A reporter, author, screenwriter & environmentalist: Celebrating A.B. ‘Bud’ Guthrie
Editor’s Note: As Lexington celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Herald-Leader and kentucky.com each day throughout 2025 will share interesting facts about our hometown. Compiled by Liz Carey, all are notable moments in the city’s history - some funny, some sad, others heartbreaking or celebratory, and some just downright strange.
Jan. 13, 1901: A.B. “Bud” Guthrie, author of The Way West and screenwriter for “Shane,” is born.
Originally from Bedford, Ind., Guthrie’s family moved to Montana when he was young. In 1926, after graduating from the University of Montana, Guthrie took out a $300 bank loan and moved to Lexington to take a job at the Lexington Leader.
For 21 years, he worked as a reporter, city editor and editorial writer. He published his first novel, Murders at Moon Dance, in 1943, and later won the Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University. That’s where he began his novel The Big Sky, which published in 1947.
That year, he left the newspaper and taught creative writing at the University of Kentucky.
He’d go on to publish The Way West, which won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. When those two books were received with acclaim, he was able to leave Lexington and return to Montana where he wrote books full time.
Later, he went on to write Hollywood movies, including the Academy Award-winning “Shane,” and “The Kentuckian,” starring Burt Lancaster, Walter Mathau and John Carradine. As he grew older, Guthrie became an environmentalist and donated 80 acres of land to the Nature Conservancy’s Pine Butte Preserve a year before his death.
He died at his home in Choteau, Montana on April 26, 1991 at the age of 90, where his ashes were scattered over the western land he loved.
In 2015, he was inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame for his writing.
This story was originally published January 17, 2025 at 4:30 AM.
