Richard Wormser papers
Portrait of Richard Wormser (center) with two unknown individuals, circa 1965 (Box 26 Folder 1).
Collection area: Literature
Collection dates: 1932-1977 bulk (bulk 1934-1973)
This collection was donated by Wormser’s widow and covers most of his career (1934-1976).
Series One consists of his manuscripts. The first subseries, the bulk of the collection, is composed of titled fictional stories of various length ranging from short stories to novelettes to novels as well as screenplays for film and television. Many of the manuscripts are organized with published editions of the stories in pulp magazines, complete with characteristicly lurid covers and illustrations. Titles where Wormser contributed frequently include Argosy, Bluebook, Detective Fiction Weekly, and Saturday Evening Post. Many of these manuscripts are grouped with relevant correspondence between Wormser and his literary agents detailing the ins and outs of the publishing trade.
The second subseries consists of Wormser’s untitled manuscripts.
Series Two consists of Wormser’s personal and business materials. Subseries one is made up of several autobiographies written at different points in his career. Subseries two is his correspondence, mostly professional with fan letters, it is preserved in his original order.
Series Three consists of Wormser’s published stories in large format magazines.
This collection contains manuscripts of short stories, novels, film and television screenplays and relevant correspondence covering the writing career of Richard Wormser, who began his career as a pulp magazine story writer and ended up a novelist who wrote screenplays for Hollywood. The genres he mostly worked in were Westerns and Mysteries.
Wormser became a writer of short stories and serialized novels for a number of the better known pulp magazines of the day including Argosy, Blue Book and Detective Fiction Weekly. As Wormser became more successful, his stories were adapted as scripts for movies and television. Wormser colorfully describes his time with the pulp magazines in his autobiography, How to Become a Complete Nonentity.
As the US entered the Second World War, Wormser moved out west where he worked as a horseback patrolman for the Forest Service in southern California while continuing to write for magazines and Hollywood during his evenings. After the war he moved in Santa Fe before finally settling in Tubac, Arizona.
Wormser was also asked by editors to produce informative text for encyclopedias and he had an interest in writing about culinary topics as well as the history, culture and topography of the American Southwest. Richard Wormser died in Tubac, Arizona in 1977.
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