Elmore Leonard | |
|---|---|
 Leonard at the 70th AnnualPeabody Awards Luncheon, 2011 | |
| Born | Elmore John Leonard Jr. (1925-10-11)October 11, 1925 New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Died | August 20, 2013(2013-08-20) (aged 87) |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Alma mater | University of Detroit |
| Genre | |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 5, includingPeter |
| Relatives | Megan Freels Johnston (granddaughter) |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Branch |  United States Navy |
| Service years | 1943–1946 |
| Rank |  Petty officer third class |
| Unit |  Seabees |
| Conflicts | World War II |
Elmore John Leonard Jr. (October 11, 1925 – August 20, 2013) was an American novelist, short story author and screenwriter. He was, according to British journalistAnthony Lane, "hailed as one of the best crime writers in the land".[1] His earliest novels, published in the 1950s, wereWesterns, but he went on to specialize incrime fiction andsuspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures. Among his best-known works areHombre,Swag,City Primeval,LaBrava,Glitz,Freaky Deaky,Get Shorty,Rum Punch,Out of Sight andTishomingo Blues.
Leonard's short story "Three-Ten to Yuma" was adapted as3:10 to Yuma, which wasremade in 2007.Rum Punch was adapted as theQuentin Tarantino filmJackie Brown (1997).Steven Soderbergh adaptedOut of Sight in 1998 intoa film of the same name.Get Shorty was adapted into aneponymous film in 1995 and in 2017 it was adapted into atelevision series of the same name. His writings were also the basis forThe Tall T, as well as theFX television seriesJustified andJustified: City Primeval. Among other honors, he won the 2009 Pen Lifetime Award[2] and the 2012 Medal For Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.[3][4]
Leonard was born inNew Orleans,Louisiana, the son of Flora Amelia (née Rive) and Elmore John Leonard.[5] Because his father worked as a site locator forGeneral Motors, the family moved frequently for several years. In 1934, the family settled inDetroit. In the 1930s, there were two news items that would influence many of Leonard's works.[6][7] From 1931, until they were killed in May 1934,gangstersBonnie and Clyde were on a rampage. In 1934, thebaseball team theDetroit Tigers made it to theWorld Series, winning the Series in 1935. Leonard developed lifelong fascinations with sports and crime. He graduated from theUniversity of Detroit Jesuit High School in 1943 and, after being rejected for theMarines for weak eyesight, immediately joined theNavy, where he served with theSeabees for three years in theSouth Pacific, where he got the nickname "Dutch", after Tigers pitcherDutch Leonard.[8]
Enrolling at theUniversity of Detroit in 1946, on theG.I. Bill, he pursued writing more seriously, entering short stories in contests and submitting them to magazines for publication. He graduated in 1950[9] with abachelor's degree in English and philosophy. A year before he graduated, he got a job as acopy writer with Campbell-Ewald Advertising Agency, a position he kept for several years, writing on the side.[9]
Leonard had his first success in 1951 whenArgosy magazine published his short story "Trail of the Apaches".[10]: 29 During the 1950s and early '60s, he continued writing Westerns, publishing more than 30 short stories. His debut novel,The Bounty Hunters, was published in 1953 and was followed by four more Westerns. His early work already showed his affection for outsiders and underdogs. He developed his characters through dialogue, each defined by their manner of speech. In many stories, he favoredArizona andNew Mexico as settings.[11] Five of his westerns were adapted as movies before 1972:The Tall T (1957),3:10 to Yuma (1957),Hombre (1967),Valdez Is Coming (1971), andJoe Kidd (1972).
In 1969, his first crime story,The Big Bounce, was published byGold Medal Books. Leonard differed from well-known names writing in this genre—he was less interested in melodrama than in his characters and in realistic dialogue. He wrote the screenplay for, and the novelization of,Mr. Majestyk (both 1974); Anthony Lane called the latter "the best novel ever written about a melon grower."[1] The stories were often located in Detroit but he also liked to useSouth Florida as a setting.LaBrava, a 1983 novel set in the latter locale, was praised in aNew York Times review, which said Leonard moved from mystery suspense short story writer to novelist.[12] His next novel,Glitz (1985), anAtlantic City gambling story, was his breakout in the crime genre. It spent 16 weeks onThe New York Times Best Seller list, and his subsequent crime novels were all bestsellers.[13][14] In his review ofGlitz,Stephen King placed Leonard in the company ofRaymond Chandler,Dashiell Hammett andJohn D. MacDonald.[15] Leonard believed that his books during the 1980s were becoming funnier and that he was developing a style that was more free and easy. His own favorites wereFreaky Deaky (1988), about ex-hippie criminals, and theDixie Mafia storyTishomingo Blues (2002).[16]Some of Leonard's characters appear in several novels, including mobster Chili Palmer, bank robber Jack Foley and theU. S. Marshals Carl Webster andRaylan Givens.[17][18]
At the time of his death his novels had sold tens of millions of copies.[19]Among film adaptations of his work areJackie Brown, (1997), based onRum Punch and described as an "homage to the author's trademark rhythm and pace";[19]Get Shorty (1995);Out of Sight (1998) and the TV seriesJustified (2010–2015) andJustified: City Primeval (2023–).[20] Nearly thirty movies were made from Leonard's novels, but for somecritics his special style worked best in print.[1]
He married Beverly Clare Cline in 1949 and had five children with her—two daughters and three sons[21]—before divorcing in 1977. His second marriage in 1979, to Joan Leanne Lancaster (aka Joan Shepard), ended with her death in 1993. Later that same year, he married Christine Kent; they divorced in 2012.[22][23] Leonard spent the last years of his life with his family inOakland County, Michigan. He suffered astroke on July 29, 2013. Initial reports stated that he was recovering,[24] but on August 20, 2013, Leonard died at his home in the Detroit suburb ofBloomfield Hills of stroke complications.[25] He was 87 years old.[22][23] One of Leonard's grandchildren is Alex Leonard, the drummer in the Detroit bandProtomartyr.[26]
Commended by critics for his grittyrealism and strongdialogue, Leonard sometimes took liberties withgrammar in the interest of speeding the story along.[27] In his essay "Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing" he said: "My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." He also said: "I try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip."[27]
Leonard has been called "theDickens of Detroit" because of his intimate portraits of people from that city, though he said, "If I lived inBuffalo, I'd write about Buffalo."[10]: 90 His favorite epithet was given to him by Britain'sNew Musical Express: "the poet laureate of wild assholes with revolvers".[28] His ear for dialogue has been praised by writers such asSaul Bellow andMartin Amis. "Your prose makes Raymond Chandler look clumsy," Amis told Leonard at aWriters Guild event inBeverly Hills in 1998.[29]Stephen King called Leonard "the great American writer."[30] According to Charles Rzepka ofBoston University, Leonard's mastery offree indirect discourse, a third-person narrative technique that gives the illusion of immediate access to a character's thoughts, "is unsurpassed in our time, and among the surest of all time, even if we includeJane Austen,Gustave Flaubert, andHemingway in the mix."[31]
Leonard often cited Hemingway as his most important influence but also criticized his lack of humor.[32] Still, it was Leonard's affection for Hemingway, and forGeorge V. Higgins, that led him to will his personal papers to theUniversity of South Carolina, where many of Hemingway's and Higgins' papers are archived. Leonard's papers reside at the university'sIrvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.[33][34]
Leonard in turn had a very strong influence on a generation of crime writers that followed him, among themGeorge Pelecanos,Michael Connelly,Dennis Lehane, andLaura Lippman.[35]
Anthony Lane praised Leonard's ear for dialogue, comparing him to Dickens andEvelyn Waugh:[1]
Leonard can make do with a single letter, or a blank where a letter is meant to be. "What in the hell's a Albanian?," a guy named Clement asks in Chapter 4 ofCity Primeval (1980). Typesetters may have pounced upon what they took to be a typo, but Leonard never misheard. In that respect, as in others, he was less like Hemingway—of whom he was a fan, and to whom he was often compared—than like Dickens, another city kid with his nose and ear to the ground... One proof of literary genius, we might say, is a democratic generosity toward your mother tongue—the conviction that every part or particle of speech, be it e'er so humble, can be put to fruitful use... He is gone now, but he left us a fine consolation: if you've never read him, or if you'd never heard of him until yesterday, or if you merely need a fitting way to mourn, pick up52 Pick-Up,LaBrava,Swag, orGlitz, and tune into the voices of America—calling loud and clear, and largely ungrammatical, from Atlantic City, Miami, Hollywood, and his home turf of Detroit. Elmore Leonard got them right, and did them proud. As Clement would say, he was a author.
In a review ofSwag,The Switch, andRum Punch,J. Robert Lennon highlighted Leonard's gift for "naturalistic dialogue, its rhythms and characteristic illogic".[36] As an example, Lennon cited a flirtatious line by Ernest "Stick" Stickley inSwag: "You're from somewhere, aren't you? Let me guess."
Leonard has been anthologized by theLibrary of America in four volumes:Westerns (Last Stand at Saber River,Hombre,Valdez is Coming,Forty Lashes Less One and eight short stories);Four Novels of the 1970s (Fifty-Two Pickup,Swag,Unknown Man No. 89,The Switch);Four Novels of the 1980s (City Primeval,LaBrava,Glitz,Freaky Deaky) andFour Later Novels (Get Shorty,Rum Punch,Out of Sight,Tishomingo Blues and the short story "Karen Makes Out".)[41]
Leonard also contributed one chapter (the twelfth of thirteen) to the 1996Miami Herald parody serial novelNaked Came the Manatee (ISBN 0-449-00124-5).
 |
| Year | Collection | ISBN |
|---|---|---|
| 1998 | The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories | ISBN 0-385-32387-5 |
| 2002 | When the Women Come Out to Dance Later reprint retitledFire in the Hole | ISBN 0-060-58616-8 |
| 2004 | The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard | ISBN 0-060-72425-0 |
| 2006 | Moment of Vengeance and Other Stories | ISBN 0-060-72428-5 |
| 2006 | Blood Money and Other Stories | ISBN 0-06-125487-8 |
| 2006 | Three-Ten To Yuma and Other Stories | ISBN 0-06-133677-7 |
| 2007 | Trail of the Apache and Other Stories | ISBN 0-06-112165-7 |
| 2009 | Comfort to the Enemy and Other Carl Webster Stories | ISBN 0-297-85668-5 |
| 2014 | Charlie Martz and Other Stories: The Unpublished Stories of Elmore Leonard | ISBN 0-297-60979-3 |
|
| Year | Story | First appearance | Film adaptation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1951-12 | "Trail of the Apache" | Argosy | |
| 1952-05 | "Apache Medicine" | Dime Western Magazine | |
| 1952-09 | "You Never See Apaches..." | Dime Western Magazine | |
| 1952-10 | "Red Hell Hits Diablo Canyon" | 10 Story Western Magazine | |
| 1952-11 | "The Colonel's Lady" | Zane Grey's Western | |
| 1952-12 | "Law of the Hunted Ones" | Western Story Magazine | |
| 1952-12 | "Cavalry Boots" | Zane Grey's Western | |
| 1953-01 | "Under the Friar's Ledge" | Dime Western Magazine | |
| 1953-02 | "The Rustlers" | Zane Grey's Western | |
| 1953-03 | "Three-Ten to Yuma" | Dime Western Magazine | 1957 –3:10 to Yuma 2007 –3:10 to Yuma |
| 1953-04 | "The Big Hunt" | Western Story Magazine | |
| 1953-05 | "Long Night" | Zane Grey's Western | |
| 1953-06 | "The Boy Who Smiled" | Gunsmoke | |
| 1953-08 | "The Hard Way" | Zane Grey's Western | |
| 1953-09 | "The Last Shot" | Fifteen Western Tales | |
| 1953-10 | "Blood Money" | Western Story Magazine | |
| 1953-10 | "Trouble at Rindo's Station" | Argosy | |
| 1954-10 | "Saint with a Six-Gun" | Argosy | |
| 1955-02 | "The Captives" | Argosy | 1957 –The Tall T |
| 1955-08 | "No Man's Guns" | Western Story Roundup | |
| 1955-09 | "The Rancher's Lady" | Western Magazine | |
| 1955-12 | "Jugged" | Western Magazine | |
| 1956-04-21 | "Moment of Vengeance" | Saturday Evening Post | |
| 1956-09 | "Man with the Iron Arm" | Complete Western Book | |
| 1956-10 | "The Longest Day of His Life" | Western Novel and Short Stories | |
| 1956-11 | "The Nagual" | 2-Gun Western | |
| 1956-12 | "The Kid" | Western Short Stories | |
| 1958-06 | "The Treasure of Mungo's Landing" | True Adventures | |
| 1961 | "Only Good Ones" | Western Roundup | Later expanded to the novel and adapted asValdez is Coming |
| 1982 | "The Tonto Woman" | Roundup | 2007 – Academy Awards nominated Live Action Short |
| 1994 | "Hurrah for Captain Early!" | New Trails | |
| 1996 | "Karen Makes Out" | Murder For Love – Delacorte Press 1996 | First episode in Karen Sisco TV series |
| 2001 | "Fire in the Hole" | ebook (ISBN 0-062-12034-4) | 2010 – TV seriesJustified |
| 2001 | "Chickasaw Charlie Hoke" | Murderers' Row: Original Baseball Mysteries[42] | |
| 2005 | "Louly and Pretty Boy" | Dangerous Women - Mysterious Press 1996 | |
| 2012 | "Chick Killer" | McSweeney's - Issue 39 |
| Year | Title | Director | Co-writers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | The Moonshine War | Richard Quine | |
| 1972 | Joe Kidd | John Sturges | |
| 1974 | Mr. Majestyk | Richard Fleischer | |
| 1980 | High Noon, Part II (TV) | Jerry Jameson | |
| 1985 | Stick | Burt Reynolds | Joseph Stinson |
| 1986 | 52 Pick-Up | John Frankenheimer | John Steppling |
| 1987 | The Rosary Murders | Fred Walton | William X. Kienzle & Fred Walton |
| Desperado (TV Movie) | Virgil W. Vogel | ||
| 1989 | Cat Chaser | Abel Ferrara | James Borelli |
Nearly all of Leonard's novels have been performed as audiobooks. A number of them (includingThe Big Bounce,Be Cool andThe Tonto Woman) have been recorded more than once resulting in over 60 English-language audiobook versions of his novels.[43] Many of the earlier recordings were abridgements, the last of which wasPagan Babies (2000) read bySteve Buscemi. Certain narrators have dominated the Elmore Leonard oeuvre, notablyFrank Muller (11 audiobooks), Grover Gardneraka Alexander Adams (7),George Guidall (5), Mark Hammer (5), andJoe Mantegna (5). Other notable Leonard narrators includeLiev Schreiber,Neil Patrick Harris,Tom Wopat,Arliss Howard,Joe Morton,Taye Diggs,Brian Dennehy,Bruce Boxleitner,Tom Skerritt,Robert Forster,Dylan Baker,Paul Rudd,Keith Carradine,Ed Asner, andHenry Rollins.[43][44]
Twenty-six of Leonard's novels and short stories have been adapted for the screen (19 as motion pictures and another seven as television programs).
Numerous Leonard novels and short stories have been adapted as films includingGet Shorty (1990 novel, 1995 film),Out of Sight (1996 novel, 1998 film) andRum Punch (1992 novel, 1997 filmJackie Brown). The novel52 Pickup was first adapted very loosely into the 1984 filmThe Ambassador (1984), starringRobert Mitchum and, two years later, under the slightly altered52 Pick-Up title starringRoy Scheider. Leonard has also written several screenplays based on his novels, plus original screenplays such asJoe Kidd (1972). The filmHombre (1967), starring Paul Newman, was an adaptation of Leonard's 1961eponymous novel. His short story "Three-Ten to Yuma" (March 1953) and novelsThe Big Bounce (1969) and52 Pickup (1974) have each been filmed twice.
Other novels filmed include:
Quentin Tarantino has optioned the right to adapt Leonard's novelForty Lashes Less One (1972).[45]
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