Hubert La Due (1891-1946)

Author, Editor, Critic, Lecturer, Journalist

Born January 15, 1891, Alameda, California

Died April 2, 1946, Omaha, Nebraska

Hubert William La Due was born on January 15, 1891, in Alameda, California. His career in journalism began at Ontario High School in Ontario, California, when he began sending news items to the Los Angeles Express for a dollar or two per day. La Due gave the farewell speech at his graduation in 1909. As an aspiring writer, he joined The Black Cat Club in the pages of The Black Cat magazine and in November 1916 won a $5 prize for the best criticisms of stories in the magazine. Earlier that year he had reported in an article for The Editor that at age twenty-five he had made exactly $12,350.00 from his writing.

Hubert La Due contributed to Action Stories, Argosy, Breezy Stories, Clues, The Dragnet Magazine, People's Favorite Magazine, Top-Notch, Short Stories, Western Story Magazine, and other titles between 1918 and 1939. A movie called Lovetime, released in 1921, was based on his story. He was also the editor of The Story World and Photodramatist magazine and wrote one story for Weird Tales, "The Soul of Peter Andrus," for the September 1923 issue. In addition, La Due was a member of the Board of Critics of the Palmer Institute of Authorship. He also lectured on the writing of fiction at the University of Redlands.

La Due lived in various places in California over the course of his short life, including Upland, Redlands, South Gate, and Yucaipa. He moved from Yucaipa to Lincoln, Nebraska, in late 1942, where he worked as assistant city editor of the Lincoln Star. He died less than four years later, on April 2, 1946, in Omaha, Nebraska. The cause was pneumonia. He was buried in Redlands.

Hubert La Due's Story in Weird Tales

"The Soul of Peter Andrus" (Sept. 1923)

Further Reading

"Prostituting Talent" by Herbert La Due in The Editor, July 15, 1916, pp. 62-66, here.

A still from Lovetime (1921) with Shirley Mason and Raymond McKee, a movie based on Hubert La Due's story.

Text copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley