bond. You never said where you got the information or who the singer actually was. I knew Jennifer for many years and she denied the story. I also had an audio tape of that song and it sounded like her. Others picked up your statment and repeated it. Her voice was better suited for the concert stage for which she had trained. Johnny Bond said that he recalled her doing the song live. So what’s your answer. Would really like to know. Mike Newton aka Front Row Kid.