Laurie Powers is a Los Angeles-based writer who has a deep interest in Westerns and Pulp Fiction, which makes sense since her grandfather was Paul S. Powers, who, throughout the 1930s, wrote many stories for pulp magazines such as the Wild West Weekly shown here. Laurie runs a website, PulpWriter.com, about her grandfather, and she also manages Laurie’s Wild West, LauriePowersWildWest.Blogspot.com.
Since September she has contributed 11 articles about the history of filmmaking in California’s Santa Clarita Valley. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of Westerns were filmed there if you include TV series, beginning at least as early as Broncho Billy’s Christmas Dinner in 1911 and continuing through the HBO series Deadwood and beyond. In the course of her articles she visits William S. Hart’s remarkable home, the Western Walk of Fame in Newhall, California, the site of John Ford’s first Western and Harry Carey Sr.’s Ranch in Saugus. Her blog features numerous images and helpful website links.
For those who might be visiting Newhall, the Eternal Valley Memorial Park is where one can visit the graves of several Western actors and movie crew members, as well as Country Swing superstar Tex Williams (“Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! [That Cigarette]”) and Rockabilly legend Gene Vincent (“Be-Bop-A-Lula”), plus a memorial to American writer Samuel Clemens a.k.a. Mark Twain.
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