Newton wrote western fiction starting in the pulps, including Lariat Story Magazine, 5 Western Novels Magazine, .44 Western Magazine and New Western Magazine. He wrote under the bylines D.B. Newton or Dwight Bennett.
In a 2008 interview with The Bulletin, in Bend, Ore., Newton, then 92, recalled a Saturday morning in May 1938:
I remember I was sitting there and here comes a little envelope from Newsstand Publications. I set it aside and had my breakfast, because I wasn’t going to eat any more if it was what I thought it was. But it was a check for $60, to D.B. Newton, for a 12,000-word novel. The letter said it was due out in Western Novels and Short Stories, and I went up to the drug store, and there it was, on the newsstand: My story. And that was the biggest day of my life.
That first story was “Brand of the Hunted.” He went on to write more than 70 novels, including “Crooked River Canyon,” “Guns of the Rimrock” and “Oregon Rifles.”
Newton also spent about three years writing scripts for TV westerns, including “Wagon Train,” “Cimarron City,” “Tales of Wells Fargo” and “Shotgun Slade.”
You can read more about Newton in the 2008 article.
Hat tip to Mark Anderson for posting a note about Newton’s death on the WesternPulps group at Yahoo.
