Stagecoach

by Ernest Haycox

Book Overview

Ernest Haycox's 1937 short story, Stage to Lordsburg, was a bestseller and a classic of the Western genre. Popularised by the 1939 film adaptation Stagecoach, this Wild West tale vividly portrays... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• ISBN: B000KXEYJK
• Release Date: January 1973
• Publisher: Signet Books
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Stagecoach, What a Movie!

Fantasy and Horror Classics has done the reading public a wonderful service by publishing Stage to Lordsburg in book form. It has introduced this classic short story to a new generation of readers, and the presentation is of good quality--the printing is nice and dark, easily readable. And that's a good thing. This book, or rather booklet of about 30 pages is the story from which the movie Stagecoach was made in 1939 directed by John Ford and made John Wayne a star. This is the best version of the three which have been made. Yet you will not find the "Ringo Kid" in the short story. The character is called Malpais Bill. You will find the whiskey drummer, the gambler, an Englishman, a cattleman, the shady lady, and the army girl, and the main plot line. The shot gun guard becomes the marshal, and of course most of the other names have been changed. Yet one can "see" how this story affected the screenwriters Dudley Nichols and Ben Hecht as they composed this screenplay. There is also a brief biography of Ernest Haycox included--a writer of the "west" who deserves to be more greatly recognized and appreciated. His books once sold in the millions, and in Collier's magazine his work appeared over 100 times. But today, new printings of his novels go lacking, and collections of his short stories are non-existent. One could only wish Fantasy and Horror Classics will continue to re-print his work, perhaps even putting more than one story in each book. I have some suggestions if they would ask me, because there are still many of his stories which have never been gathered in book form.