S P A C E L I G H T
INDEX
Name: HAMILTON, Leigh Douglass Brackett
Aged: 62
Born: December 7, 1915
Where: Los Angeles, California
Died: March 17, 1978
Where: Lancaster, California
Married: Edmond Moore Hamilton
When: December 31, 1946
Interred: Kinsman, Ohio
Awarded: 1981 British Fantasy Award
Leigh Brackett
"Every writer has a natural length. Your best work will come
in that length, flow easiest, be most enjoyable, and sell best."
First story, "Martian Quest," was sold to Astounding Stories in 1940. Lee's last work, completed only a month before she died, was a screenplay for the Star Wars trilogy, The Empire Strikes Back. Leigh's work in western movies was also impressive, writing Rio Bravo and El Dorado; winning the 1963 Silver Spur award for Follow the Free Wind.
Brackett competed in the pulps by doing what the boys were doing. She cranked out such pulp-fiction as "Dragon-Queen of Jupiter," "Enchantress of Venus," and "The Jewel-Beast of Mars." While a writer of short stories in the SF field and novels in the Western field, Leigh's interest was in films and screenplays.
Leigh was married to Edmond Hamilton, the leading pulp SF writer of his day. The Hamiltons maintained two residences; Edmond's traditional home outside of Kinsman, Ohio and a place in Lancaster, California, near to Los Angeles on the edge of the Mojave Desert. After the death of her husband in Lancaster and his interment at Kinsman, Leigh returned to Lancaster and worked only on screenplays for the short time she had left.
PEN NAMES: V. E. Thiessen
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.
BIOGRAPHY: Supernatural Fiction Writers, E. F. Bleiler
OBITUARY: L.A. Times & UPI, and VARIETY, Mar 29, 1978, p94.
