MacNeil, Neil, 1903-1980

Willis Todhunter Ballard was born on December 13, 1903 in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended schools in Cleveland and Westtown, Pennsylvania and, in 1926, graduated from Wilmington College, Wilmington, Ohio. Right after college he began working for his father’s company, F. W. Ballard Company, as an engineer constructing power plants and transmission lines. He stayed there for two years.

His transition to a career as a professional writer began with the editorship of an electrical trade magazine. His first published story, “Gambler’s Luck,” appeared in Brief Stories in 1927. Ballard was a prolific writer and went on to write over a thousand stories for magazines such as Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Argosy, McCall’s, Esquire, and Liberty . He also wrote stories for pulp magazines such as Black Mask, Brief Stories, Dime Mystery, Popular Western, and Ranch Romances . Ballard wrote about fifty televison and movie scripts including The Outcast for Republic Pictures. Some television series he wrote for were “Cowboy G-Men,” “Death Valley Days,” “Shotgun Slade,” “Shannon,” and “Alias Smith and Jones.”

Ballard’s main interests as a writer were in the mystery and western genres. He wrote over seventy books under such pseudonyms as Brian Agar, P. D. Ballard, Todhunter Ballard, W. T. Ballard, Parker Bonner, Hunter D’Allard, Harrison Hunt, Tod Hunt, John Hunter, Neil MacNeil, John Shepherd, and others. Ballard wrote as part of a pool of writers hired by publisher Tower Books to write stories using the pseudonym of Jack Slade.

Ballard was an active member of the Western Writes of America. He served on the applications committee and also won their “Spur Award” in 1965 for Gold in California (Doubleday, 1965) as “best historical novel.”

After a long, successful career as a writer, Mr. Ballard died on December 27, 1980 in Mount Dora, Florida at the age of 77.

From the guide to the Todhunter Ballard papers, 1926-1975, (Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries)