Luke Short

Background

Luke was born Frederick Dilley Glidden on November 19, 1908 in Kewanee, Illinois, United States, the son of Wallace Dilley Glidden, a clerical worker, and Fannie Mae Hurff, a high school teacher.

Education

While in high school, he played basketball and football. In 1926, Short entered the University of Illinois at Urbana and took humanities courses. Deciding that he wanted to write, he transferred to the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1929, graduating in 1930 with a B. A. in journalism.

Career

After landing and losing a succession of newspaper jobs, Short spent the early years of the Depression wandering about the West. In 1931 he moved to northern Alberta, Canada, and trapped furs for a couple of seasons. Drifting south, Short worked during part of 1933 as an archaeologist's assistant near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

As an unemployed homesteader in New Mexico, Short began reading magazines featuring Western pulp fiction, with the idea of earning a living writing such stories. By September 1934 he was writing Westerns - and collecting rejection slips. In November he hired New York literary agent Marguerite E. Harper, with whom he was associated for thirty-two years.

During 1935, he adopted Luke Short as his pen name, sold his first story, and published his first novel, The Feud at Single Shot, in serial form. By the end of the decade, he had published fourteen novels. The 1940's were Short's most productive years. In addition to writing the novels on which his reputation rests, he became increasingly involved with movie production. In 1940, he sold a short story to RKO Radio Pictures for $1, 000; for the next several years, he worked part-time in Hollywood as a scriptwriter. Beginning in 1943, Short served for a year with the Office of Strategic Services in Washington.

After the war, he started a profitable relationship with several paperback publishers. In 1946, he helped write the movie script of his novel Ramrod (1943). Then, in the summer of 1947, he moved his family to Aspen, Colorado. In the meantime, Short's association with the movie industry continued; in 1948 alone, his books Dead Freight for Piute (1940), Blood on the Moon (1943), Coroner Creek (1947), and Station West (1947), were all made into films.

The 1940's saw the publication of Short's best novels. Others that he wrote in these years are Gunman's Chance (1941), Ride the Man Down (1942), High Vermilion (1948), and Vengeance Valley (1950). These novels established Short as a "slick" rather than a pulp writer and secured his reputation for fast-moving, cleverly plotted, and well-written Westerns.

In the 1950's Short was less productive. Frustrated by the limitations of being a best-selling author of traditional Westerns, he tried other ventures. In 1952, with the help of Joe Marsala, Short composed a musical comedy called I've Had It, which played in Colorado but never made it to Broadway. During the next two years, he visited uranium mines in Alberta, Canada, and in Utah, using this experience as background for Rimrock (1955). In 1955, he helped found a thorium company in Aspen and conferred with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz on scriptwriting for television, but nothing much came of these activities. Meanwhile, Short continued to write Westerns, producing seven during the decade.

During the 1960's, Short returned to writing conventional Westerns full-time. He published eleven novels.

In 1963, he and his wife spent several months in the Virgin Islands, where he wrote the manuscript "Pearly, " a non-Western novel that was never published. He wrote and published nine more Western novels in the 1970's.

He died in Aspen.

Achievements

• Luke Short was a leading writer of traditional action yarns that are a cut above the typical Western story. Known for his ingenious plotting, spare style, realistic dialogue, and stereotypical yet well-rounded characters, Short received the Western Heritage Wrangler award in 1974. His best novels: Gunman's Chance (1941), Ride the Man Down (1942), High Vermilion (1948), and Vengeance Valley (1950). After publishing over dozens novels, he started writing for movies, the most popular: Ramrod (1947) and Blood on the Moon (1948).

Works

More photos

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  • RIDE THE MAN DOWN

    (PAPERBACK)

  • book

  • book

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Connections

En route to Wyoming to find work, he met Florence Elder in Colorado; the two married on June 18, 1934. They had three children. Short suffered personal tragedy in 1960, when his son drowned in a swimming pool at Princeton University. In the spring of 1966, Marguerite Harper died.

Father:

Wallace Dilley Glidden

Mother:

Fannie Mae Hurff

Spouse:

Florence Elder

coworker:

Marguerite E. Harper