Dorothy M. Johnson
| Dorothy M. Johnson | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 19, 1905 McGregor, Iowa, United States |
| Died | November 11, 1984 (aged 78) Missoula, Montana, United States |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Language | English |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Subject | Western fiction |
| Notable works |
The Hanging Tree The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance A Man Called Horse |
Dorothy Marie Johnson (December 19, 1905 – November 11, 1984) was an American author best known for her Western fiction.
Dorothy Marie Johnson was born in McGregor, Iowa, the only daughter of Lester Eugene Johnson and Mary Louisa Barlow. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Montana.
While she was a student at Whitefish High School she began to write professionally, working as a newspaper stringer for The Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. She studied English in college before a brief marriage which ended with a divorce.
Her writing career began to take off by the 1930s when she sold her first magazine article to The Saturday Evening Post for the sum of $400. In 1935, her story "Beulah Bunny" was published and began a series of four stories. Her writing was temporarily sidetracked by World War II, when she went to work for the Air Warden Service. After the war, she produced some of her best-known Western stories. Three of these would later be made into notable films, namely A Man Called Horse (1950), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1953) and The Hanging Tree (1957).
Between 1956-60, Johnson taught creative writing at the University of Montana, Missoula, Montana, from which she had graduated in 1928. Prior to and during her tenure she wrote numerous articles and fictional stories for many different magazines. These were often based on interviews with Western old-timers, Native Americans and characters she met during her tenure as secretary and researcher for The Montana Historical Society. She was also secretary/manager of the Montana Press Association in the 1950s.
In 1957, the Western Writers of America gave her its highest award, the Spur Award, for her short story, Lost Sister, a short story in "The Hanging Tree" collection, that deals with the reintegration into white settler society of Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been kidnapped by Comanche as a child. In 1959, she was made honorary member of the Blackfoot Tribe. In 1976, 'the Writers' again awarded her the Levi Strauss Golden Saddleman Award, for bringing dignity and honor to the history and legends of the West. In 2005, a 30-minute documentary film was made of her life by Sue Hart of Montana State University, Billings The four-year effort was written and co-produced by Hart, along with producer Gene Bodeur, director Bill Bilverstone and film director Lansing Dreamer. Margot Kidder lent her voice to the effort. It was titled Gravel in her Gut and Spit in her Eye, and shown on PBS in November 2005.
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