Elmore Leonard has been a top-selling writer since the mid-1980s, the author of more than three dozen crime and western novels famous for their crackling dialogue and dark humor. Leonard had a career in advertising when he began writing westerns in the 1950s. The success of the movie version of his novel Hombre allowed him to write novels full-time and he turned to writing fast-paced crime stories in the late 1960s. In the 1970s he began getting noticed by reviewers and critics, and by the mid-1980s he was a consistently bankable author. His stories often revolve around the misadventures of amiable-but-crooked protagonists and lowlifes, characters who are thieves, hustlers, prostitutes and loan sharks. His novels include Glitz (1985), Freaky Deaky (1988) and Tishomingo Blues (2002). Films made from his novels include: Hombre (1967, starring Paul Newman); Valdez is Coming (1971, starring Burt Lancaster); Get Shorty (1995, starring John Travolta): Jackie Brown (1997, starring Pam Grier, from the 1992 novel Rum Punch): Out of Sight (1998, starring Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney); and The Big Bounce (2004, starring Owen Wilson).
Leonard has written several screenplays, including Joe Kidd (1972, starring Clint Eastwood) and Mr. Majestyk (1974)... Leonard is also referred to as "Dutch," a childhood nickname... Out of Sight was the basis for the 2003 television series Karen Sisco.
Hombre. The best known of Leonard's western stories features a characteristic unheroic protagonist and unconventional treatment of conventional western elements. It would be voted one of the twenty-five best western novels of all time by Western Writer of America and made into a successful 1967 film, starring Paul Newman. The New Orleans-born writer would be most celebrated for his crime novels such as Stick (1983), Glitz (1985), and Get Shorty (1990).
The Big Bounce. The first of Leonard's crime novels had been rejected eighty-four times before being sold as a film story and appearing as a paperback original. It features the writer's characteristic offbeat realism and stripped-down prose style, reminiscent of the works of Ernest Hemingway and James M. Cain. It would be followed by a number of contemporary crime thrillers that solidified Leonard's reputation.
Career Highlights: Jackie Brown, The Tall T, 3:10 to Yuma
First Major Screen Credit: 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
Biography
Without question, one of the 20th century's premier writers of crime fiction, Elmore Leonard's fascinatingly seedy characters and penchant for snappy, natural dialogue has found the longtime writer climbing from pulp Western author to one of the most sought after scribes of the Hollywood scene. Though it would take nearly two decades for filmmakers to accurately capture the gritty, but humorous, tone that he had mastered through his many years putting pen to paper, the runaway success of director Barry Sonnenfeld's spot-on adaptation of Leonard's novel Get Shorty in 1995 prompted a slew of films in which the author's unique tone was accurately translated to celluloid.
Born the son of a General Motors location scout in New Orleans in 1925, his family moved frequently during Elmore's early years. His imagination fueled by newspaper headlines detailing the exploits of such desperadoes as Bonnie and Clyde, a permanent move to Detroit during the 1934 World Series also spurred an interest in sports that would find young Leonard (nicknamed "Dutch" by his friends) running the gridiron at the University of Detroit High School after receiving his primary education at Catholic school. Leonard often credited his early, Jesuit education as a prime factor in his learning how to "think," and following his high school graduation in 1944, he joined the Seabees and shipped out for the Admiralty Islands. Returning from the South Seas to major in English at the University of Detroit, Leonard became enamored with the writings of Ernest Hemingway and Richard Bissell. The seed had been planted. After graduating from college, Leonard married and landed a job as a copy boy at the Campbell-Ewald advertising agency, and though he would soon be penning ads for Chevrolet, the prospect of writing commercial fiction proved too tempting to resist. Initially penning Westerns due to market demand, Leonard's story Trail of the Apache was published in Argosy Magazine in December 1951 -- marking the author's first published work.
Frequently rising two hours before work to begin writing, this period yielded 30 pulp Western stories and five novels, two of which (3:10 to Yuma and The Tall T) would be made into successful Hollywood films in the 1950s. When the Western market dried up in the early '60s due to the encroachment of television, the burgeoning author quit his job in advertising and take up writing full time, a decision that Leonard ultimately went back on in order to support his growing family. A turning point of sorts came when Leonard's novel Hombre was turned into a successful Hollywood feature staring a young Paul Newman. Soon thereafter, he was writing his first crime novel, The Big Bounce, and honing his screenwriting skills. Adapting many of his novels into screenplays, the practice proved essential in funding Leonard's fiction writing in the ensuing years, and it was this windfall that found Leonard penning crime novels (often set in Detroit) that would gain him a loyal cult following thanks to his sharp eye for street detail and keen dialogue instincts. After the publication of his best-selling novels La Bravo and Glitz, Leonard landed on the cover of Newsweek in 1984 and was christened the "Dickens of Detroit." Soon, Hollywood producers were clamoring to adapt the works of this "overnight success."
Although subsequent high-profile releases such as Stick (1985) and 52 Pick-Up (1986) managed to capture the grittiness of Leonard's writings, they failed to accurately translate his somewhat quirky sense of humor and proved only moderately successful -- not that that stopped eager producers from trying. In 1995, Sonnenfeld finally struck the right tone with Get Shorty. An infectiously fun journey into the mind of a criminal with Hollywood aspirations, the film proved an enormous success due, in no small part, to star John Travolta's show-stealing performance as protagonist Chili Palmer. Followed in 1997 and 1998 by Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown and Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight, respectively, both films also succeeded in accurately bringing Leonard's unique style to the screen fully in tact. As the millennium turned and Leonard's Out of Sight character Karen Sisco received her own eponymous television series, Hollywood kept plugging away with such adaptations as The Big Bounce, Tishomingo Blues and, of course, the Get Shorty sequel, Be Cool (all scheduled for release in 2004). Meanwhile, the tireless author kept releasing novels at a pace that suggested he rarely sleeps and in 2007 filmgoers would find the prolific scribe venturing back into the old west as the second screen incarnation of his short story 3:10 to Yuma found Russell Crowe and Christain Bale priming their pisols. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
His earliest published novels in the 1950s were westerns, and Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, several of which have been adapted into successful motion pictures or TV movies.
Leonard was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, but since his father worked as a site locator for General Motors, the family moved frequently for several years. In 1934, the family finally settled in Detroit, Michigan. Leonard has made the Detroit area his home ever since.
In the 1930s, 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. From about 1931 to 1934, Bonnie and Clyde were on a rampage; they 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 with Campbell-Ewald Advertising 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 Apaches".[1] During the 1950s and early 1960s, 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.
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," he writes, "My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." His advice to writers also includes the hint, "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip."[2]
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 same on the printed page are considered by some admirers to be uncanny and have 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.[3]
Film work
Aside from the short stories already noted, 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). He has also written several screenplays based on his novels, plus original ones such as Joe Kidd.
The 1967 film Hombre starring Paul Newman was an adaptation of Leonard's novel of the same name.
A 2001 comedy film, Bandits, was originally meant to be an adaptation of Leonard's novel by that name, to which Bruce Willis owns the film rights. However, the producers brought in writer Harley Peyton to write a new script from scratch that bears little or no resemblance to Leonard's book.
An adaptation of Leonard's 1972 novel Forty Lashes Less One is in development.
Leonard was referenced in the television show Leverage in episode 105 "The Bank Shot Job" when Aldis Hodge as Alec Hardison and Beth Riesgraf as Parker introduced themselves to police officers as FBI agents Leonard and Elmore.
In October 2008 Leonard received the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award for outstanding achievement in American literature during the 13th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference held at Montgomery College in Rockville, Md.
Notes
^ Challen, Paul (2000). Get Dutch! A Biography of Elmore Leonard, p. 29. ECW Press. ISBN 1550224220.
^ Leonard, Elmore, "Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle", in Smiley, Jane, et al. (2004), Writers on Writing, Vol. II, p. 145. Macmillan. ISBN 0805075887.
