In 1999, I had the astounding experience of discovering that my grandfather, Paul S. Powers, had been a prolific pulp Western writer during the Great Depression. The vast majority of his work was published in Wild West Weekly and his heroes appeared on a regular basis in the magazine from 1929 until the magazine ceased publication in 1943.

During my research I was able to reunite with my long lost aunt who still had my grandfather’s personal papers. In those papers was an unpublished memoir of his pulp-writing days: Pulp Writer: Twenty Years in the American Grub Street. This was published in 2007 by the University of Nebraska Press. I wrote the prologue and epilogue to the memoir, in which I discuss the history of Wild West Weekly. Another jewel found in my grandfather’s papers was a collection of letters from the editors of Wild West Weekly, starting in 1928 and ending in 1943. There are 180 letters total and were of immeasurable help to me when I was writing the history of the magazine. In my opinion, Wild West Weekly is the epitome of the pulp Western magazine of the 1930s. It rarely published stories written by famous Western writers, such as Max Brand (a pseudonym of Frederick Faust) or Walt Coburn. But it was enormously popular and today stands as a classic example of what the majority of pulps were all about: good cheap entertainment that offered up a regular diet of solid, likeable heroes and action-packed stories. Here is a history of Wild West Weekly.

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Pulp fiction magazines were enormously popular during one of the bleakest times in American History. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, as many as 250 different titles were sold at newsstands at any one time, with glossy, colorful covers that promised unimaginable drama, suspense and romance. The stories almost always had a happy ending and justice was always served, which was quite comforting when the real world had become illogical, cold, and cruel. Reading a pulp magazine promised a few hours of diversion and comfort in a very uncertain time.

Of the scores of themes offered in pulps, the Western was one of the most popular. Over the twenty-five year period from 1920 to 1945, at least 162 different Western magazines hit the newsstands at one point or another, resulting in the Depression era being called the Western’s Golden Age. At one point in 1940, there were 36 different pulp Western magazines on newsstands, just waiting to be bought and read.

Of all the publishers that attempted to make their mark with pulp magazines, Street & Smith was king. Street & Smith, a true "fiction factory," published pulp fiction magazines and dime novels from 1864 to the mid-20^th century. For almost one hundred years, they launched a staggering amount of reading material on a weekly basis. Thirty-six weekly publications and 39 paperback-book libraries, each of which contained dozens of stories based on one central character or theme, were launched. The publisher’s magazines were the company’s most successful venture. From the company’s first, Ainslee’s in 1898, to their last, Living for Young Homemakers in 1947, the company launched 61 different titles.

Street & Smith published all types of magazines, but they were most famous for their pulp titles: Top Notch, Detective Story Magazine, Western Story Magazine, Love Story Magazine, The Shadow, Astounding Stories, Doc Savage, the Avenger, Wild West Weekly, and on and on.

Western Story Magazine was the most popular of all the pulp Westerns. Although it would be very difficult to narrow down the most popular magazines with any accuracy, others that were very popular were West, Cowboy Stories, Ace High, Dime Western, Ten Story Western, 44 Western, Ranch Romances, and Wild West Weekly. John Dinan in his wonderful 1989 book The Pulp Western (reprinted in 2003) listed what he believed to be of all of the pulp Western magazines published over a 25-year period. The list is three pages long, two columns per page.

Wild West Weekly catered to a juvenile audience and its stories leaned toward the fantastic when it came to credulity. Thus, it was considered a standard no-frills pulp, unlike its sister publication Western Story that had a reputation for producing top-notch Western stories. Still, Wild West Weekly was a little workhorse for Street & Smith, a "staunch little magazine" as W. Henry Ralston, the company’s vice-president, called it.

Wild West Weekly was launched in 1902 by Frank Tousey as a dime novel. Each issue centered around one character, a young mutant of Buffalo Bill called Young Wild West. Young Wild West, nicknamed "Wild," was a handsome blonde dressed in buckskins who traveled the countryside on his magnificent sorrel stallion, a "perfect picture of a dashing young Westerner." Wild was an adventurer who owned mine stock in the Black Hills and thus could afford to roam the countryside in pursuit of adventure. His exploits were narrated in thirty-thousand word novels every week by a storyteller who was listed only as "An Old Scout."

Wild West Weekly did fairly well for many years, enough so that it managed to stay in circulation for twenty-five years. But by the early 1920s, the magazine was barely limping along, and the series had deteriorated to the point where new issues were just reproductions of earlier ones. Dime novels had been eclipsed by pulp magazines by that point, and very few dime novels remained. Western Story, for example, was already in full swing by that point, bolstered by regular stories by Frederick Faust, the writing sensation who published under the pseudonym Max Brand.

Street & Smith bought the magazine from Tousey in 1927. Under new ownership, Young Wild West was still be the dominant character, but his name was changed to Billy West. Circle J in Montana was his outfit and he was joined by three sidekicks: Buck Foster, Joe Scott, and a Chinese cook named Sing Lo. In addition, new western heroes were added to the Table of Contents. Ronald Oliphant, for a while an associate editor of Detective Story Magazine, and later the editor of Thrill Book, was put in charge of the magazine and ordered to start looking for new writers.

In the early years, the magazine featured "Three Complete Western Novelettes," and "Four Complete Western Stories." The novelettes ranged from 12,000 to 15,000 words, sometimes a bit longer. The four or five shorter stories that ranged in the 6,000 to 9,000 word range.

Wild West Weekly advertised "All Stories Complete" on the cover. Many magazines ran serials that continued from week to week, much to the aggravation of readers. Many readers liked Wild West Weekly because they promised to keep each story complete. But in the early 1930s, the magazine began to run serials, usually consisting of six stories, many of them written by prolific Walker Tompkins. Judging from the letters to the editor (more on those later), readers had mixed feelings about the serials, but the tradition continued into the late 1930s.

The heroes that dominated each issue of the magazine, especially during the early years, accounted for much of Wild West Weekly’s popularity, an important factor that cannot be overestimated. Out of the 8 to 10 stories in each issue, 5 to 7 would feature regularly-appearing heroes like the Circle J partners, Lum Yates, Bud Jones of Texas, the Whistlin’ Kid, Looshis Carey, the Ranny Kid, Hungry and Rusty, and the Bar U Twins. Not to mention my grandfather’s brainchildren: Sonny Tabor, Kid Wolf, Freckles Malone, Johnny Forty-five and, later, King Kolt. Each hero was put into a rotation and would appear on a regular schedule, perhaps every four or five weeks.

Many early Western heroes had the word "Kid" in their name; so much so that when my grandfather originally pitched the idea of Kid Wolf to Oliphant in 1929, the editor turned it down strictly due to the fact that he already had way too many "Kids" on his hands. The Whistlin’ Kid, created by J. Allan Dunn under the pseudonym Emery Jackson, was one. A range detective for the Cattlemen’s Association, the Whistlin Kid whistled only one song: "The Cowboy’s Lament." The Silver Kid, created by T.W. Ford, was another, who had a penchant for wearing silver and having his horse’s tack decked out in silver. Some regular heroes were featured in short stories, like the Bar U Twins, Tom and Jerry Carter. Many heroes were Texas Rangers, like Bud Jones of Company F and Hungry and Rusty. One of the early favorites, who shows up almost every week, was Lum Yates, who is a cowpuncher from Missouri. Yates is a simple guy with no superhero characteristics, with a gangly partner named Zeke of unknown origin. But the feature that endeared him to many readers is his small, scrawny yellow dog named Job, who fits into a feedbag that dangled from Yates’ saddle horn. Job is Yates’ sensor, growling at threatening men before the puncher has a clue that he could be in danger.

So you can see that all of the heroes had a particular characteristic, costume, behavior or weapon that identified, or "branded," the character to make him easily identifiable to readers. It made the hero more human, more interesting, and easier to remember for readers that, when standing at a newsstand, could feasibly have a hundred different magazines to choose from. Sonny Tabor was a young "good" outlaw with a youthful face (think Billy the Kid) who had what appeared to be a dimple in his chin, but in reality was a bullet scar. I know of readers who loved Kid Wolf, for example, because his Bowie knife stored away in a hidden sheath sewn in the inside of Kid’s jacket. Readers knew that in a pinch, when his life was on the line, Kid could be counted on to fling that knife with lightning speed and meet its target, which was always the throat of a threatening criminal.

Grandpa created another hero, Johnny Forty-five, under the pen name Andrew Griffin. Johnny Forty five is famous for his four line verses, ever-mindful that his audience would be young boys reading his story in Prohibition times:

"Whisky makes me very ill, Beer gives me quite a pain; So kindly fill a water glass, And I will be refreshed again!" Johnny Forty-five also has a peculiar habit of rolling cigarettes, but not smoking them. His explains in this four-line wonder that it keeps his fingers nimble for shooting purposes: "I promised ma I wouldn’t smoke Till I was sixty-one But rollin’ cigs is mighty fine For fingers that trigger a gun." It helped if the hero could be faced with real-life dilemmas that the Depression reader could relate to. Sonny Tabor’s clothes are shabby and he continually wanders the countryside of Arizona and New Mexico looking for employment: Sonny was looking for a job; he always worked when a job was to be had, which wasn’t often, for the law quickly found him out. In spite of the fact that he was a "wanted" man, he worked whenever possible at the only game he knew – punching cows.

Despite the ominous clouds hanging over his head, knowing that the entire Southwest is after his head, Sonny always tries to get hired on small, isolated cattle ranches in Arizona or New Mexico. Like the worker of the 1930s, he was just an honest guy looking for an honest day’s work.

Many of these heroes had a long lasting career with Wild West Weekly. Sonny Tabor and Kid Wolf, and others like the Silver Kid and the Circle J pards, appeared for the duration of the magazine’s 15 years. Others, like Dapper Donnelly and Blackston Bangs, appeared for maybe a dozen stories before disappearing. While heroes were usually good looking and of Anglo-Saxon descent, villains have cruel and calculating eyes, disfigured faces, crooked and ingenuous smiles, repulsive smells and nonexistent hygiene habits. They usually have dark complexions and many are Mexican. They are the gangs that wait in ambush in the desert at night, the hired assassins employed by the greedy ranchers to torture and kill homesteaders who are unlucky enough to own rich cattle land, the sadistic accomplices who brand a young rancher’s forehead as a means of extracting information, and the band of desperados who stake a white man to the ground, face up and spread eagle, cut off his eyelids and leave him for the buzzards. Torture is the calling card of the villain. American Indians are commonly referred to as "breeds" but in many stories are allies of the white man. Grey Eagle is a close and valuable assistant to hero Senor Red Mask, written by Guy Maynard. In "The Devil’s Calling Card," hero Colt Drigger is one-half Cherokee and proud that his mother was the daughter of a Cherokee chief.

Portraits of Asians would make any modern reader blanch. They are frequently referred to as "chinks," and are subservient but crafty. Sing Lo, Billy West’s cook who travels with Billy, Buck, and Joe, is not above lying to get themselves out of a fix, and has a weakness for liquor. Sing Lo has a "flat yellow face" and "slant eyes," and has to prove that he is not like "typical" Chinese who apparently are known for their underhandedness. "Me velly honest Chinee!" he blurts to shifty Long Sam Raynor before letting loose of a string of lies. Most of these characteristics were standard fare for many pulp magazines, not just Wild West Weekly.

Oddly enough, the use of violence to capture or kill criminals was not as prevalent in the early days of the magazine. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, criminals in Wild West Weekly stories were arrested and sent off to be tried and sent to prison rather than killed in confrontations with the hero. Occasionally they were hung. But as the years progressed, the violence became the centrifuge of most stories, including Sonny Tabor and Kid Wolf stories. From the lead sentence on, everything rolls towards a bloody scene in the climax.

"Al Bentley, his head smashed like a ripe pumpkin, spun rapidly around on his boot heels and fell without a sound, his unfired Colt still clutched in his hand.

Toke Landus died at almost the same moment. With his heart chopped in two, he took half a dozen running steps, screaming thinly. His gun exploded into the ground as he fell heavily. He rolled over several times and lay still."

Ironically, writers were not allowed to use the words "blood" or "bleed," and instead had to be described in archaic words such as "flow" and "scarlet," "crimson," or "red:"

The full charge of buckshot hit Mark Seabury in the head, nearly blowing it from his shoulders. It killed the rancher instantly, and dropped him, a bundle of reddened rags, into the snow under the hoofs of his frightened cayuse.

The heroes were the backbone of Wild West Weekly, but the reader’s letters were the pulse. Letters to the editor were always important for pulp magazines because many times they were the only clue the publisher had as to the nature of the magazine’s readership. They helped the editor gage what the readers wanted in their stories and how they wanted their heroes to behave. Just like ordering a sandwich in a deli, once a reader asked for more stories about a certain hero, it was the editor’s and writer’s duty to serve it up.

In the early years, letters from readers were included in "A Chat with the Range Boss," but late, the letters were given their own column, "Reader’s Branding Irons." Many of the letter writers, using some of the colorful vocabulary in the stories, declare a fervid allegiance to their favorite heroes:

Dear Range Boss:

Unbuckle your gun belt, sky your paws, and listen to this letter! Sonny Tabor’s stories shore are humdingers. Kid Wolf, the Oklahoma Kid, and Johnny Forty-five are swell hombres.

George Krumm ought to turn in his badge, join up with bock Foster, and start raising sheep. "Yores truly Buck Foster" is a champion sheep-herder. Yes, sir, he shore knows his woollies!

By heifers, Boss, where did you round up all the gun-slingin waddies who make 3W such a humdinger?

It would be plumb bueno with me if Sonny Tabor was put on the screen, with Bob Steele or John Wane in the leading role. I think the other readin’ hombres would like it too.

Keep the gals out of your magazine—they only spoil things. Tell all the waddies that I said "hello" and that I’m wishing them a lot of luck.

Yours till Sonny Tabor is hanged.

Bud the Kid.
Barton, Ohio

The subject that seemed to generate more controversy and more headaches for the editors was the subject of women in the stories. The appearance of a young, impressionable girl, who would have the audacity to not only have a crush on a hero, but to speak to him, would create an uproar.

But woe to the careless author. Many times readers wrote in to complain about a historical inaccuracy they found in a story. My grandfather writes in the first chapter of Pulp Writer:

The author must continually watch his step, and an error or even the semblance of an error will be immediately spotted by the clientele. The readers of pseudoscience and of sports are particularly keen witted, and the writer of a Western story who makes a mistake in the caliber, rotation motion, or trajectory of a Winchester rifle bullet will, before the storm of disapproval has subsided, feel like using one of the bullets on himself.

One hundred and ninety seven writers dipped their pens into the Wild West Weekly inkwell at one point or another between 1927 and 1943. The majority came and went after just a few stories, some after only one story. Of these, only a fraction were what could be considered the magazine’s core. Roughly 30 writers managed to write over 50 stories, and of those, only 14 wrote over a hundred. Both Ronald L. Oliphant and Francis Stebbins, a later editor, contributed significantly as writers.

In the beginning of his career, my grandfather was paid a penny a word. That was later raised to a penny and a half. For a short while he was paid two cents a word, but that was lowered later back to the penny and a half mark. Most of the authors were within the same ballpark when it came to payment.

Most of the writers used "house" pseudonyms like Andrew Griffin, Cleve Endicott and Nelse Anderson. House names were the property of Wild West Weekly, and used by the editors at their discretion. For example, Nelse Andersen was used by 31 different writers. Sometimes house names were used in combinations that would dumfound any bookkeeper trying to keep the books straight. For example, Cleve Endicott, probably the busiest of the pen names, was used by other writers writing solo ("by Cleve Endicott"), used in partnership with other writers using their real names, ("by Lee Bond and Cleve Endicott" which could be Lee Bond writing solo or Lee Bond writing with another person) and in partnership with other pseudonyms ("by Ward Stevens and Cleve Endicott," which could be one writer, namely Paul Powers in most cases, pretending to be two writers and using both pseudonyms). Over the fifteen years as a 3W author, Grandpa used twelve different pseudonyms, although the vast majority of his stories were written under Ward S. Stevens as author of Sonny Tabor and Kid Wolf.

By having a writer publish several stories in one issue under different names, the magazine was using a common marketing tool used by most pulp fiction publishers. It appeared to the reader that the magazine was giving them a diverse collection of stories from different writers, when in fact only three or four writers were responsible for ten stories. As Paul’s career with Wild West Weekly continued, it was common for him to have two stories in one issue: a novelette under a pen name, and a short story under his real name. Sometimes he had as many as three stories in one issue.

In his memoir, Grandpa doesn’t mention his constant struggles to meet Wild West Weekly’s deadlines, but judging from the letters from the editors that were found in his personal papers, lateness was a chronic problem. From about 1932 on, Grandpa frequently turned in his stories late, or sometimes he just disappeared for a month or two. In all fairness, sometimes the workload demanded on him was enough to drive anyone to drink:

September 6, 1934:

Dear Powers:

"Since you’ve been in San Diego you seem to be slipping rather badly on production. Why not go back to that nice canyon in Arizona where you used to do so much work?

Will you please make your next job a short novelette about Sonny Tabor (12,000 words) with a Thanksgiving setting suitable for the Thanksgiving number? I should also like to have some Kid Wolf and Sonny Tabor novelettes of 15,000 words suitable for cover illustration and shorter novelettes about both characters of 12,000 words, as well as independent novelettes and an occasional yarn about Freckles Malone and Johnny Forty-five."

Other writers seemed to cope with the workload in different ways, and some writers had lives as colorful as their characters. Chuck Martin, a WWW regular, was quite prolific, having written for many Western magazines besides 3W. Martin lived the life of a true cowboy, having grown up on a few California ranches, and claims he knew Wyatt Earp and the Daltons. On his ranch, or "Boot Hill Rancho" as his stationery called it, Chuck built his own "Literary Boothill," a private cemetery where he "buried" those characters that had been killed off in his stories. He was proud of it, and more than willing to take visitors on a tour when they were in the area. The magazine was proud of it too, and featured it at least once in "A Chat with the Range Boss." By 1938, Street & Smith was a ghost of its former self. Titles such as The Shadow still sold, but the Western magazines that had carried the company from its beginning were struggling. Reader’s tastes were changing, but Street & Smith stubbornly clung to their Victorian story lines, and Wild West Weekly and Western Story Magazine doggedly pursued a West encapsulated within a mythical frontier. Competing magazines like Dime Western and Big-Book Western featured realistic and gritty heroes in stories lined in grey, but Street & Smith clung to characters that were pure and unquestioning in their pursuit of evil. Good was good and bad was bad.

That same year, Street & Smith overhauled management. For the first time in its history, the company was run by people outside of the family. Anyone who didn’t fit into the new plan was promptly fired. One of the casualties was Ronald Oliphant. Transitions are always hard, but the absence of Oliphant was especially difficult for Grandpa, who missed the editor’s fair and gentlemanly approach, especially when it came to Grandpa’s recurring tardiness when turning in stories.

Francis L. Stebbins, an assistant editor who wrote many of the Bar U Twin stories, took over the lead for Wild West Weekly after Oliphant left. A third editor, Jon Burr, appeared in 1941. Burr, who was the editor of Western Story Magazine at the time, was asked to add Wild West Weekly to his workload. Burr would end up being my grandfather’s nemesis. No longer would my grandfather’s tardiness be tolerated.

Burr’s job was to "mature" the magazine by toning down the juvenile nature of the yarns. One of the first changes made was to stop using the Western "sing-song" language that had permeated the magazine since the beginning.. "You" replaced "yuh," for one thing. In addition, Burr didn’t care for the long-standing Wild West Weekly tradition of featuring several regular heroes either. Suddenly, the issues appeared with maybe only one hero: a Circle J story, an Oklahoma Kid, or a Kid Wolf would be a feature novel. All other stories in the issues would be "independent" stories that did not feature a regular Wild West Weekly hero.

The strategy backfired. Readers of 3W bought the magazine for a reason: to enjoy heroes that they could count on week after week to behave in a certain manner. They didn’t need some citified editor telling them what to read. Letter after letter after letter to the editor complained of the new format.

Dear Range Boss:

I am writing in regard to your magazine. For the last year it has been rotten. Leave out the gals and the continued novels. Run the magazine the way it used to be….

Delbert Ganns

Dear Range Boss:

I have been reading your magazine four years, and I think it is the best on the newsstands. Lately, however, you have been using too many new authors and characters. I wish you would go back to the old characters, such as Sonny Tabor, Oklahoma Kid, Tommy Rockford, Kid Wolf—instead of so many new ones.

Also, I would like to see you continue the Wrangler’s Corner.

Adios,

Howard Lassen

But even after Wild West Weekly reverted back to the old style and brought back the old standbys, circulation continued to sag, just as it was for all pulps. They were losing their novelty; the comic book had become enormously popular. The war was on, and many boys who had sat on their back porches reading Wild West Weekly during the Great Depression were now fighting in the war with other things on their mind. However, what eventually killed the pulps was, ironically, what had made them unique in the first place: the paper on which they were printed. During World War II, all types of raw material, including steel, aluminum, nylon, and rubber, became property of the war effort. Many pulp magazines quietly signed off during this period.

Wild West Weekly hung on, sturdy as ever. But changes began to appear. The editors tried new a new cover by changing the title logo. But the cover illustrations were for the most part second-rate. Once in a while a great artist like Walter Baumhofer created a gem, but many times the artwork was flat and uninspired. Gradually, over the next few years, the magazine cut back on its size and the frequency of publication. With the March 13, 1943 issue, Wild West Weekly went from a weekly to a biweekly, and the title of the magazine was shortened to just Wild West. The magazine was then changed to a monthly magazine with the September 1943 issue.

There was nothing particularly different about the November 1943 cover. It was like all the others: a cowboy on a pinto, forging a creek as the cowboy looks back at his pursuer. Grandpa had two stories in the issue, one of which the cover claimed was a "flaming" Johnny Forty-five story called "Hog Legs for Range Hogs." Johnny espouses some of his famous four liners: "When your knees are rattlin’ on the rope, And your neck is stretched good and far, When you’re squirmin’ and twistin’ and turnin’ Then you’ll look like the snake that you are." The other Powers story was "Death Blots the Brands." Inserted close to the end of the story was a caption: Because of the drastic necessity for the conservation of paper and because we are doing everything in our power to co-operate with our government in winning this war, we announce, with regrets, that with this issue WILD WEST will suspend publication for the duration.

Although the notice insinuated that the magazine was only temporarily on hold, it would never be resurrected.

After the magazine shut down, Grandpa sporadically sold stories to big pulps that managed to stay in business such as Western Story Magazine, Thrilling Ranch Stories, and Ranch Romances. Judging from the meager amount of correspondence from Western Story Magazine in Grandpa’s papers, the volume he produced for them was a fraction of what he had written for Wild West Weekly. Most of the magazines didn’t care for the juvenile tone and the cookie cutter hero and villain characters that were the staples of Wild West Weekly. Grandpa, almost forty years old, had to start all over again as an apprentice pulp writer, struggling to write stories that may or may not get published and wondering how he would pay the rent.

Other Wild West Weekly writers had mixed success after the magazine ended.

Chuck Martin was one of the few that did well after the end of the pulps, probably because he shrewdly marketed his stories to different fields. He peddled stories to the growing paperback field and writing Western juvenile books for Viking Press.

Walker "Two-Gun" Tompkins had better luck. Someone who wrote 6,000 words a day, five days a week wasn’t going to just stop cold-turkey. Tompkins ultimately wrote 27 novels and for various television shows. Later, he wrote regional history books for the Santa Barbara area. He died in 1990.

As for Ronald Oliphant, he settled down on Staten Island and wrote pulp stories, selling them to the new editor of 3W, Francis Stebbins, and a few to Leo Margulies, managing editor of Standard Magazines. According to public records, Ronald Oliphant died in 1968 at the age of 83 in Signal Hill, a suburb of Long Beach.

The last pulps were discontinued in the late 1950s, although Ranch Romances held on until 1970. All in all, roughly 1,200 different pulp magazine titles came and went during their heyday.

Nowadays, Wild West Weekly enjoys a sturdy following, on eBay at least. Dinan wrote in 1989 that "Wild West Weekly has, today, a hard core of devotees who collect and read these magazines with a passion born of a deep love of the Western yarn. The magazines are sold and traded via an underground that would do credit to the French Resistance Forces of World War II."

That quote is 20 years old now, but I like to think that it’s still accurate today.

From the prologue and epilogue of PULP WRITER: TWENTY YEARS IN THE AMERICAN GRUB STREET by Paul S. Powers, edited and with biographical essays by Laurie Powers, by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. © 2007 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. All rights reserved. Available wherever books are sold or from the University of Nebraska Press 800.755.1105 and on the web at nebraskapress.unl.edu.