Larry McMurtry, ‘Lonesome Dove’ Author and ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Screenwriter, Dies at 84
Larry McMurtry, the prolific novelist of “Lonesome Dove” and screenwriter known for “Terms of Endearment,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Last Picture Show,” has died. He was 84.
McMurtry died on Thursday, his publicist told TheWrap. No cause of death or where he died was given.
McMurtry wrote over 30 novels in his career that spanned five decades. He became renowned for his ability to remove the romanticism from the image of the American West and highlight the reality of the small towns of modern day Texas. He was first nominated for an Oscar for “The Last Picture Show” and won in 2006 for “Brokeback Mountain,” the screenplay which he co-wrote with his longtime collaborator Diana Ossana based on the short story by Annie Proulx.
He most recently collaborated with Ossana on “Joe Bell” starring Mark Wahlberg, which made its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last year.
McMurtry won the Pulitzer prize for his novel “Lonesome Dove” from 1985, which was something of an anti-Western, telling the story of two famous retired Texas Rangers in the waning period of the Old West driving a cattle herd to Montana as they grapple with age, death and faded glory. The sweeping, 843-page novel became one of his most acclaimed and commercially successful works, matching the scope of something like “Gone With the Wind.” And the subsequent TV miniseries starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones was nominated for 18 Emmys. On the whole, adaptations of his books have been nominated for 34 Oscars and won 13.
Born in Texas as the son of a rancher, McMurtry’s first three novels all drew from his upbringing and were a trilogy of stories all set in the small town of Thalia. His first book “Horseman, Pass By,” follows life on a cattle ranch in post-WWII Texas. It was also quickly adapted into a feature film, “Hud” starring Paul Newman. The other two books in the trilogy, “Leaving Cheyenne” in 1963 and “The Last Picture Show” in 1966, would also both be adapted into feature films, including Sidney Lumet’s “Loving Molly” in 1974 and Peter Bogdanovich’s “The Last Picture Show” from 1971.
For the record: An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled McMurtry’s name.
More to come…
