Elmore Leonard


Elmore John Leonard Jr. was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. His earliest novels, published in the 1950s, were Westerns, but he went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures.
Among his best-known works are Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Swag, Hombre, Mr. Majestyk, and Rum Punch. Leonard's writings include short stories that became the films 3:10 to Yuma and The Tall T, as well as the FX television series Justified.

Early life and education

Leonard was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Flora Amelia and Elmore John Leonard, Sr. Because his father worked as a site locator for General Motors, the family moved frequently for several years. In 1934, the family settled in Detroit.
He graduated from the University of Detroit Jesuit High School in 1943 and, after being rejected for the Marines for weak eyesight, immediately joined the Navy, where he served with the Seabees for three years in the South Pacific. Enrolling at the University of Detroit in 1946, he pursued writing more seriously, entering his work in short story contests and submitting it to magazines for publication. He graduated in 1950 with a bachelor's degree in English and philosophy. A year before he graduated, he got a job as a copy writer with Campbell-Ewald Advertising Agency, a position he kept for several years, writing on the side.

Career

Leonard received his first break in the fiction market during the 1950s, regularly publishing pulp Western novels. He had his first success in 1951 when Argosy published the short story "Trail of the Apaches." During the 1950s and early 1960s, he continued writing Westerns, publishing more than 30 short stories. He wrote his first novel, The Bounty Hunters, in 1953 and followed this with four other novels. His western novels had already begun to show his fondness for culturally diverse outsiders and underdogs. He often developed his characters through dialogue, each defined by means of his speech. For many of his stories he favored Arizona and New Mexico settings. Five of his westerns were turned into major movies before 1972: The Tall T, , Hombre, Valdez Is Coming, and Joe Kidd.
In 1969 his first crime story titled The Big Bounce was published by Gold Medal Books. Leonard was different from the well-known names writing in this genre, such as Raymond Chandler or any of the other famous noir writers – no melodrama and pessimism, but more interested in his characters and in realistic dialogue. The stories were often located in Detroit, but apart from his favorite setting he also liked to use South Florida as a setting. La Brava, a novel set there published 1983, was also the occasion for a New York Times review, in which Leonard moved from mystery suspense short story writer to novelist. His next book, an Atlantic City gambling story published in 1985 and titled Glitz, was his breakout in the crime genre. It spent 16 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller list. Other crime novels that followed were all best sellers, as well. In his review of Glitz, Stephen King placed him in the same company as John MacDonald, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but Leonard felt more influenced by Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.
Leonard believed that his books during the 1980s were becoming more humorous and that he was developing a style that was more free and easy. His own favorites were the Dixie Mafia story Tishomingo Blues from 2002 and Freaky Deaky from 1988 about ex-hippie criminals.
There are some of his characters in parts of different novels like Hollywood mobster Chili Palmer, bank robber Jack Foley or the two U. S. Marshals Carl Webster and Raylan Givens.
His crime books were published amongst others by Fawcett Publications, Bantam Books and Dell Publishing. In the 1980s his publisher was Arbor House, later also William Morrow & Company as an imprint of HarperCollins. There are different reprints from his novels, so in the 2000s from Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
At the time of his death his novels had sold tens of millions of copies.
Among film adaptations of his work are Jackie Brown which is a "homage to the author’s trademark rhythm and pace"; Get Shorty ; Out of Sight and the television series Justified. Nearly thirty movies were made from Leonard's novels, but for some critics his special style worked only in print.

Personal life

He married Beverly Clare Cline in 1949, and they had five children together—two daughters and three sons—before divorcing in 1977. His second marriage in 1979, to Joan Leanne Lancaster, ended with her death in 1993. Later that same year, he married Christine Kent and they divorced in 2012.
Leonard spent the last years of his life with his family in Oakland County, Michigan. He suffered a stroke on July 29, 2013. Initial reports stated that Leonard was recovering but on August 20, 2013, Leonard died at his home in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills of stroke complications. He was 87 years old. Leonard is survived by his five children, 13 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Leonard's grandson is Alex Leonard, drummer in the Detroit band Protomartyr.

Writing style

Commended by critics for his gritty realism and strong dialogue, Leonard sometimes took liberties with grammar in the interest of speeding the story along. In his essay "Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing" he said: "My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." He also hinted: "I try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip."
Elmore Leonard has been called "the Dickens of Detroit" because of his intimate portraits of people from that city, though he said, "If I lived in Buffalo, I'd write about Buffalo." His favorite epithet was one given by Britain's New Musical Express: "the poet laureate of wild assholes with revolvers". His ear for dialogue has been praised by writers such as Saul Bellow, Martin Amis, and Stephen King. "Your prose makes Raymond Chandler look clumsy," Amis told Leonard at a Writers Guild event in Beverly Hills in 1998. Stephen King has called him "the great American writer." According to Charles Rzepka of Boston University, Leonard's mastery of free indirect discourse, a third-person narrative technique that gives the illusion of immediate access to a character's thoughts, "is unsurpassed in our time, and among the surest of all time, even if we include Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, and Hemingway in the mix."
Leonard often cited Ernest Hemingway as perhaps his single most important influence, but at the same time criticized Hemingway for his lack of humor and for taking himself too seriously. Still, it was Leonard's affection for Hemingway, as well as George V. Higgins, that led him to will his personal papers to the University of South Carolina, where many of Hemingway's and Higgins' papers are archived. Leonard's papers reside at the university's Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
Leonard in turn had a very strong influence on a generation of crime writers that followed him. His obituary in USA Today named George Pelecanos, Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, and Laura Lippman.

Awards and honors

Novels

Leonard also contributed one chapter to the 1996 Miami Herald parody serial novel Naked Came the Manatee.

Collections

YearCollectionISBN
1998The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories
2002When the Women Come Out to Dance
Later reprint retitled Fire in the Hole
2004The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard
2006Moment of Vengeance and Other Stories
2006Blood Money and Other Stories
2006Three Ten To Yuma and Other Stories
2007Trail of the Apache and Other Stories
2009Comfort to the Enemy and Other Carl Webster Stories
2014Charlie Martz and Other Stories: The Unpublished Stories of Elmore Leonard

Short stories

YearStoryFirst appearanceFilm adaptation
1953-03"Three-Ten to Yuma"Dime Western Magazine1957 – '
2007 – '
1955-02"The Captives"Argosy1957 – The Tall T
1982"The Tonto Woman"Roundup2007 – Academy Awards nominated Live Action Short
1996"Karen Makes Out"Murder For Love - Delacorte Press 1996First episode in Karen Sisco TV series
2001"Fire in the Hole"ebook 2010 – TV series Justified
2001"Chickasaw Charlie Hoke"Murderers' Row: Original Baseball Mysteries
2005"Louly and Pretty Boy"Dangerous Women - Mysterious Press 1996

Screenplays

Nonfiction

Twenty-six of Leonard's novels and short stories have been adapted for the screen.

Film

Aside from the short stories already noted, a number of Leonard's novels have been adapted as films, including Get Shorty, Out of Sight, and Rum Punch. The novel 52 Pick-Up was first adapted very loosely into the 1984 film The Ambassador, starring Robert Mitchum and, two years later, under its original title starring Roy Scheider. Leonard has also written several screenplays based on his novels, plus original screenplays such as Joe Kidd.
The film Hombre, starring Paul Newman, was an adaptation of Leonard's 1961 novel of the same name.
His short story "Three-Ten to Yuma" and novels The Big Bounce and 52 Pick-Up have each been filmed twice.
Other novels filmed include:
Quentin Tarantino has optioned the right to adapt Leonard's novel Forty Lashes Less One.

Television