A. B. Guthrie Jr.
1901-1991

Inducted June 16, 1993

A.B. (Bud) Guthrie Jr. was a dedicated newspaperman who parlayed a brilliant writing style and love of Montana into a Pulitzer Prize-winning second career.

Born Jan. 13, 1901, in Bedford, Ind., Guthrie and his family soon moved to Montana. He grew up along the Rocky Mountain Front near Choteau, exploring the land he learned to love more than any other. He graduated from high school there and after a year at the University of Washington, transferred to the University of Montana, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1923.

Guthrie took a job as a reporter for the Lexington (Ky.) Leader in 1926 and stayed there for 30 years, rising through the ranks to become the Leader’s executive editor. While he was in Kentucky, he returned to Choteau to marry his childhood sweetheart, Harriet Larson in 1931. They had two children, Bert and Helen.

While Guthrie was at the Leader he got the opportunity to pursue his career as a serious novelist. In 1944 he received a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University and while there he completed his first novel, “The Big Sky.”

“The Big Sky” was a huge success when it was published in 1947, and he followed it with “The Way West,” which was published in 1949 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1950. Although he never was pleased with how Hollywood handled his novels made into movies, he wrote two famous screenplays for the films “Shane” and “The Kentuckian,” between 1953 and 1955.

The Guthries moved back to Montana in 1956 and divorced in 1962. Guthrie met his second wife, Carol Bischman Luthin, in Missoula. They were married in Helena on April 3, 1969. Guthrie adopted her two children — Amy and Herbert William Luthin; the family split its time between Missoula and Choteau.

Guthrie published several other historical novels including “These Thousand Hills” in 1956; “Arfive,” which won the 1970 Western Heritage Wrangler Award; “The Last Valley” in 1975; and “Fair Land, Fair Land” in 1982. He wrote numerous short stories and essays and even tried his hand at mystery novels. His final book, “A Field Guide to Writing Fiction,” was published in 1990.

In his later years, Guthrie became an outspoken critic of “progress,” if that meant the continued destruction of the West’s natural heritage.

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