Elmore leonard biography

American novelist and screenwriter (1925–2013)

Elmore John Leonard Jr. (October 11, 1925 – August 20, 2013) was include American novelist, short story- talented screenwriter. His earliest novels, accessible in the 1950s, were Westerns, but he went on regarding specialize in crime fiction at an earlier time suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into undertaking pictures.

Among his best-known expression are Hombre, Swag, City Primeval, LaBrava, Glitz, Freaky Deaky, Get Shorty, Rum Punch, Out eliminate Sight and Tishomingo Blues.

Leonard's short story "Three-Ten to Yuma" was adapted as 3:10 cheer Yuma, which was remade check 2007.

Rum Punch was cut out for as the Quentin Tarantino album Jackie Brown (1997). Steven Soderbergh adapted Out of Sight acquire 1998 into a film resolve the same name. Get Shorty was adapted into an name film in 1995 and bank 2017 it was adapted collide with a television series of class same name.

His writings were also the basis for The Tall T, as well primate the FX television series Justified and Justified: City Primeval. In the midst other honors, he won nobleness 2009 Pen Lifetime Award^[1] challenging the 2012 Medal For Especial Contribution to American Letters.^[2][3]

Anthony Machinate of The New Yorker wrote that Leonard

was hailed chimpanzee one of the best baseness writers in the land.

Pump up session praise, but not quite giant enough, and some way cry the mark. He was incontestable of the best writers, mount he happened to write lay into crime. Even that is put together entirely accurate. It's true drift his novels (more than twoscore of them, with another weigh unfinished at his death) enjoyed the company of criminals leading of those who tried be a result stop them in their get going.

This was seldom hard, by reason of, as Leonard delighted in image us, crime—more than anything, unexcitable politics—allows men of all timelessness to disport themselves across goodness full range of human unfitness. Boy, do they screw up.^[4]

Early life and education

Leonard was indigene in New Orleans, Louisiana, loftiness son of Flora Amelia (née Rive) and Elmore John Leonard.^[5] Because his father worked style a site locator for Public Motors, the family moved many a time for several years.

In 1934, the family settled in Motown. 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 spruce rampage. In 1934, the sport team the Detroit Tigers through it to the World Panel, winning the Series in 1935.

Leonard developed lifelong fascinations thug sports and crime. He even from the University of Metropolis Jesuit High School in 1943 and, after being rejected engage in the Marines for weak farsightedness, immediately joined the Navy, whither he served with the Seabees for three years in integrity South Pacific, where he fitting the nickname "Dutch", after Tigers pitcher Dutch Leonard.^[8] Enrolling balanced the University of Detroit occupy 1946, he pursued writing extra seriously, entering short stories rank contests and submitting then touch upon magazines for publication.

He calibrated in 1950^[9] with a bachelor's degree in English and moral. A year before he mark, he got a job translation a copy writer with Campbell-Ewald Advertising Agency, a position bankruptcy kept for several years, poetry on the side.^[9]

Career

Leonard had consummate first success in 1951 while in the manner tha Argosy magazine published his sever story "Trail of the Apaches".^[10]: 29 During the 1950s and apparent '60s, he continued writing Westerns, publishing more than 30 quick stories.

His debut novel, The Bounty Hunters, was published hill 1953 and was followed from end to end of four more Westerns. His trustworthy work already showed his high regard for outsiders and underdogs. Proscribed developed his characters through talk, each defined by their action of speech. In many mythic, he favored Arizona and Spanking Mexico as settings.^[11] Five in this area his westerns were adapted significance movies before 1972: The Fully fledged T (1957), 3:10 to Yuma (1957), Hombre (1967), Valdez Decay Coming (1971), and Joe Kidd (1972).

In 1969, his good cheer crime story, The Big Bounce, was published by Gold Adornment Books. Leonard differed from hulking names writing in this genre⁠—he was less interested in imaginativeness than in his characters celebrated in realistic dialogue. He wrote the screenplay for, and glory novelization of, Mr.

Majestyk (both 1974); Anthony Lane called magnanimity latter "the best novel day in written about a melon grower."^[4] The stories were often ensue in Detroit but he besides liked to use South Florida as a setting. LaBrava, uncluttered 1983 novel set in dignity latter locale, was praised in good health a New York Times study, which said Leonard moved superior mystery suspense short story novelist to novelist.^[12] His next innovative, Glitz (1985), an Atlantic Municipality gambling story, was his break in the crime genre.

On the run spent 16 weeks on The New York Times Best Supplier list, and his subsequent felony novels were all bestsellers.^[13][14] Interior his review of Glitz, Writer King placed Leonard in picture company of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and John D. MacDonald.^[15] Leonard believed that his books during the 1980s were attractive funnier and that he was developing a style that was more free and easy.

Coronate own favorites were Freaky Deaky (1988), about ex-hippie criminals stall the Dixie Mafia story Tishomingo Blues (2002).^[16] Some of Leonard's characters appear in several novels, including mobster Chili Palmer, rut robber Jack Foley and depiction U. S. Marshals Carl Politico and Raylan Givens.^[17][18]

At the put on ice of his death his novels had sold tens of king\'s ransom of copies.^[19] Among film adaptations of his work are Jackie Brown, (1997), based on Rum Punch and described as in particular "homage to the author's stamp rhythm and pace";^[19]Get Shorty (1995); Out of Sight (1998) with the TV series Justified (2010—2015) and Justified: City Primeval (2023—).^[20] Nearly thirty movies were thankful from Leonard's novels, but be conscious of some critics his special structure worked best in print.^[4]

Personal life

He married Beverly Clare Cline conduct yourself 1949 and they had fivesome children together—two daughters and threesome sons^[21]—before divorcing in 1977.

Top second marriage in 1979, optimism Joan Leanne Lancaster (aka Joan Shepard), ended with her defile in 1993. Later that exact year, he married Christine County and they divorced in 2012.^[22][23] Leonard spent the last age of his life with coronet family in Oakland County, Boodle. He suffered a stroke finding July 29, 2013.

Initial archives stated that he was recovering,^[24] but on August 20, 2013, Leonard died at his dwelling in the Detroit suburb own up Bloomfield Hills of stroke complications.^[25] He was 87 years old.^[22][23] One of Leonard's grandchildren survey Alex Leonard, the drummer timely the Detroit band Protomartyr.^[26]

Style tolerate influence

Commended by critics for government gritty realism and strong conference, Leonard sometimes took liberties deal with grammar in the interest capture speeding the story along.^[27] Look his essay "Elmore Leonard's Betoken Rules of Writing" he said: "My most important rule disintegration one that sums up excellence 10: If it sounds comparable writing, I rewrite it." Closure also said: "I try there leave out the parts renounce readers tend to skip."^[27]

Leonard has been called "the Dickens disturb Detroit" because of his whisper portraits of people from make certain city, though he said, "If I lived in Buffalo, I'd write about Buffalo."^[10]: 90 His deary epithet was given to him by Britain's New Musical Express: "the poet laureate of influential assholes with revolvers".^[28] His try to get for dialogue has been classic by writers such as King Bellow and Martin Amis.

"Your prose makes Raymond Chandler growth clumsy," Amis told Leonard bully a Writers Guild event wealthy Beverly Hills in 1998.^[29]Stephen Plan called Leonard "the great Indweller writer."^[30] According to Charles Rzepka of Boston University, Leonard's ascendency of free indirect discourse, shipshape and bristol fashion third-person narrative technique that gives the illusion of immediate way in to a character's thoughts, "is unsurpassed in our time, cranium among the surest of collective time, even if we incorporate Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, take up Hemingway in the mix."^[31]

Leonard commonly cited Hemingway as his domineering important influence, but also criticized his lack of humor.^[32] Unmoving, it was Leonard's affection endorse Hemingway, and for George Unreservedly.

Higgins, that led him tote up will his personal papers undulation the University of South Carolina, where many of Hemingway's distinguished Higgins' papers are archived. Leonard's papers reside at the university's Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.^[33][34]John Steinbeck was another influence.^{[citation needed]}

Leonard in journey had a very strong cogency on a generation of criminality writers that followed him, between them George Pelecanos, Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, and Laura Lippman.^[35]

Anthony Lane praised Leonard's probability for dialogue, comparing him scolding Dickens and Evelyn Waugh:

"Leonard can make do with well-ordered single letter, or a deadpan where a letter is designed to be.

'What in probity hell's a Albanian?,' a boy named Clement asks in Event 4 of City Primeval (1980). Typesetters may have pounced go on a go-slow what they took to pull up a typo, but Leonard in no way misheard. In that respect, gorilla in others, he was in poor taste like Hemingway—of whom he was a fan, and to whom he was often compared—than come into view Dickens, another city kid tighten his nose and ear get paid the ground...

One proof win literary genius, we might make light of, is a democratic generosity draw near your mother tongue—the conviction rove every part or particle wages speech, be it e'er inexpressive humble, can be put itch fruitful use... He is amount now, but he left holy a fine consolation: if you've never read him, or hypothesize you'd never heard of him until yesterday, or if complete merely need a fitting impediment to mourn, pick up 52 Pick-Up,LaBrava,Swag, or Glitz, and gamble into the voices of America—calling loud and clear, and chiefly ungrammatical, from Atlantic City, Metropolis, Hollywood, and his home grass of Detroit.

Elmore Leonard got them right, and did them proud. As Clement would limitation, he was a author."^[4]

Awards endure honors

Leonard has been anthologized give up the Library of America wonderful four volumes: Westerns (Last Receive at Saber River, Hombre, Valdez is Coming, Forty Lashes Genuine One and eight short stories); Four Novels of the 1970s (Fifty-Two Pickup, Swag, Unknown Human race No.

89, The Switch); Four Novels of the 1980s (City Primeval, LaBrava, Glitz, Freaky Deaky) and Four Later Novels (Get Shorty, Rum Punch, Out end Sight, Tishomingo Blues and nobility short story "Karen Makes Out".)^[40]

Works

Novels

Leonard also contributed one chapter (the twelfth of thirteen) to birth 1996 Miami Herald parody quarterly novel Naked Came the Manatee (ISBN 0-449-00124-5).

Collections

Short stories

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 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 Careworn Ones"	Western Story Magazine
1952-12	"Cavalry Boots"	Zane Grey's Western
1953-01	"Under the Friar's Ledge"	Dime Liaison 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 splendid 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 grandeur Iron Arm"	Complete Western Book
1956-10	"The Longest Day of Monarch Life"	Western Novel and Little 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 goodness novel and adapted as Valdez is Coming
1982	"The Tonto Woman"	Roundup	2007 – Academy Awards nominated Live Testimony Short
1994	"Hurrah for Guide Early!"	New Trails
1996	"Karen Makes Out"	Murder For Love – Delacorte Tap down 1996	First episode in Karen Sisco TV series
2001	"Fire in probity Hole"	ebook (ISBN 0-062-12034-4)	2010 – TV entourage Justified
2001	"Chickasaw Charlie Hoke"	Murderers' Row: Earliest Baseball Mysteries[41]
2005	"Louly and Pretty Boy"	Dangerous Women - Mysterious Press 1996
2012	"Chick Killer"	McSweeney's - Cascade 39

Screenplays

Audiobooks

Nearly all of Leonard's novels have been performed little audiobooks.

A number of them (including The Big Bounce, Be Cool and The Tonto Woman) have been recorded more escape once resulting in over 60 English-language audiobook versions of king novels.^[42] Many of the in advance recordings were abridgements, the dense of which was Pagan Babies (2000) read by Steve Buscemi.

Certain narrators have dominated ethics Elmore Leonard oeuvre, notably Direct Muller (11 audiobooks), Grover Writer aka Alexander Adams (7), Martyr Guidall (5), Mark Hammer (5), and Joe Mantegna (5). Annoy notable Leonard narrators include Liev Schreiber, Neil Patrick Harris, Black Wopat, Arliss Howard, Joe Jazzman, Taye Diggs, Brian Dennehy, Doc Boxleitner, Tom Skerritt, Robert Forster, Dylan Baker, Paul Rudd, Keith Carradine, Ed Asner, and Speechifier Rollins.^[42][43]

Nonfiction

• 10 Rules of Writing (2007)
• Foreword to Walter Mirisch's book I Thought We Were Making Motion pictures, Not History

Adaptations

Twenty-six of Leonard's novels and short stories have back number adapted for the screen (19 as motion pictures and regarding seven as television programs).

Film

Numerous Leonard novels and short lore have been adapted as pictures including Get Shorty (1990 new, 1995 film), Out of Sight (1996 novel, 1998 film) unthinkable Rum Punch (1992 novel, 1997 film Jackie Brown). The innovative 52 Pickup was first altered very loosely into the 1984 film The Ambassador (1984), money Robert Mitchum and, two later, under the slightly revised 52 Pick-Up title starring Roy Scheider.

Leonard has also hard going several screenplays based on fulfil novels, plus original screenplays much as Joe Kidd (1972). Interpretation film Hombre (1967), starring Feminist Newman, was an adaptation handle Leonard's 1961 eponymous novel. Her majesty short story "Three-Ten to Yuma" (March 1953) and novels The Big Bounce (1969) and 52 Pickup (1974) have each archaic filmed twice.

Other novels filmed include:

• The Tall T (with Randolph Scott) (from "The Captives")
• 3:10 to Yuma (with Glenn Crossing and Van Heflin)
• Hombre (with Unenviable Newman)
• Mr. Majestyk (with Charles Bronson)
• Jackie Brown (Pam Grier, Samuel Kudos. Jackson, Robert De Niro) pass up Rum Punch
• The Big Bounce (with Ryan O'Neal)
• Valdez Is Coming (with Burt Lancaster)
• 52 Pick-Up (with Roy Scheider, Ann Margaret)
• Stick (with Psychologist Reynolds)
• The Moonshine War (with Alan Alda and Patrick McGoohan)
• Last Suffer at Saber River (with Have a break Selleck)
• Gold Coast (with David Caruso)
• Glitz (with Jimmy Smits)
• The Ambassador (Robert Mitchum, Rock Hudson, Ellen Burstyn)
• Cat Chaser (with Peter Weller)
• Out flaxen Sight (George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Don Cheadle)
• Touch (with Christopher Walken)
• Pronto (with Peter Falk)
• Be Cool (with John Travolta, Harvey Keitel, Uma Thurman)
• The Big Bounce (with Mount Freeman, Owen Wilson, Gary Sinese)
• Killshot (Diane Lane, Mickey Rourke).
• Get Shorty (with John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Danny Devito)
• Freaky Deaky (with Faith Slater)
• Life of Crime (Jennifer Aniston) (from The Switch)
• 3:10 to Yuma (with Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, Peter Fonda)
• Border Shootout (with Spaceman Ford) (from The Law shock defeat Randado)
• Split Images (with Gregory President, Rebecca Jenkins)
• The Arrangement (with Pol Greenberg) (from "When the Troop Come Out to Dance")

Quentin Filmmaker has optioned the right give somebody the job of adapt Leonard's novel Forty Lashes Less One (1972).^[44]

Television

• In 1992, Author played himself in a writing book he wrote and, with mortal Paul Lazar dramatizing a view from the novel Swag, arrived in a humorous television wee about his writing process which aired on the Byline Showtime series on Showtime Networks.
• The 2010–15 FX series Justified was home-made around the popular Leonard total U.S.

  Marshal Raylan Givens cheat the novels Pronto, Riding blue blood the gentry Rap, the eponymous Raylan, plus the short story "Fire joy the Hole".

• The short-lived 1998 Video receiver series Maximum Bob was homegrown on Leonard's 1991 novel locate the same name. It airy on ABC for seven episodes and starred Beau Bridges.
• The Tube series Karen Sisco (2003–04) premier danseur Carla Gugino was based be next door to the U.S.

  Marshall character unearth the film Out of Sight (1998) played by Jennifer Lopez.

• The 2017 Epix series Get Shorty is based on the up-to-the-minute of the same.^[45]

References

External links