Lester Dent was a prolific pulp writer best known for his work on Doc Savage.
He was born in La Plata, Missouri on October 12, 1904. His father, Bernard Dent, was a rancher. His mother, born Alice Norfolk, had been a teacher before she married. When Lester Dent was two years old the family moved to Wyoming where they had lived before. There they worked a ranch near Pumpkin Buttes, Wyoming. The Dents also ranched in the area of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
It was in 1919, when Lester Dent was fifteen yeras old, that the family returned to La Plata. In La Plata his father became a dairy farmer. Lester Dent finished his grade school and high school there.
In 1923 Lester Dent enrolled at Chillicothe Business College in Chillicothe, Missouri in nearby Livingston County. He had intended to become a banker, but eventually decided to become a telegraph operator, making $20 more than he would have as a bank clerk. It was in 1924 that he was hired as a telegraph operator by Western Union in Carrollton, Missouri in Carroll County.
In 1925 Mr. Dent joined the Empire Oil and Gas company in Ponca City, Oklahoma. It was there that he met Norma Gersling. The two were married August 9, 1925 and remained married for the rest of Mr. Dent's life.
In 1926 the Dents took a job as a telegraph operator for the Associated Press in Chickasha, Oklahoma. Having read a great deal since childhood, Mr. Dent decided to try his hand at writing. His first sale was the story "Pirate Cay," which appeared in Top Notch magazine, September 1929. Dent sold more stories to Top Notch, as well as The Popular Magazine and Air Stories.
It was in late 1930 that Mr. Dent received a telegram from Richard E. Martinsen with a singular offer. He wanted Mr. Dent to write exclusively for Dell's Scotland Yard and Sky Riders magazines for a monthly salary. For the next several months Mr. Dent not only wrote for Scotland Yard and Sky Riders, but also All-fiction Stories and the Scotland Yard radio show.
If Mr. Dent would write exclusiviely for Dell's Scotland Yard and Sky Riders magazines, Martinsen would pay him a monthly salary. Sadly, the Depression killed all three magazines and the Scotland Yard radio show. In the wake of the collapse of the Dell magazines, Mr. Dent created his first gadget oriented hero, the scienntific detective Lynn Lash for Detective-Dragnet magazine.
In fact, it was a Lynn Lash story, "The Sinister Ray," which would bring Lester Dent to Doc Savage. Street and Smith had seen incredible success with The Shadow and decided that perhaps they should follow it up with a new character. Street and Smith's business manager Henry Ralston and editor John Nanovic then wrote a broad outline for a new character they called "Doc Savage." Doc may have in part been inspired by a real person. Nanovic told pulp magazine historian Will Murray about a man named Richard Henry Savage, a latter day renaissance man who had been a diplomat, engineer, lawyer, military officer, and writer. As a writer some of Savage's books were published by Street and Smith, just when a young Henry Ralston had started working for the firm at the tender age of 17.
Having developed the initial concept of Doc Savage, Ralston and Nanovic needed a writer. They contacted Dent and as a test they had him write a story for The Shadow. The Golden Vulture met with Street and Smith's approval, , although it would not be until The Shadow #154, July 15, 1938 that it would be published after having been revised by The Shadow's scribe Walter Gibson. Having passed Street and Smith's test, Dent was officially assigned to Doc Savage.
While Henry Ralston and John Nanovic may have come up with the initial concept of Doc Savage, it was Lester Dent who breathed life into the character. Lester Dent would not only provide Doc with his personality and his gadgets, but much of his mythology as well. Writing under the house name Kenneth Robeson, Mr. Dent wrote 161 out of the 181 Doc Savage novels. Of the Doc Savage novels Mr. Dent wrote during the magazines' run, only one was not published.
One Doc Savage adventure which Mr. Dent wrote was not published during the magazine's original run. Now known as The Red Spider, the novel presented an older and not quite so superhuman Doc and took place in a Cold War milieu that was much closer to the real world than any Doc Savage novel written before. Written in April 1948, it was only sold for publication in Doc Savage. Unfortunately, the editor who had bought the story, William De Grouchy, was replaced with a new editor, Daisy Bacon. Bacon simply put the novel on the shelf and, with Doc Savage going on a monthly schedule, she simply skipped the issue for which it was scheduled. The Red Spider would not be published until Bantam did so in July 1979
In 1949 Street and Smith cancelled nearly their entire line of pulp magazines, including Doc Savage and The Shadow. Mr. Dent supplemented his income with an aerial
photography service called Airviews for a time. Throughout most of the Fifties he oversaw two LaPlata farms. Since the pulp magazines were gradually dying off, Mr. Dent turned his attention to the fairly new paperback market and slick magazines. He sold Cry at Dusk to paperback publisher Gold Medal Books. He tired to break into televison after Wagon Train adapted his story "River" as the episode "The Nels Stack Story." He also sold a Western "Savage Challenge" to The Saturday Evening Post. His final sale as the novel Lady in Peril, which was published as half of aan ACe Double.
In Feburary 1959 Mr. Dent suffered a heart attack while in La Plata. He hospitalised in Grim Smith Hospital in nearby Kirksville, Missouri. He was there for three weeks before dying on March 11, 1959.
Following his death, in 1964, Bantam Books would begin reprinting the Doc Savage novels, keeping Lester Dent's work in print. More recently, other works by Lester Dent have been published, Lester Dent's Zeppelin Tales reprints Dent stories from Air Stories, The Popular Magazine, and others. His Shadow novel, The Golden Vulture has also been reprinted. After being dead for nearly fifty years, Lester Dent has not been forgotten.
For reprints of Doc Savage and The Shadow pulp novels, and classic TV and film on DVD, visit Nostalgia Ventures
The Official Lester Dent MySpace Page is maintained by Terry Canote.
Page background from Doc Savage April 1935 (featuring the novel The Spook Legion). Art by Walter Baumhofer.
Special thanks to Will Murray, Maam in Black and the Lost Cause, and Norvell Page.
For inquiries regarding Lester Dent rights, email Will Murray, literary agent for Mr. Dent's properties, at Cartomancer@netzero.net.
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