S. Gordon Gurwit (1887-1955)

Newspaper Reporter, Cartoonist, Author, Poet, Playwright, Screenwriter, Painter, Pianist

Born December 14, 1887, New York, New York

Died March 11, 1955, Miami, Florida

Samuel Gordon Gurwit was born on December 14, 1887, in New York City. His parents, Isaac and Lucy (Rosenberg) Gurivit or Gurevit, were Russian-born Jewish immigrants recently arrived in America. Their surname is a variation of Gurevich or Gurevitch and related to Horowitz, denoting an origin in Horovice, a place in Bohemia, now in the Czech Republic. We have seen another variation of that name before: Richard S. Shaver's first wife was Sophie Gurvitch (1903-1936).

I haven't found the Gurivit family in the 1900 census, but in 1910, they were in Chicago. Isaac was a designer in a cloak and suit factory. Both Samuel G. Gurivit and his younger brother Peter S. Gurivit (1893-1971) were working as newspaper cartoonists. Also in the household was thirteen-year-old May Gurivit.

On May 11, 1917, in Chicago, Samuel G. Gurwit--note the change in spelling--married Ruth Stein (1894-1981). Their son, Montgomery Stanhope "Monte" Gurwit, was born three years and a month later, on June 13, 1920, in Chicago. No one knew it then, but a writing family was thereby formed. Many years later, a Florida newspaper columnist called them "the 'writingest' family in St. Petersburg." ("Your Pinellas: Writing Family" by Peter Pinellas, Tampa Bay Times, June 17, 1941, p. 2.)

S. Gordon Gurwit started selling his stories and poems at around that time. His first credit in The FictionMags Index is an item called "--The Harder They Fall" in The Parisienne Monthly Magazine for February 1921. Before the year was out, he had a story in Breezy Stories, a poem in Snappy Stories, and his first genre story, "The Ghost Plays a Hand," in Mystery Magazine. Gurwit had his first story, called "The Letter," in Weird Tales in March 1933. His next contribution was a letter to "The Eyrie," published in June 1933. In all, Gurwit had dozens of stories and poems in pulp magazines and story magazines from 1921 to 1941. And then his byline seems to have disappeared, or at least that's the story suggested by the list in The FictionMags Index. Gurwit had previously been treated for incipient tuberculosis. A newspaper photograph from 1941 (below) shows him to have been very slightly built. (He was also smoking a cigarette or cigar.) Could he have fallen ill?

The Gurwit family was in Chicago in 1930, Manhattan in 1935, Pelham Manor, New York, in 1936, and in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1940. (Their name was spelled "Gurevit" that year.) By 1950, they were in Miami. Monte was a writer for magazines in 1950. Neither his father nor his mother gave an occupation.

S. Gordon Gurwit died five years later, on March 11, 1955, in Miami. He was sixty-seven years old. He was buried at Mount Nebo Cemetery in West Miami. Gurwit's widow married his brother, Peter Sherlock Gurwit, on June 11, 1957, in Alexandria, Virginia. Once employed with the Jahn & Ollier Printing Company in Chicago, Peter Gurwit died in 1971. Ruth Stein Gurwit Gurwit died in 1981, and her son Monte on July 8, 1993, in Lee County, Florida. Thus the writing Gurvits came to an end. They seem to have been a close and happy family.

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S. Gordon Gurwit got his start as a reporter and cartoonist in 1909 working for the Denver Republican. In 1910, he moved to the New York Journal, where he was an assistant to editor Arthur Brisbane (1864-1936). From 1911 to 1914, he traveled in Europe while working for the London Graphic. Gurwit began writing fiction while he was working as a newspaper reporter. He also wrote poetry and at least one play, Other Men's Wives, which was adapted to film, possibly in 1919 under the same title. Gurwit may also have written movie scenarios, but I haven't found any credits for him in that realm.

From 1921 to 1941, Gurwit had dozens of stories in Argosy All-Story Weekly and Argosy, Breezy Stories, Five-Novels Monthly, Holland's Magazine, Liberty, Nickel Detective, Snappy Stories, South Sea Stories, Thrilling Adventures, Thrilling Detective, Thrilling Western, Wayside Tales, and other titles. He had three stories in Weird Tales and one in The Magic Carpet Magazine. He also had two letters in "The Eyrie." In its issue of August 10, 1938, the London Evening Standard published his "Law Is Law," No. 98 in its Six Minute Short Story series (p. 19). He also wrote a hardbound novel called Alias the Promised Land (1939).

Again, Gurwit led a writing family. Using the pen name Ruth Goodwin, his wife Ruth (Stein) Gurwit (1894-1981) wrote romances that appeared in Sweetheart Stories, Thrilling Love, and possibly other titles in 1941-1942. She was also a singer and worked in radio. The Gurwits' son, Monte Gurwit, wrote true crime articles as well as short stories, also for pulp magazines and story magazines. He was also a photographer and cartoonist and sometimes illustrated his own stories. He had true crime stories in Official Detective (Dec. 1940) and Intimate Detective. His name is not in The FictionMags Index. Maybe he wrote under a pseudonym like his mother. Official Detective and Intimate Detective are also not in that index, so no luck finding him in that way, either.

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S. Gordon Gurwit's Stories & Letters in Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazines
(from the Internet Speculative Fiction Database)
"The Letter" in Weird Tales (Mar. 1933)
Letter to "The Eyrie" in Weird Tales (June 1933)
Letter in Astounding Stories (Jan. 1934)
"Speed Planes for Moscow" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (Jan. 1934)
"World Flight" in Astounding Stories (Jan. 1934)
"The Pistol" in Weird Tales (Oct. 1934)
"The Golden Glow" in Weird Tales (Nov. 1934)
"'G'-Trap in Secret Agent X (Oct. 1936)

Further Reading

"Writing Gurwits Only Triple-Threat Family in St. Petersburg" by Dick Bothwell in the Tampa Bay Times, September 7, 1941, page 16. By the way, Bothwell was one of the first artists to draw a picture of the Flatwoods Monster.

S. Gordon Gurwit's "Speed Planes for Moscow" was the cover story in The Magic Carpet Magazine in January 1934. The artist was Margaret Brundage.

Gurwit had another cover story, "The Masked Terror, or, The Voice on the Wire," in Nickel Detective, March 1933. The cover artist was Eric Lundgren.

Gurwit's "G-Trap," a "G-Man" novelette, was the cover story of Secret Agent X Detective Mysteries. This cover, executed by William F. Luberoff, has a weird component.

I always like to show foreign-language versions of American short stories and novels. Here's "Dubbel Dynamit" by S. Gordon Gurwit in Detektivmagasinet Number 30. I don't know the title of the original story. I'm also not sure whether this is a Norwegian or a Danish title. This image is a distorted version of the original that I found on the Internet.

The Writing Gurwits, left to right, Monte, Ruth, and S. Gordon Gurwit, from 1941.

Text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley