This may be an indication that my father was considering writing the screenplay; possibly he had some new ideas about revising Miriam to more completely fit Hepburn’s needs. Anytime Dad considered writing a screenplay it was a sign that a different agenda was in the works. He generally disliked working closely with people in the movie business, regarding the endeavor as nearly always a waste of his time and patience. Like many other Hollywood dreamers, he liked to imagine it was possible to get a movie made “his way.” But unlike many self-deluding professionals, he knew that in reality its being done “his way” was most likely going to be impossible. He ultimately decided to just sell it off, a decision that in early 1964 finally resulted in a deal with Universal.
Some ten or twelve years later, the L’Amour family was traveling through Quebec on our way to New Brunswick. One night we were heading out of our motel rooms to go to dinner. Mom was getting my sister and me ready to go, but Dad was staring at the TV, his hand poised to turn it off. It was showing a Western, dubbed in French. Frowning, he wondered aloud about how the film looked very familiar; yet he couldn’t place what it was. Checking the newspaper later, he realized that the movie had been Taggart. Until that night, he had never seen any of it.
Taggart was not the end of Dad’s relationship with Hepburn. He was oddly inspired by her letter and her admission that she coveted the sort of role that a man typically played in a Western. By 1963 her letter had led to the creation of the character of Kate Lundy and the novel Kiowa Trail…but that is another story.
My father and Katharine Hepburn remained nodding acquaintances for many years. I can remember arriving at the Beverly Hills Hotel to pick him up from a business lunch sometime in the 1980s. As he was saying goodbye to the producer or agent with whom he had been meeting, Hepburn got up from another table and joined us. We all walked out together, and she seemed amused to watch my father wedge himself into my rumbling hot-rodded ’68 Mustang. Needless to say, her presence impressed Dad’s lunch companions. For my part, it was one of the few times in those days that I felt maybe my hair and sideburns could have been a little bit shorter!
Beau L’Amour
October 2020
Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour
NOVELS
Bendigo Shafter
Borden Chantry
Brionne
The Broken Gun
The Burning Hills
The Californios
Callaghen
Catlow
Chancy
The Cherokee Trail
Comstock Lode
Conagher
Crossfire Trail
Dark Canyon
Down the Long Hills
The Empty Land
Fair Blows the Wind
Fallon
The Ferguson Rifle
The First Fast Draw
Flint
Guns of the Timberlands
Hanging Woman Creek
The Haunted Mesa
Heller with a Gun
The High Graders
High Lonesome
Hondo
How the West Was Won
The Iron Marshal
The Key-Lock Man
Kid Rodelo
Kilkenny
Killoe
Kilrone
Kiowa Trail
Last of the Breed
Last Stand at Papago Wells
The Lonesome Gods
The Man Called Noon
The Man from Skibbereen
The Man from the Broken Hills
Matagorda
Milo Talon
The Mountain Valley War
North to the Rails
Over on the Dry Side
Passin’ Through
The Proving Trail
The Quick and the Dead
Radigan
Reilly’s Luck
The Rider of Lost Creek
Rivers West
The Shadow Riders
Shalako
Showdown at Yellow Butte
Silver Canyon
Sitka
Son of a Wanted Man
Taggart
The Tall Stranger
To Tame a Land
Tucker
Under the Sweetwater Rim
Utah Blaine
The Walking Drum
Westward the Tide
Where the Long Grass Blows
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Beyond the Great Snow Mountains
Bowdrie
Bowdrie’s Law
Buckskin Run
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour (vols. 1–7)
Dutchman’s Flat
End of the Drive
From the Listening Hills
The Hills of Homicide
Law of the Desert Born
Long Ride Home
Lonigan
May There Be a Road
Monument Rock
Night Over the Solomons
Off the Mangrove Coast
The Outlaws of Mesquite
The Rider of the Ruby Hills
Riding for the Brand
The Strong Shall Live
The Trail to Crazy Man
Valley of the Sun
War Party
West from Singapore
West of Dodge
With These Hands
Yondering
SACKETT TITLES
Sackett’s Land
To the Far Blue Mountains
The Warrior’s Path
Jubal Sackett
Ride the River
The Daybreakers
Sackett
Lando
Mojave Crossing
Mustang Man
The Lonely Men
Galloway
Treasure Mountain
Lonely on the Mountain
Ride the Dark Trail
The Sackett Brand
The Sky-Liners
THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS
The Riders of High Rock
The Rustlers of West Fork
The Trail to Seven Pines
Trouble Shooter
NONFICTION
Education of a Wandering Man
Frontier
The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels
A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour
POETRY
Smoke from This Altar
LOST TREASURES
Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 1 (with Beau L’Amour)
No Traveller Returns (with Beau L’Amour)
Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 2 (with Beau L’Amour)
ABOUT LOUIS L’AMOUR
“I think of myself in the oral tradition—
as a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man
in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way
I’d like to be remembered—as a storyteller.
A good storyteller.”
IT IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.
As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who w
as scalped by Sioux warriors.
Spurred by an eager curiosity and a desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs, including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and officer in the Transportation Corps during World War II. He was a voracious reader and collector of books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.
Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for the many frontier and adventure stories he wrote for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are more than 300 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.
His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available from Random House Audio.
The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.
Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988.
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