A. B. Guthrie the western writer known for his novels Big Sky and the Pulitzer Prize winning The Way West also wrote for the movies. For example, Guthrie was credited for the screenplay for the 1953 Paramount film Shane based on the novel by the same name by Jack Schaefer.

Guthrie was nominated for an Academy Award for this screen play. Guthrie also wrote the screenplay for the 1955 Burt Lancaster film The Kentuckian. This movie is an adaptation of the novel The Gabriel Horn by Felix Holt.

Guthrie is not known, however, for writing the screenplays for any of his own books. When I was preparing for the recent Museum of Printing History Book Fair, I was surprised to see a letter from Guthrie on the letterhead of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

Musical aside: Yes, I am a child of the 60s and so the mere mention of this motion picture studio’s name causes the Doors song of the same name to play in my head. Thanks Jim Morrison!

Does this happen to anyone else?

Anyway, back to the Guthrie letter.

In the April 1957 letter Guthrie responds to a fan letter asking about his next book. I can relate to this fan, as I hate to have to wait for a favorite author to finish her next book (come on Louise Penny, write faster!) Guthrie’s response is that he is in Hollywood (see the letterhead) and working on the screenplay for his novel These Thousand Hills, which was published in 1956. While this book was released as a film in 1959 (two years after the date of this letter), Guthrie is not credited with the screen play, which is by the Englishman Alfred Hayes.

Of course, under the somewhat arcane (at least to me) rules of screenwriting, it is unclear if any of Guthrie’s attempts at a script may have made it into the final movie, or whether he suffered from Charlie Kaufman-like difficulties in crafting an Adaptation. But it is interesting to see he was asked to take a shot at it first, and that he was apparently unsuccessful, despite his past success in adapting the works of other authors.

To me this letter is an unexpected pleasure, giving an interesting side-light on Guthrie’s Hollywood career.

According to Wikipedia, the California ghost town of Volcano was so-named because of the shape of the valley, which early miners erroneously thought was caused by a volcano.

I became interested in this former gold mining center as I was writing up the description of a Wells Fargo document in my collection.

Here is my description:

[Volcano, California] Wells, Fargo & Co. Express Receipt. San Francisco, California: Towne & Bacon Print. July 17, 1859. One page engraved express receipt.
For a shipment from Volcano, California of one sealed package valued at $1,500 and to be delivered to the banking department with the proceeds to be returned to Volcano. Today Volcano is a ghost town, but in the gold mining days it was a boom town. The town, in Amador County, California, is named for its setting in a bowl-shaped valley which early miners thought was caused by a volcano. The town dates back to the late 1850’s and was originally nicknamed “Crater City”. It is said that in 1849 one miner took out 8 thousand dollars’ worth of gold in a few days. Another got 28 pounds in a single pocket. In 1851 a post office was established and by April 1852 there were 300 houses, and by 1853 there were 11 stores, 6 hotels, 3 bakeries, and 3 saloons. Hydraulic operations began in 1855 and by 1867 most of the mining operations were idle. George A. Macomber, the consignor was a senior member of the firm of Macomber Bros. He came across the plains in 1850 with his brothers. For many years they operated mines in Tuolumne, Calaveras and Amador counties. In Amador County they practically established their right to be known as the fathers of hydraulic mining in California.

To me this document has so much going for it in terms of California local history: gold mining, shipments of gold via the iconic Wells Fargo Express, (does any one else think of a John Wayne film like War Wagon?) and of course, what is now a ghost town with the colorful, if erroneous name of Volcano. This is why I love researching these items to see the back story. Thanks to the interwires for making so much information easily available!