Dorothy M. Johnson
Western Writer
1905 – 1984 A.D.

For many beginning writers their first sale to a publisher is always an important moment. After all, it is only logical to assume it is just the beginning and they will soon become well known and successful. However, it doesn’t always work out that way, which is what happened when in 1930 Dorothy Marie Johnson sold her first story to a major magazine for $400—then had no more sales for more than a decade. However, in 1941 she began to sell, yet in one particular genre there was a challenge. Editors loved her Western stories, but were often reluctant to accept them—and suggested she change her byline. She did so and as it turned out her Western stories brought her important success and popularity.

Born in 1905 in Iowa, Dorothy was eight when her family moved to Whitefish, Montana where the lumbering business was just beginning to fade. Her father died when she was thirteen and it meant a new struggle for Dorothy and her mother. To support her family, Mrs. Johnson held several part-time jobs, including writing personal columns for the Whitefish newspaper as well as working in city government. Dorothy also worked including a job as a relief telephone operator as well as doing articles for the same newspaper. For this she used her aunt’s name, thinking that the editor would not accept a piece written by a teenager. Actually, at the time Dorothy was mostly interested in the money, to purchase a small rifle from a local store.

During this time in the process, she learned persistence and discipline as she not only completed her chores and her jobs, but also read as widely as she could. Later Dorothy enrolled in the University Montana where she graduated in 1928.

However, in 1927 she had married a man named George Peterkin who turned out to be a deadbeat gambler and then in 1930 came two important events in her life: She divorced her husband and also received that check for $400 for her first magazine sale to the Saturday Evening Post. It was a story about a cowboy and his girl titled “Bonnie George Campbell.” Ultimately, it was the end of one point of her life and the beginning of a new one.

In the end, Dorothy worked for many years to repay Peterkin’s debts and also vowed to never remarry. During that time she worked in business journalism writing for a textbook publisher and a woman’s magazine.

Then in 1935 she moved to New York to take a job as a magazine editor and continue writing, often focusing on Western stories because she was homesick. By 1941 she had become successful as she sold other stories to the Saturday Evening Post as well as other publications. However, she learned there was a challenge with her sales to Western magazines—editors loved her stories but not her byline.

To the mostly male readers of Western stories they were a man’s world—the characters were all male—gunslingers, cowboys, ranchers and others. Women were just side characters. Because editors feared a reader might shun a story authored by Dorothy M. Johnson their solution was that she use the byline D.M. Johnson. That solved the problem and her sales increased, finding success and popularity. This was because of her writing skills but also because of her careful research, particularly from frequent visits to Montana for accuracy material. Instead of using the conventional images of Western stories—Dorothy’s stories were not stereotypical but realistic—and accurately dealt with the realities of the violence involved.

By 1950 Dorothy had returned to live in Whitefish, Montana to work for the local newspaper but when the salary proved unsatisfactory she moved to Missoula where she began to work at the University of Montana as secretary-manager of the Montana Press Association and also to teach in the School of Journalism at the university.

Dorothy’s stories—now published under her full name—began to be the basis of several major motion pictures at the time. One of these was from 1949, and dealt with the shooting of a notorious outlaw in a Western town and how the shooter advanced to great success until eventually it’s revealed that another man had shot the outlaw. The story asked important questions—such as what happens when we choose appearances over the truth. The story The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was later adapted into a 1962 motion picture starring John Wayne and James Stewart and directed by John Ford.

Another 1949 story titled A Man Called Horse was originally published in a major magazine that year, and then was republished in her book Indian Country in 1953. After that it was the basis for an episode of TV’s Wagon Train and then as a film in 1970 starring Richard Harris. There were two sequels, also starring Harris. The story was about an aristocratic man who is captured by Natives and enslaved, but over time comes to understand and respect his captors’ culture. He married the chief’s daughter and using his Native name “Horse” (since he was treated like a horse) he became a respected member of the tribe.

Dorothy’s 1957 story The Hanging Tree was based on a real incident during Montana’s gold mining days and the 1959 film starred Gary Cooper (a Montana native) as well as George C. Scott.

Another popular piece in the same 1957 collection titled Lost Sister was a Western story about a girl abducted by indigenous people then returned to her family, possibly inspired by how Cynthia Ann Parker was taken captive by the Comanche in Texas in 1836. Dorothy’s character, as did Parker, dealt with trying to adapt to living in two different cultures. In this and other stories, Dorothy depicted Native characters as being human while in other stories of the time these persons were incidental to the plot.

Also in the 1950s as she worked with the Montana Press association where she assisted young writers develop their skills and also in marketing their works to enable them to be published.

Honors came next—in 1957 the Western Writers of America honored her with the Spur Award for the Lost Sister story. Her home town of Whitefish also honored her by making her an honorary police chief. She was inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame and adopted by the Blackfeet tribe giving her the name “Kills Both Places.” One unusual honor was in 1972 when she took part in a peyote ceremony at a Native church on the Crow Indian Reservation.

At the University Dorothy’s students had the chance to absorb her philosophies and attitudes described by one source as “…with the same principles she’d lived; persistence, precision and unflinching attention to the real over the comfortable.” She also became known as the individual she was—wearing hiking boots to academic meetings. Said one source, “She was sharp, funny and completely unbothered by what anyone thought of her style.”

Then as Parkinson’s disease became more debilitating in her later years Dorothy still stayed in print by submitting letters to the editor.

She died in November, 1984 and wrote her own Whitefish tombstone—PAID. After all, she’d paid off a debt with hard work and inspiration and when she passed the account was settled.

References:
Wikipedia
Facebook—April 28, 2026

~*~

Anne Adams is a retired church staffer. She lives in East Texas and has an historical column for a local newspaper. She has published in Christian and secular publications for more than 40 years.