Lawrence Donovan

Laurence L. Donovan (July 1885–March 11, 1948) was an American pulp fiction writer who wrote ten Doc Savage novels under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson, a pen name that was used by other writers of the same publishing house. However, there are nine Doc Savage novels dully credited to Donovan, published between November 1935 and July 1937.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in July 1885, he worked as a press feeder in Covington, Kentucky before becoming a newspaperman. Donovan later became a copyreader and journalist for the San Francisco Call-Bulletin and the Vancouver Sun, as well as city editor for the Spokane Chronicle. During the latter 20s, he began contributing to myriad pulp magazines ranging from the dignified Argosy to the bizarre Zeppelin Stories. Prior to that, he appears to have toiled in Hollywood. Family legend has it that Donovan was offered the chance to script the 1925 silent screen version of Ben Hur, but went off on one of his infamous drinking binges, blowing the chance forever. That same year, his vignette, "The Old Copy Desk", was published in The Saturday Evening Post.

Donovan broke into pulps in 1929 via the story "Brick Sacrifices" written for Street & Smith's Sport Story Magazine. By 1933, he was writing for Street & Smith editor John L. Nanovic, contributing short stories to the back pages of The Shadow, Doc Savage, Nick Carter, Pete Rice and others, sometimes under the house name of Walter Wayne. In the pages of Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine, Clues and Western Story Magazine, he employed the bylines "Patrick Everett" and "Patrick Lawrence"—both cobbled together from the names of his two sons. Donovan wrote virtually the entire first issue of Street & Smith's Movie Action, converting to novelettes such then-current film scripts as Tumbling Tumbleweeds, The Crime of Dr. Crespi, Bodyguard, Powder-Smoke Range, The Last Days of Pompeii, Drake the Pirate and Moonlight on the Prairie under his own name.

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