Ormond Orlea Robbins (March 14, 1910 – July 21, 1984) was an American

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

of hardboiled

detective fiction Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as s ...

and weird fiction. His work was primarily published in the

Popular Publications Popular Publications was one of the largest publishers of pulp magazines during its existence, at one point publishing 42 different titles per month. Company titles included detective fiction, detective, adventure novel, adventure, Romance nove ...

catalog of pulp fiction. The most part of his work for Popular Publications was attributed to his pen names ''Dane Gregory'' and, occasionally, ''Breck Tarrant''. In ''The Shudder Pulps'', Robert Kenneth Jones places Dane Gregory's detective fiction in the vogue of the "defective detective" in the late nineteen-thirties and early forties. Recurring characters in Dane Gregory's fiction included ''Rocky Rhodes'', ex-convict turned private investigator, and ''Satan Jones''. Ormond Robbins' brother Wayne Robbins also wrote fiction for the pulps. The two brothers even collaborated on a western story, ''Murder Boss Of The Poverty Pool'' that was featured in ''10 Story Western Magazine'' in September 1941.

Biography

Ormond Robbins was born on March 14, 1910, in Stillwater, Oklahoma, to Charles L. and Clara (Brooks) Robbins. His family moved to Sunnyside, Washington, in 1919, where Ormond completed elementary and high school, class of 1928. He began writing short stories, humor, and poetry at about age 12. By the age of 15, he regularly contributed to the pulp magazine '' College Humor''. ''

The Saturday Evening Post ''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely c ...

'' published a poem in their December 1, 1934, issue, and another in March of the following year. He saw another printed in the June 1935 issue of ''Country Gentleman.'' In 1936, the newly established ''Yakima Independent'' newspaper carried his daily column for about a year. He married Jane Eshom on October 8, 1937, in

Yakima, Washington Yakima ( or ) is a city in and the county seat of Yakima County, Washington, and the state's 11th-largest city by population. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 96,968 and a metropolitan population of 256,728. The uninco ...

. Their daughter, Alta Jane Robbins, was born on 15 April 1951. After a divorce, he married Wanda M. Falls at Bettles Field, Alaska on September 20, 1957. They had no children. Ormond was unable to serve in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

due to a 4f classification, but he and Jane were accepted by the Civil Aeronautics Administration (now the FAA) for outpost positions in Alaska. Ormond served as station manager, while Jane was a communications operator. Their first assignment was Nome, then

Kotzebue Kotzebue ( ) or Qikiqtaġruk ( , ) is a city in the Northwest Arctic Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. It is the County seat, borough's seat, by far its largest community and the economic and transportation hub of the subregion of Alaska en ...

in 1945, and then Bettles Field in 1951. He transferred with Wanda to Northway, and became district manager at

Kenai Kenai (, ) ( Dena'ina: ; russian: Кенай, ''Kenay'') is a city in the Kenai Peninsula Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. It is one hundred and fifty-eight miles by road southwest from Anchorage. The population was 7,424 as of the 2020 cen ...

. In 1969, he transferred to

Anchorage Anchorage () is the largest city in the U.S. state of Alaska by population. With a population of 291,247 in 2020, it contains nearly 40% of the state's population. The Anchorage metropolitan area, which includes Anchorage and the neighboring Ma ...

, where he retired and became city manager at Kenai on January 20, 1970.''The Job No One Seemed to Want'', Clark Fair, The Redoubt Reporter, May 6, 2009, retrieved fro
redoubtreporter.wordpress.com
November 30, 2009. In 1974, Ormond and Wanda returned to Sunnyside, Washington to be near his father, his mother having died that year. After his father died in 1978, they moved to Seaside, Oregon, where Ormond died in 1984. He had survived both his first wife Jane and his daughter, and left no descendants.

Bibliography

Published Short Stories and Novelettes

(Attributed to "Ormond Robbins.")

*''Eternal'', Complete Stories - August 1929 #2 (poem) *''Detective Novel'', The Saturday Evening Post - December 1, 1934 (poem) *''Spirited Plea for a Return to the Old Order'', The Saturday Evening Post - March 30, 1935 (poem) *''Unknown Title'', Country Gentleman - June 1935 (poem)

(Attributed to "Dane Gregory" except where noted.)

*''Dead Hands Seek My Bride'',

Terror Tales ''Terror Tales'' was the name of two United States, American publications: a pulp magazine of the weird menace genre of the 1930s, and a horror comic in the 1960s and 1970s. Pulp magazine ''Terror Tales'' was originally published by Popular Publ ...

- January 1939 *''Golden Lady of Death'', Dime Mystery Magazine - April 1939 *''When the Black Dolls Die'', Dime Mystery Magazine - September 1939 *''I Steal Your Blood!'', Horror Stories - October 1939 *''Society of Corpses'', Dime Mystery Magazine - November 1939 *''Prison-Made Justice'', Detective Tales - December 1939 *''Girls for the Corpse Clan'', Horror Stories - December 1939 *''Monsters Made for Murder'', Dime Mystery Magazine - January 1940 *''Hardly Thicker Than Water'', Detective Tales - January 1940 *''Last Mile'', Detective Tales - February 1940 *''Scalps for the Butcher'', Dime Mystery Magazine - March 1940 *''Dead Men Laugh Last'', Detective Tales - April 1940 *''Golden Lady of Death'', Dime Mystery Magazine - April 1940 (a Rocky Rhodes novelette) *''Little Men from Hell'', Dime Mystery Magazine - May 1940 *''The Man with Two Souls'', Terror Tales - May 1940 *''Dopes Die Hard'', Detective Tales - October 1940 *''Death Winds the Clock'', Dime Mystery Magazine - October 1940 *''The Doomsday Book'', Terror Tales - November 1940 *''Peace McCabe's Bullet Mortgage'', 10 Story Western - December 1940 *''Dead Men Don't Need Alibis'', Detective Tales - December 1940 *''Beware the Crying Dead'', Dime Mystery Magazine - January 1941 *''Unknown Title'', Detective Tales - February 1941 *''Why Couldn’t She Stay Dead?'', Dime Mystery Magazine - March 1941 *''Remembrance of Horror'', Horror Stories - April 1941 *''Jackie Won’t Be Home'', Detective Tales - June 1941 *''The Man in the Murder Mask'', Dime Mystery Magazine - July 1941 *''My Night to Kill'', Detective Tales - August 1941 *''Murder Boss Of The Poverty Pool'' (with W. Wayne Robbins), 10 Story Western - September 1941 (correspondence from 3/4/1941, 4/24/1941) *''The Colonel Writes in Blood'', Dime Western Magazine - September 1941 *''Her Friend, the Killer'', Strange Detective Mysteries - October 1941 *''Her Friend, the Killer'', Strange Detective Mysteries (Canada) - November 1941 *''Murder Boss Of The Poverty Pool'' (with W. Wayne Robbins), 10 Story Western (Canada) - December 1941 *''The Silver Bell of San Gee'', Detective Tales - December 1941 *''All at Once—No Wednesday!'', Dime Mystery Magazine - January 1942 *''Pride of the Fighting O'Malleys'', Dime Western Magazine (Canada) - September 1942 *''One Lucky Corpse'', Detective Tales - February 1943 *''If Thy Right Hand Offend Thee'', Detective Tales - April 1943 *''Human Interest Story'',

Argosy Argosy or The Argosy may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * ''Argosy'' (magazine), an American pulp magazine 1882–1978 and revived 1990–1994, 2004–2006 * ''Argosy'' (UK magazine), three British magazines * Argosy spaceship in ''Escap ...

- March 1944 *''Save a Grave for Me!'', Detective Tales - October 1944 *''El Libro del Juicio Final'', Narraciones Terrorificas - June 1945 (translated and published by Editorial Molino, Argentina) *''The Mystery of Curly Bill'', .44 Western Magazine - July 1951 *''Death Song'', 10 Story Western - August 1952 *''No Town for a Tinhorn'', Dime Western Magazine - September 1952 *''Soronado Deadline'' (AKA ''Gun-Medicine Cures Texas Fever''; as Breck Tarrant), 10 Story Western - October 1952 *''Gun-Medicine Cures Texas Fever'', (AKA ''Soronado Deadline''; as Breck Tarrant), unknown issue *''Silvertip Courage'', 10 Story Western - February 1953 *''Wilderness Trap'', 15 Western tales - March 1953 *''Somebody Dies Tonight!'', Dime Western Magazine - March 1953 *''Unknown Title'', Detective Tales - April 1953 *''The Way of the Fighting O’Malleys'' (''Pride of the Fighting O'Malleys''), 10 Story Western - August 1953 *''Last Deadline'', Fifteen Western Tales - November 1953 *''Silent Be My Grave'', Fifteen Detective Stories - April 1954 *''Unknown Title'', Invincible Detective Magazine - April 1954 (Volume 5, Issue 53, Invincible Press, Sydney, Australia) *''Last Kill'', Western Story Magazine - April 1955

Other Works Accepted by Popular Publications

*''Judgment Seat'', January 20, 1941

Anthologized works

*''Jackie Won’t Be Home'', 100 Crooked Little Crime Stories, Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, & Martin H. Greenberg, Barnes & Noble Books, 1994, *''Jackie Won’t Be Home'', 100 Crooked Little Crime Stories, Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, & Martin H. Greenberg, Sterling Pub. Co. Inc., 2004, *''The Mandarin’s Thirty-Third Tooth'', It's Raining More Corpses in Chinatown, Don Hutchison, Adventure House, 2001, *''Unknown Title'', Tales of Mystery, Bill Pronzini, Bonanza Books, 1986, (includes selections by Hammett, Daly, McCoy, Nebel, Paul Cain, John D. MacDonald, Woolrich, Norbert Davis, Dane Gregory, D. L. Champion, Gault, Fredric Brown, and John Jakes) *''Unknown Title'', Mal de ojo y otros relatos de terror, 1973,

Footnotes

References

*''The Shudder Pulps'', Robert Kenneth Jones, Fax Collector's Editions Inc., 1975, . (Jones' work conflates the brothers Wayne and Ormond Robbins together with Ormond's pen name Dane Gregory, but otherwise provides a solid history of weird menace fiction.) *''Selected tales of Grim and Grue from the Horror Pulps'',

Sheldon Jaffery Sheldon Jaffery (April 22, 1934 – July 10, 2003) was an American bibliographer. An attorney by profession, he was an aficionado of'' Weird Tales'' magazine, Arkham House books, the weird menace pulps, and related topics. He died in 2003 of s ...

, Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1987, (hardcover), (paperback). *''The Weirds'', Sheldon Jaffery, Starmont House Inc., 1987, . {{DEFAULTSORT:Robbins, Ormond 20th-century American novelists American male novelists 1910 births 1984 deaths American crime fiction writers People from Seaside, Oregon 20th-century American male writers