Fred Gipson

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Frederick Benjamin Gipson (February 7, 1908-August 14, 1973) was an American author. He is best remembered for creating the fictional dog Old Yeller, featured in a book and 1957 Disney movie of the same name.

[edit] Youth, education

Gipson was born on a farm near Mason, Texas, the son of Beck and Emma Deishler Gipson. After working at a variety of farming and ranching jobs, he enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin in 1933. There he wrote for the Daily Texan and The Ranger, but he left school before graduating to become a newspaper reporter.

[edit] Writing

In the 1940s, Gipson began writing short stories with a western theme which proved to be prototypes for his longer works of fiction that followed. In 1946, his first full-length book, The Fabulous Empire: Colonel Zack Miller's Story was published. Hound-Dog Man in 1949 established Gipson's reputation when it became a Doubleday Book-of-the-Month Club selection and sold over 250,000 copies in its first year of publication. His additional work included The Home Place, later filmed as Return of the Texan, Big Bend: A Homesteader's Story, Cowhand: The Story of a Working Cowboy, The Trail-Driving Rooster, and Recollection Creek.

In 1956, he published Old Yeller, which won the Newbery Honor, and was made famous by Walt Disney Studios in the 1957 film Old Yeller, and its 1962 sequel Savage Sam, also written by Gipson.

Old Yeller was the novel that Gipson considered his best work. Set in the Texas Hill Country in the 1860s just after the American Civil War, the story is about a fourteen-year-old boy named Travis Coates (played by Tommy Kirk in the movie) left in charge of the household while his father is away. Old Yeller, a stray dog adopted by the boy, helps in the formidable task of protecting the family in the frontier wilderness.

[edit] Awards, heritage

Fred Gipson was the recipient of the William Allen White Award, the first Sequoyah Award, the Television-Radio Annual Writers Award, and the Northwest Pacific Award.

According to one critic, Gipson "made the term 'Southwest literature' legitimate and meaningful" and "accomplished the rare but admirable feat of turning the bits and pieces of folklore into myth." His novels were translated into Danish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.