Larry McMurtry

Novelist Larry McMurtry was born June 3, 1936 in Wichita Falls, Texas. He received a B.A. from North Texas State University in 1958, an M.A. from Rice University in 1960, and attended Stanford University. He married Josephine Ballard in 1959, divorced in 1966, and had one son, folksinger James McMurtry. In 2011 he married Norma Faye Kesey. Until the age of 22, McMurtry worked on his father's cattle ranch. When he was 25, he published his first novel, "Horseman, Pass By" (1961), which was turned into the Academy Award-winning movie Hud in 1962. "The Last Picture Show" (1966) was made into a screenplay with Peter Bogdanovich, and the 1971 movie was nominated for eight Oscars, including one for best screenplay adaptation. "Terms of Endearment" (1975) received little attention until the movie version won five Oscars, including Best Picture, in 1983. McMurtry's novel "Lonesome Dove" (1985) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and the Spur Award and was followed by two popular TV miniseries. The other titles in the Lonesome Dove Series are "Streets of Laredo" (1993), "Dead Man's Walk" (1995), and "Comanche Moon" (1997). The other books in his Last Picture Show Trilogy are "Texasville" (1987) and "Duane's Depressed" (1999). McMurtry suffered a heart attack in 1991 and had quadruple-bypass surgery. Following that, he suffered from severe depression and it was during this time he wrote "Streets of Laredo," a dark sequel to "Lonesome Dove." His companion Diana Ossana, helping to pull him out of his depression, collaborated with him on "Pretty Boy Floyd" (1994) and "Zeke and Ned" (1997). He co-won the Best Screenplay Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Brokeback Mountain in 2006. He made The New York Times Best Seller List with his title's Custer and The Last Kind Words Saloon. Some of his other works included Cadillac Jack (1982), Somebody's Darling (1978), The Desert Rose (1983), The Last Kind Words Saloon (2014), Buffalo Girls (1990) and When the Light Goes (2007). His nonfiction included Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen (1999), Books: A Memoir (2008), Literary Life: A Second Memoir (2009), Hollywood: A Third Memoir (2011), and Custer (2012). He was the president of PEN America from 1989 to 1991. And in 2014, he was presented with a National Humanities Medal for his work, by President Barack Obama. McMurtry was considered one of the country's leading antiquarian book dealers. Larry McMurtry died of heart failure on March 25, 2021 in Archer City, Texas. He was 84.