ELMORE LEONARD

'Elmore John Leonard Jr.' (born October 11, 1925, in New Orleans, Louisiana) is a popular American and screenwriter.

Contents

Biography

Writing Style

Film Work

Work

Novels

Screen Plays

Stories

Radio

External links

Biography

Leonard was born in New Orleans, but his father worked as a site locator for General Motors and the family moved frequently for several years. However in 1934 the family settled in Detroit, Michigan and Leonard has made this area his home ever since.
About this time, two major events occurred that would influence many of his works. Gangsters such as Bonnie and Clyde were making national headlines, as were the Detroit Tigers baseball team. In the early 1930s, Bonnie and Clyde were on their rampage, and were killed in May, 1934. The Tigers made it to the World Series in 1934. Leonard turned these events into lifelong fascinations with both sports and guns.
Leonard graduated from the University of Detroit Jesuit High School in 1943 and immediately joined the Navy where he served with the Seabees for three years in the south Pacific. In 1946 he enrolled at the University of Detroit where he pursued writing more seriously, entering his work in short story contests and sending it off to magazines. A year before he graduated he got a job as a copy writer for an ad agency, a position he kept for several years as he wrote on the side. He graduated in 1950 with a degree in English and Philosophy.
Leonard had his first success in 1951 when Argosy published the short-story, "Trail of the Apache". During the 50's and early 60's he continued writing westerns, publishing over 30 short-stories. He wrote his first novel, "The Bounty Hunters", in 1953 and followed this with four other novels. Two of his stories were turned into movies at this time, "The Tall T" and "3:10 to Yuma".
Leonard, or "Dutch" as he is sometimes called, got his first break in the fiction market during the 1950s, regularly publishing pulp western novels. He has since forayed into mystery, crime, and more topical genres, as well as screenwriting.
Leonard now lives in Oakland County, Michigan, with his family.

Writing Style

He has been commended by critics for his gritty realism and strong dialogue. His writing style sometimes takes liberties with grammar in the interest of speeding along the story. In his essay "Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing", Leonard wrote, "My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." Also on the subject of what makes his books so readable he has said that he leaves out the parts that readers skip.[1]
Leonard has been called "the Dickens of Detroit" because of his intimate portraits of people from that city. Leonard's ear for dialogue and ability to render dialogue on the printed page are uncanny and have been praised by writers such as Saul Bellow and Martin Amis. "Your prose makes Raymond Chandler look clumsy", Amis told Leonard at a Writers Guild Theatre event in Beverly Hills in 1998. [2]

Film Work

A number of Leonard's novels have been adapted as films, perhaps most notably '' Out of Sight'', ''Get Shorty'' in 1995, and ''Rum Punch'' as the 1997 film ''Jackie Brown''. The film Bandits was originally meant to be an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel "Bandits", to which Bruce Willis owns the film rights, but the producers felt it was too weak and brought in writer Harley Peyton to write a new script from scratch.

Work

Novels

★ ''The Bounty Hunters'' (1953)

★ ''The Law at Randado'' (1954)

★ ''Escape from Five Shadows'' (1956)

★ ''Last Stand at Saber River'' (1959) – also 1997 TV movie

★ ''Hombre (novel)'' (1961) – also 1967 film

★ ''The Big Bounce'' (1969) – also 1969 film and 2004 film

★ ''The Moonshine War'' (1969) – also 1970 film

★ ''Valdez is Coming'' (1970) – also 1971 film

★ ''Forty Lashes Less One'' (1972)

★ ''Mr. Majestyk'' (1974) – also 1974 film

★ ''Fifty-Two Pickup'' (1974) – also 1986 film

★ ''Swag'' (1976)

★ ''Unknown man No. 89'' (1977)

★ ''The Hunted'' (1977)

★ ''The Switch'' (1978)

★ ''Gunsights'' (1979)

★ ''City Primeval'' (1980)

★ ''Gold Coast'' (1980) – also 1997 TV movie

★ ''Split Images'' (1981) – also 1992 film

★ ''Cat Chaser'' (1982) – also 1989 film

★ ''Stick'' (1983) – also 1985 film

★ ''LaBrava'' (1983) – Edgar Award, Best Novel (1984)

★ ''Glitz'' (1985) - also 1988 movie

★ ''Bandits'' (1987)

★ ''Touch'' (1987) – also 1997 film

★ ''Freaky Deaky'' (1988)

★ ''Killshot'' (1989)

★ ''Get Shorty'' (1990) – also 1995 film

★ ''Maximum Bob'' (1991) – also 1998 TV series

★ ''Rum Punch'' (1992) – also 1997 film ''Jackie Brown''

★ ''Pronto'' (1993) – also 1997 TV movie

★ ''Riding the Rap'' (1995)

★ ''Out of Sight'' (1996) – also 1998 film

★ ''Cuba Libre'' (1998)

★ ''Be Cool'' (1999) – also 2005 film

★ ''Tonto Woman'' (1998)

★ ''Pagan Babies'' (2000)

★ ''Fire in the Hole'' (2001)

★ ''When the Women Come Out to Dance'' (2002)

★ ''Tishomingo Blues'' (2002)

★ ''A Coyote's in the House'' (2003)

★ ''Mr. Paradise'' (2004)

★ ''The Hot Kid'' (2005)

★ ''Up in Honey's Room'' (2007)

Screen Plays

★ ''Last Stand at Saber River'' with Ronald M. Cohen (TV/1997)

★ ''Cat Chaser'' (1989)

★ ''The Rosary Murders'' with Fred Walton (1987)

★ ''Desparado'' (TV/1987)

★ ''52 Pickup'' with John Steppling (1986)

★ ''Stick'' with Joseph Stinson (1985)

★ ''High Noon, Part II'' (TV/1980)

★ ''Mr. Majestyk'' (1974)

★ ''Joe Kidd'' (1972)

★ ''The Moonshine War'' (1970)

Stories

Short stories turned into films:

★ ''Three Ten to Yuma'' (1953) – and , both titled ''3:10 to Yuma''

★ ''The Captives'' (1955) – 1957 film ''The Tall T''

Radio

★ Actor Robert Forster recorded a public service announcement for Deejay Ra's 'Hip-Hop Literacy' campaign encouraging reading of books by Elmore Leonard.

External links

★ "Elmore Leonard's rules for Westerns", by Stephen Abell: a review in the TLS, June 21, 2006.

★ Elmore Leonard Homepage

★ Elmore Leonard: white space upon a printed page

★ Photo of Leonard @ Double-Whammy

★ Bio from All Movie Guide @ VH1.com

★ Elmore Leonard Interview @ TheGATE.ca

★ Bio @ the University of Albany

★

★ 1985 and 1987 audio interviews with Elmore Leonard by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, RealAudio

★ Guardian Interview

★ Gate Interview

★ BankRank Interview

★ BookReporter Interview

★ Elmore Leonard interviewed by Ginny Dougary (2004)