Ellis Amburn inducted into Schieffer Hall of Fame

Fort Worth, TX

9/24/2007

Ellis Amburn, a 1954 TCU journalism graduate and well-known book editor and biographer has been named the 2007 inductee for TCU’s Schieffer School of Journalism Hall of Excellence. Amburn was inducted into the Hall at the Journalism Exes Breakfast Saturday, Sept. 22.
“Ellis is known as an exhaustive researcher, resulting in books that are considered excellent insights into their subjects,” said Tommy Thomason, director of the Schieffer School.   “Ellis Amburn will make an outstanding addition to a Hall of Excellence designed to honor TCU graduates who have made significant contributions in mass communications.”
Thomason also notes that Amburn “has brought the instincts of a reporter – especially his noted expertise as an interviewer – to his work as a biographer.”
Amburn was editor for such authors as John le Carré, Belva Plain, Muriel Spark, Joshua Logan and Jack Kerouac.  He wrote Kerouac’s 1998 biography, Subterranean Kerouac:  The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac.
He also is the author of celebrity biographies of Janis Joplin, Warren Beatty, Elizabeth Taylor, Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison. He worked as a ghostwriter on autobiographies of Priscilla Presley, Shelley Winters, Peggy Lee and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Amburn worked as a reporter at Newsweek following his graduation from TCU.   He entered the book publishing industry to work for G.P. Putnam’s Sons, and has also worked at Delacorte Press, Coward McCann, and William Morrow.
The induction was held at Joe T. Garcia’s Restaurant.
Other members of the Schieffer School’s Hall of Excellence are journalism educators Warren Agee and J. Willard Ridings; CBS newsman Bob Schieffer; Broadway and TV actress Betty Buckley; newspaper editor Ken Bunting; sports journalist Dan Jenkins; Washington Post online journalism pioneer Johnny Livengood; writers Bud Shrake, Gary Cartwright, and Skip Hollandsworth, public relations practitioners Jerre Todd and Camille Keith, and Society of Professional Journalists executive Russell Hurst.