Archives West Finding Aid

Alfred Bertram "A. B." Guthrie was born on January 13, 1901 in Choteau, Montana. He graduated from Montana State University (now the University of Montana) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1923. Starting in 1926 Guthrie worked for the Lexington Leader in Kentucky, and for the next twenty-one years was a reporter, city editor, editorial writer, and executive editor. Guthrie was also a successful novelist, mainly writing about the American West. The Big Sky was his first novel published in 1947. His second novel, The Way West, earned him a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1949. Other books that Guthrie wrote include These Thousand Hills (1956), The Blue Hen's Chick (1965), an autobiography, and several western mysteries, short stories, poetry, and essays. The Way West was adapted into a screenplay and became a Hollywood movie in 1952 starring Kirk Douglas, Sally Field, and Robert Mitchum. Two other screenplays that Guthrie wrote were Shane (1953) and The Kentuckian (1955). In 1949, Guthrie was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Literature from Montana State University. In addition to his newspaper and fiction writing, Guthrie taught creative writing at the University of Kentucky until 1952. He died at his home near Choteau on April 26, 1991.