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Taggart (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

Page 16

by Louis L'Amour


  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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