James R. Webb
American writer (1909-1974)
James Ruffin Webb (October 4, 1909 – September 27, 1974) was an American screenwriter. He was best known for writing the screenplay for the film How the West Was Won (1962), which garnered widespread critical acclaim and earned him an Academy Award.
Biography
Early life
Webb was born in Denver in 1909 and graduated from Stanford University in 1930. He became a fiction writer for national magazines, including Collier's: The National Weekly, Cosmopolitan, and The Saturday Evening Post, in 1936 and a screenwriter two years later.
Early screenplays
Webb's early screenplays were written for Republic Pictures. He did a series of films starring Roy Rogers and directed by Joseph Kane: Nevada City (1941), Bad Man of Deadwood (1941), Jesse James at Bay (1941) and South of Santa Fe (1942) with Roy Rogers. He also did Rags to Riches (1941) directed by Kane.
World War II
Webb was commissioned an army officer in June 1942 and became a personal aide to General Lloyd R. Fredendall who was commander of the II Corps. Webb accompanied Fredendall to England in October 1942 and participated in the invasion of North Africa in November 1942 when the Second Corps captured the city of Oran. The Second Corps then attacked eastward into Tunisia.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “James R. Webb” is american writer (1909-1974). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through James, Webb and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q505675. VIAF identifies the subject as 42035545. The Library of Congress control number is nr91002240. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1909, 1974, 1962 and 1930.
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This entry incorporates text from “James R. Webb” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.