Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry was the Pulitzer and Oscar winner who wrote the novel Lonesome Dove and co-wrote the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (for which he shared the Academy Award with collaborator Diana Ossana). Larry McMurtry grew up in the small town of Archer City, Texas and is strongly associated with tales of the American frontier. A skeptic of glowing tales of cowboy heroics, McMurtry wrote books about the west that were gritty and unromantic. While proclaiming himself a shy Texas lad, McMurtry proved to be a prolific and savvy scribe whose works also became popular as novels, feature films and television mini-series. His first novel, Horseman, Pass By (1961), was made into the Paul Newman film Hud (1963). His 1966 novel The Last Picture Show was made into a critically acclaimed 1971 movie that earned McMurtry an Oscar nomination for screenwriting. His most famous novel remains Lonesome Dove, the 1985 cattle drive epic that won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into a hit TV mini-series starring Robert Duvall in 1989. McMurtry is also the guy who wrote Terms of Endearment, the 1975 novel that became the 1983 hit movie with Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine. McMurtry wrote several novels with the same characters: the Last Picture Show novels include Texasville (1987) and Duane's Depression (1999), and the Lonesome Dove novels include The Streets of Laredo (1993) and Comanche Moon (1997). His other books included Buffalo Girls (1990), Boone's Lick (2000) and the memoir Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen (1999).