Arthur Guy Empey (11 December 1883, Ogden, Utah –22 February 1963, Wadsworth, Kansas) was a soldier in both the British and American armies of World War I who later reinvented himself as an author, screenwriter, actor and prolific author of pulp fiction.
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Empey served for six years in the US Cavalry and was performing duty as a recruiting sergeant for the New Jersey National Guard at the time of the sinking of the Lusitania. He left the United States and travelled to England where he joined the Royal Fusiliers serving with the Machine Gun Company 1st Battalion London Regiment 56th (London) Infantry Division. He was medically discharged after he was wounded at the Battle of the Somme.[1]
Empey wrote a book of his experiences titled Over the Top that was later filmed in 1918 with Empey writing the screenplay and playing the lead role.[2] Empey had unsuccessfully attempted to join the US Army but was rejected due to his wounds. He was commissioned a Captain in the US Army Adjutant General's Department[3] but the commission was withdrawn three days later. There was speculation that the reason was that whilst appearing as an actor in a play of Pack Up Your Troubles, Empey gave a speech praising the European and French Armies, and the American volunteers—but not the draftees who were only fighting because they were compelled to. In the audience was President Woodrow Wilson.[4] Empey wrote several more screenplays and books on the First World War, and formed his own production company called Guy Empey Films. He was also a songwriter writing songs such as Your Lips are No Mans Land but Mine.
After the war Empey created the pulp fiction hero Terence X. O'Leary [5] who would explain "sure and the 'X' stands for 'xcillint'". Empey's O'Leary appeared in a variety of pulp magazines such as War Stories (Dell), Battle Stories (Fawcett), with the Infantryman O'Leary also doing duty as a Military Policeman, Secret Service Agent and Foreign Legionnaire, later becoming an aviator in War Birds (Dell). The latter magazine was later retitled Terence X O'Leary's War Birds.[6] With the start of O'Leary's name on the publication the magazine changed from O'Leary fighting the First World War to science fiction adventure with O'Leary fighting "Unuk, High Priest to the God of the Depths" a 500 year old madman who has seized an island in the South Pacific, kidnapped scientists and turned them into zombies to perfect amazing weapons to attack the United States in O'Leary Fights the Golden Ray and O'Leary, Dyno-Blaster, or Adventure of the Ageless Men.[7] with the magazine ending after its third issue The Purple Warriors of Neptunia. A few more stories with O'Leary did appear after this in War Stories and Battle Stories.
In 1935 he organised a unit of volunteer cavalrymen called the Hollywood Hussars that included several film stars such as Victor McLaglen and Gary Cooper with Ted Parsons as personnel officer.[8] The Hussars were a uniformed paramilitary horse mounted organisation whose bylaws stated they would turn out in any emergency except labour disputes.[9] Headquartered in the Hollywood Athletic Club they were a volunteer "military-social unit" "devoted to the advancement of American ideals".[8]
He is the father of actress Diane Webber.