Montana has an outstanding literary legacy. The names A B Guthrie, Norman MacLean, and Joseph Kinsey Howard come to mind. There are many more men on the list. A name not often mentioned is Dorothy M Johnson, most likely because she was a woman. Yet she was a novelist like Guthrie, a journalist like Howard, and a professor like MacLean. Eventually, she was known as Montana’s First Lady of Letters.

Dorothy Marie Johnson was born in December 1905 in Iowa. She was an only child and was called Marie. When she was five years old, the family moved to Montana, where she grew up. Her father died when she was ten, and her mother took over her late husband’s job as city treasurer. Marie did odd jobs.

Just after she learned to read and before she had mastered spelling, Marie began to write stories. The spelling came fairly quickly and she was involved in all things literary in school. Somehow, she and her mother saved enough money for Marie to attend Montana State College.

Her stay in Bozeman was brief, she had rushed through the early grades, and graduated from high school at 16 in Whitefish, class of 1922. That fall, she began classes in Bozeman. Despite having admitted that science was not her thing, she was determined to become a physician (chiefly because she had read a romantic novel about a female doctor). Marie lasted one school year in town, then moved on to Missoula, Montana’s literary center, to pursue her real calling. Because of the way she had filled out her college application, she became known thereafter as Dorothy.

At the University in Missoula, Dorothy became a student of H G Merriam, a literary visionary who established creative writing there and promoted Montana and northwest writers through the regional publication, Frontier. Still in her teens, Dorothy embraced her classes and wrote poetry for the journal. Yet after a year, illness and financial worries caused her to leave the university and return to Whitefish. She worked in various secretarial positions until she was able to return to Missoula, where she graduated from the University in 1928.

At some point, probably encouraged by Merriam, Dorothy left poetry and began to write fiction. Her professor commented that she wrote prodigiously, story after story. He felt that she ultimately succeeded because she never gave up. After college, Dorothy took a number of office jobs in Montana and Washington. She wrote in her spare time, and sold a story to the Saturday Evening Post in 1930. This gave her confidence; however, she did not sell another story for eleven years.

During that time, Miss Johnson never ceased writing and submitting her work, and her professional career thrived. She moved from Montana to Washington to Wisconsin, then to New York City. Her positions rose from secretary to office manager to technical writer, then to magazine editor. At one point, she turned down a job when she was informed that she would have to stop her fictional writing to concentrate on the offered position. She declined the job—and was hired anyway.

As she continued to write and submit stories without success, Dorothy analyzed her style. She noticed that many of her stories were tragic, and that she was writing to express herself. She realized that expression was fine, but communication with readers was vital. Writing with expression required the reader to do a lot of work, whereas communication made the reader comfortable and was actually fun to write. She had to do both. When she applied this to a story she wrote in the first person, her character became a schoolteacher named Beulah Bunny. The Saturday Evening Post bought the lighthearted story and many subsequent ones featuring this meddlesome and adventurous person.

When her Beulah Bunny stories were published in a collection, Dorothy observed that a writer was not an author until they had published a book. She had made more money on the individual stories than she ever did with the book royalties, but prestige came with a book. In January 1942 she published a 277-page hardcover book called Beulah Bunny Tells All.

Though she had succeeded in New York City as a magazine editor and a published author, Dorothy missed Montana. In 1950, after fifteen years in the east, Dorothy and her mother moved back to Whitefish. There was no culture shock, just a homecoming. She worked for three years at the local newspaper, then moved again to Missoula, where she became the manager of the Montana Press Association and a member of the University of Montana faculty in the journalism department.

Along with more contemporary work, Miss Johnson had always written stories of the frontier west. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she focused more on the West. Her story,

“The Hanging Tree,” was purchased by Hollywood and became a movie starring Montana native Gary Cooper. She was offered a job as a consultant on the film but, citing her full-time job in Missoula, declined, though she consulted informally and became fast friends with Mr. Cooper. The movie was released in 1959 and received good reviews. This brought attention to Miss Johnson’s work. Subsequently, two more of her stories were adapted for the screen: “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” starring John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Lee Marvin, and “A Man Called Horse,” starring Richard Harris.

Miss Johnson was philosophical about seeing her work performed onscreen. She admitted it was greatly changed, but said that was possibly for the better. She commented on the different jobs of a writer and film director, saying that the writer counts on readers to fill in faces, scenery, and costumes that can only be suggested on the page. The movie director does not have to do this, but has to somehow indicate thoughts and emotions that an author can simply relate as a part of the story.

Dorothy had arrived as a well-known Western author, achieving celebrity status. She received the Spur award from the Western Writers of America in 1957. In 1959, she was made an honorary member of the Blackfoot tribe. In 1976, she was awarded the Levi Strauss Golden Saddleman Award for bringing dignity and honor to the history and legends of the West. In Montana she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 1973 by the University of Montana.

By the late 1950s, the national magazines that featured short fiction were either out of business or had moved on to other things. Dorothy began to have difficulty selling her stories. She shifted her focus to other forms. She wrote some children’s books. She wrote many nonfiction articles and two novels featuring Native American stories and characters. By the early 1970s, she was writing Western history. She was good at all of these various genres because she was a relentless researcher, and approached each topic with a fresh attitude and an interesting, witty style.

Dorothy retired from the faculty of the University of Montana in 1967, and from her Press Association job the following year. Decades of full-time work and personal writing at night had damaged her health, but she continued to write, and to publish. She also traveled extensively, a lifelong dream, and wrote of her travels.

Johnson’s biographer, Steve Smith was also a U of M journalism professor. The book he has written gives the day-to-day, year-to-year basics of her life. But since he knew Dorothy and listened to her, he was wise enough to include her voice in the book.

Johnson had a way of using memorable, humorous quotes in her writings. From the wife of a prospector in Bannack in 1862 speaking of the number of deaths over the winter; “...but that there have not been twice as many is entirely owing to the fact that drunken men do not shoot well.” From Granville Stuart, describing the Indian wife of a fellow pioneer who had clubbed a man who had harassed her; “Mrs. Dempsey is known in these parts to be a lady of uncertain temper.”

She speaks of the curiosity and emotion necessary to write stories, and the recall needed to remember details, since what does not work one time may be perfect for the next story or book. Most fascinatingly, she speaks of genius. She explains that the word had an ancient meaning akin to a guardian angel. Everyone had one. The modern word is not used because it would be deemed boastful. Yet, she admits to genius in the old sense, and uses it to write.

She says people believe that writing is like building a house. Make a plan and build. She tells us that writing is more like drilling for oil. Locate it, pump it, and refine it. Reading about her life, and reading her writing, it becomes obvious that Dorothy Johnson possesses both the old and new forms of genius.