Frederick Benjamin Gipson was an American writer and screenwriter born on a farm near Mason in the Texas Hill Country. He is best known for writing Old Yeller, published in 1956, which became a popular Walt Disney film the following year. Before establishing himself as a writer, Gipson worked at various farming and ranching jobs. In 1933, he enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, where he wrote for the Daily Texan and The Ranger. He left school before graduating to pursue a career in newspaper journalism. Gipson spent his entire life in the Mason area, where he was born in 1908 and died in 1973.