Ormond Orlea Robbins (March 14, 1910 – July 21, 1984) was an American author of hardboileddetective fiction and weird fiction. His work was primarily published in the Popular Publications 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.[1]
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.
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 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. 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 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.[2] Their first assignment was Nome, then Kotzebue in 1945, and then Bettles Field in 1951.[3] He transferred with Wanda to Northway, and became district manager at Kenai.[4] In 1969, he transferred to Anchorage, where he retired and became city manager at Kenai on January 20, 1970.[5]
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 - January 1939
Golden Lady of Death, Dime Mystery Magazine - April 1939
When the Black Dolls Die, Dime Mystery Magazine - September 1939
Jackie Won’t Be Home, 100 Crooked Little Crime Stories, Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, & Martin H. Greenberg, Barnes & Noble Books, 1994, ISBN1-56619-556-X
Jackie Won’t Be Home, 100 Crooked Little Crime Stories, Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, & Martin H. Greenberg, Sterling Pub. Co. Inc., 2004, ISBN1-4027-1100-X
The Mandarin’s Thirty-Third Tooth, It's Raining More Corpses in Chinatown, Don Hutchison, Adventure House, 2001, ISBN1-886937-55-9
Unknown Title, Tales of Mystery, Bill Pronzini, Bonanza Books, 1986, ISBN0-517-61819-2 (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)
^CAA Mukluk Telegraph, July 1947, p. 30, retrieved from atchistory.org November 30, 2009.
^CAA Mukluk Telegraph, November 1948, p. 17, retrieved from atchistory.org November 30, 2009.
^FAA Telephone Directory - Alaskan Region, January 1968, p. 9, retrieved from atchistory.org November 30, 2009.
^The Job No One Seemed to Want, Clark Fair, The Redoubt Reporter, May 6, 2009, retrieved from redoubtreporter.wordpress.com November 30, 2009.
References
The Shudder Pulps, Robert Kenneth Jones, Fax Collector's Editions Inc., 1975, ISBN0-913960-04-7. (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.)
