EMMETT DALTON - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 06/15/1935 - HFSID 350565

EMMETT DALTON
The only surviving Dalton Gang member writes a letter to a publisher regarding facts surrounding his supposed shooting from the hip and the use of two guns.
Typed letter signed: "Emmett Dalton", black ink, 1p, 8½ x 11. Hollywood, California, June 15, 1935. To Mr. C.W. Mowre/Dell Publications/New York City. In full: "Dear Mr. Mowre:/Thank you for the two all western magazines you sent me last week. You certainly gave me a large spriad (sic) this time. Its all appreciated if you never get paid. "Chuch" told me that you had sent him a fan letter, last issue, giving me the devil for saying the Pine Pinyons were on the Salt River, etc. Then, last week Mr. McBride, who works on the L.A. Times here called my hand for saying in the last all western about faning a gun, shooting from the hip and the two-gun man. He said "I thought you claimed there was never such a man as that." Of course, he was a very good friend of mine and I very easily talked him out of "When The Daltons Rode" and told him to use it as a reference. I was too sick to read the articles at that time but you will not find any of that two-gun bunk, shooting from the hip or gun faning, any where in "When The Daltons Rode." I have always fought all that bunk, as I knew it was impossible and was only put out by would-be authors who tried to be western by wearing a ten gallon Montgomery-Ward hat and a three dollar pair of boots to get by. If you have any of the photos left from those articles please send them to me. "Chuck" has lost or misplaced several of them which I sent to him. The photos do not mean a damn thing to any one but me and that for souveniers. Are you going to be able to visit us the coming summer or not? I would be mighty glad to meet you. Trusting luck is with you, I remain, Sincerely Yours," Framed by the Gallery of History, 31¾ x 21¼. Fine condition.

EMMETT DALTON (1871-1937) and his three brothers led a murderous gang of train robbers, who used a network of informers and hideouts to evade a widespread manhunt. He was the only member of the Dalton Brothers' Gang to survive the 1892 attempt to rob two banks simultaneously in Coffeyville, Kansas. On October 5, Emmett, his brothers Grattan and Robert and two other outlaws were recognized by the townspeople, who stopped them with a hail of gunfire. Emmett, wounded by more than a dozen bullets, was sentenced to life in prison. Pardoned in 1907 after serving 14 years,he later moved to California where he wrote two books: Beyond the Law (1918) and When the Daltons Rode (1931) which chronicled the gang's Wild West saga of horse rustling, train robberies and bank robberies in Kansas, Oklahoma and CaliforniaIn the 1918 silent, Beyond the Law, based on his book, Emmett Dalton played three roles: himself and his brothers Frank and Bob. He consulted on many westerns. Three years after his death, When the Daltons Rode was released by MCA/Universal Pictures. It starred Randolph Scott, Brian Donlevy and Broderick Crawford; Frank Albertson played Emmett.