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Frank Gruber

kevinburtonsmith

Pseudonyms include Stephen Acre, Charles K. Boston & John K. Vedder
(1904-1969)

One of the most successful of the pulp writers, Frank Gruber was born February 2, 1904, in Elmer, Minnesota and died December 9, 1969 in Santa Monica, California. But in those sixty-five years, Gruber became one of the most prolific writers of pulp fiction, writing more than 400 short stories and novellas for over 40 pulp magazines, as well as over fifty novels, and over 150 screenplays and television scripts.

He grew up on the family farm, but by the age of nine was living in Chicago, where he came upon a book that would leave a lasting impression.

“I read my first book when I was nine years old. Is was a paperback copy of Luke Walton, the Chicago Newsboy by Horatio Alger, Jr. The book made a profound impression upon me, for I lived in Chicago and I was, at the age of nine, a newsboy!”

After a stint in the Army, Gruber took on various jobs, working as a bellhop and a ticket-taker at a movie theatre. He married in 1931 and became a father and after some success writing for agricultural trade magazines, he and the family moved to New York in 1933 to try to make a go of it as a full-time writer. He took several freelance writing gigs, as well as working as a trade journal editor and correspondence school teacher. Times were tough, but he finally sold his first pulp story to Underworld Magazine in 1933. He was soon pumping out everything from science fiction to romance, but he’s chiefly remembered for his westerns and his detective stories. He even cracked Black Mask, the most prestigious of all pulp magazines.

For the crime and detective pulps, he wrote a long string of short stories featuring smooth-talking crime-solving encyclopedia salesman Oliver Quade, some of which were collected in a book called Brass Knuckle. Quade was a much loved character, and when Gruber started writing longer works, many of the elements of Quade found their way into his detectve novels–quirky characters; fast-paced fun; a detective with, at best, quasi-official status, and a gift for gab; and interestingly, most of them revolved one way or another around books. But whereas Quade traveled solo, for the most part, in his adventures, Gruber’s novels often featured two-man teams of detectives.

And while Quade was an encyclopedia salesman, Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg were traveling con artists, slick rascals flogging a body-building manual. Johnny was the brains of the outfit, while Sam was the strongarm sidekick. At least one movie was also made, with Albert Dekker as Johnny and Mike Mazurki (Moose from Murder, My Sweet) as the big guy.

Cranky, crabby Los Angeles-based PI name Simon Lash collected rare books about the early frontier which often served as the “Macguffins” of the books’ plots. He and his partner, Eddie Slocum, appeared in three novels, as did ethically elastic private eyes Otis Beagle and Joe Peel.

In fact, Lash’s interest in the old west was shared by Gruber himself, and it served him in good stead in the numerous westerns he wrote for the pulps, books, film and television. As well known as he is in crime fiction circles, he’s even more well known among fans of westerns. He wrote dozens of western novels, many of which were adapted to the screen.

As the glory days of the pulps waned, Gruber found himself writing more and more for film and the burgeoning TV industry in Hollywood. His first experience came about when his Oliver Quade story, “Death of a Champion” was brought to the screen in 1939. He soon went to work for Warner Bros. churning out scripts for such films as Northern Pursuit (1942), the noir classic Mask of Dimitros (1943), two Sherlock Holmes flicks (Terror by Night and Dressed to Kill). Meanwhile, his own books were also being brought to the screen. Backlash, Accomplice, The Big Land, Twenty Plus Two, The French Key, The Oregon Trail and Town Tamer were all based on novels or short stories by Gruber.

For television, he supposedly cranked out over 200 teleplays, again mostly in the western genre. He even created several TV series, most notably Tales of Wells Fargo, The Texan, and Shotgun Slade, which merged perhaps his two greatest strengths — Slade was a private eye in the days of the Old West. With his eye open for more work, and his tongue no doubt firmly in cheek, he even wrote an article for TV Guide in 1959 — a year in which there were 32 westerns on the American airwaves) complaining that there weren’t enough westerns being broadcast.

In 1967, Gruber published The Pulp Jungle, a collection of reminisces of his years as a pulp writer. There’s some great stuff about him in New York City during the depression years, when he apparently lived on “tomato soup” which he prepared himself in automat restaurants from hot tea water, the ketchup bottle on the table and a dissolved customary cookie you got with the tea water. There’s also some great stuff about his run-ins with several colourful characters in the pulps, everyone from eccentric editors to his fellow writers.

One of these was L. Ron Hubbard whom Gruber ran into long before Hubbard had created either Dianetics or Scientology, back when Hubbard and he were just two more hungry pulpsters scrounging for a living. This is from Russell Miller’s 1987 book on Hubbard, Bare-Faced Messiah:

“One evening [in 1934], Frank Gruber [a friend of Hubbard and fellow pulp fiction writer], sat through a long account of his experiences in the Marine Corps, his exploration of the upper Amazon and his years as a white hunter in Africa. At the end of it he asked with obvious sarcasm: ‘Ron, you’re eighty-four years old aren’t you?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Ron snapped.

Gruber waved a notebook in which he had been jotting figures. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you were in the Marines seven years, you were a civil engineer for six years, you spent four years in Brazil, three in Africa, you barnstormed with your own flying circus for six years… I’ve just added up all the years you did this and that and it comes to eighty-four.’

(Hubbard) was furious that his escapades should be openly doubted. ‘He blew his tack,’ said Gruber. He would react in the same way at the [American Fiction] Guild lunches if someone raised an eyebrow when he was in full flow. Most of the other members expected their yarns to be taken with a pinch of salt, but not Ron. It was almost as if he believed his own stories.”

Gruber died in Santa Monica, California, on December 9, 1969. He was 65.

SHORT STORIES

NOVELS

COLLECTIONS

NON-FICTION ARTICLES

NON-FICTION BOOKS

FILMS

TELEVISION

REFERENCE

FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith, with additional leads provided by Jim Doherty and the Dueling Dentons, William and Frank. And thanks to Walt from Switzerland for the giant whack upside the head.
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