In purely material accomplishment, not even
an Anthony Adverse or a Ben Hur can compare with Tarzan, acrobat of the
jungle. Nor has any author more thoroughly exploited his literary produce
than has Mr. Edgar Rice Burroughs of Tarzana, California. Some of his stories
are pretty lousy, Mr. Burroughs admits, “but they sell,” he says simply.
“That’s what’s important.”
They certainly sell. The Tarzan books have been translated
into twenty-two languages; they are the standard items of Arabian publishers
and well thought of among readers of Hindustani; they have been best sellers
in England, Sweden, Austrialia, and Italy. They continue to be so in America.
Every two years a new Tarzan volume is scheduled for publication; and before
the new saga is bound in cloth covers at two dollars a copy, every yard
has first been wholesaled as a serial.
Tarzan, however, is rather more than just a literary
figure. He is also a radio act; a film hero; a familiar figure to readers
of the comic strips; and one whose name has lent authority to such diverse
commodities as gum, garters, and inflated rubber toys. He is, in fact,
a property any author would be glad to own.
Mr Burroughs was not always an author; he became one
at the age of thirty-three. He had already been a cavalryman, cowboy, railroad
policeman, gold dredger, patent-medicine salesman and vendor of a drunkards;
cure-all. He also did something not very profitable with a patent pencil
sharpener. Eventually he owned half of the patent-medicine outfit; then
he transferred his allegiance to a business counsel service in Chicago.
In 1910, while he was still with the business counsel
service, a friend informed him that magazine writers received staggering
sums of money. This was apparently the first time that Mr. Burroughs had
a heard the news; he at once decided to get a piece of this money for himself.
He constructed a romance entitled The Princess of Mars, which concerns
a young man who arrives on the planet Mars and falls in love with a Princess.
Although the Princess laid eggs (very well, you read it then), the serial,
on its appearance in All Story Magazine, scarcely caused a flutter among
that publication’s hardened readers.
But Mr. Burroughs was paid for it: $400. This miracle
inflicted upon him his one and only spasm of creative vertigo. He spent
six months boning up on English history in order to produce a masterpiece
called The Outlaw of Torn; it was thick with knights, dukes, and Tudor
atmosphere; but it was pretty much of a bust financially. This taught him
his lesson. Henceforth, he was to waste no time on literary background.
In 1912, Mr. Burroughs sent the editors of the old
All-Story Weekly the uncompleted manuscript of his third adventure tale,
Tarzan of the Apes, having for his principal character a young man reared
and cherished by the primordial apes of darkest Africa. The editors were
so ravished by the original plot idea (Mr. Burrough swears he never though
of Kipling’s Mowgli) that they purchased the story and impatiently waited
delivery.
For the Tarzan saga the author relied on what he remembered
of Stanley’s Darkest Africa, and when Darkest Africa failed him he fell
back on a prodigious invention. That saved time. Mr. Burroughs hates to
see time or energy to waste. An efficient and economical man, he was even
able to salvage most of that six months’ historical research.
This was done by transferring Old England to darkest
Africa in the third of his Tarzan series, which revolves around the simple
theme of a Tudor colony—which had somehow or other been lost in the jungle
four centuries ago, and survived unchanged into the present day. A man
who can have his heroine lay eggs on the planet Mars isn’t one to be troubled
by his readers’ feelings when they happen upon a description of sixteenth
century knights wandering through Africa in modern times.
By 1913, with three serials marketed, he decided to
devote himself entirely to fiction. So, he and his family trekked to California.
A year later, a publisher was finally discovered who would risk committing
Tarzan of the Apes to a book. Not that it was much of a risk—America seemed
to be filled with nature lovers, who took the mighty Tarzan immediately
to their bosoms. The book rocketed through one edition after another, into
the astonishing sales figures of three million copies. With his royalties,
in 1915, Mr. Burroughs purchased the old Otis estate fifteen miles outside
of Los Angeles; gratefully renamed it “Tarzana Ranch”; and, for the next
decade, slaved away at this task of author, turning out 24 book-length
novels, including six more of the imperishable jungle series.
Meanwhile, Selig Pictures had purchased The Lad and
the Lion in 1916; National Films, Tarzan of the Apes, in 1918, one of the
first of the silent to gross over a million dollars; National Films, Romance
of Tarzan, the same year; Universal, The Return of Tarzan, in 1919; Century,
Adventures of Tarzan, in 1920; and West Brothers, Sons of Tarzan, in 1922.
Middlewesterners had already started moving west to
their vision of Paradise. As they passed by his ranch, Mr. Burroughs began
to feel the old urge to strike his pitch and begin selling things to the
multitude. He subdivided Tarzana ranch into lots, and soon the pleasant
township or Tarzana spread out beneath the sterile blue California sky.
In 1923, deciding that book publisher’s practice of demanding 65 to 90%
of the gross returns from authors’ brain-children was too much of a good
thing, he organized the Edgar Rice Burroughs Corporation, elected himself
president, and proceeded to publish and market his own literary wares and
also to consolidate his real estate activities.
From 1923 to 1929 he sold Tarzan and the Golden Lion
to F.B.O., Tarzan the Mighty and Tarzan and the Tiger to Universal; he
also sold his Tarzana home to the Tarzana Golf Club, Inc.; obtained a Tarzana
post office from the Government; assisted at the inauguration of the Tarzana
Chamber of Commerce, which has regularly communed once a week ever since.
He also limited himself to four hours a day before a Dictaphone, uttering
twelve eighty thousand word novels. Not one of them received a rejection
slip, either from the magazines or from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
Tarzan the Tiger was released in 1930 during the mournful
demise of the silent films. The talking-picture came as no surprise to
a gentleman who had already blandly written of the scientific marvels of
interplanetary communication and travel. He found a small motion picture
company which, delighted with the idea of a Tarzan learning to speak, purchased
the sound rights to Tarzan the Fearless.
The depression stopped these plans; Tarzan the Fearless
remained unproduced. But Mr. Burroughs has never been easily discouraged.
He went to M.G.M’s white-headed boy, Mr. Irving Thalberg, with Tarzan the
Ape-man. When it appeared in 1932, starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen
O’Sullivan, out of the entire industry only the author and the psychic
Mr. Thalberg were prepared for the extraordinary run which followed.
Immediately, Mr. Sol Lesser bought the rights to Tarzan
the Fearless from the producers who had first obtained them from the trusting
Mr. Burroughs. And, despite the acute embarrassment of the author, who
had sold M.G.M. a sequel, Tarzan and His Mate, Mr. Lesser coldly turned
his legal property into a rather muddy serial featuring Mr. Buster Crabbe.
For the next half year, millions of nature lovers, to whom practically
nothing comes amiss, were nevertheless faintly bewildered by the spectacle
of two Tarzans bounding and screaming with equal verve among the branches
of large studio trees.
But now all is well. Mr. Burroughs recently disposed
of his thirteenth Tarzan scenario. It has been taken by M.G.M. for a third
Johnny Weissmuller thriller. . .
Mr. Burroughs does not care to leave his offices in
Tarzana. He is furiously occupied with his various projects. Three years
ago, for instance, he placed his eldest son, Mr. Hulbert Burroughs, in
charge of a newly formed radio division of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.;
contracted with an independent radio producer to make a group of Tarzan
records based on the Tarzan stories; arranged for his daughter, Joan, to
play “Jane Porter.” The delicious heroine of the “Tarzan Radio Act”, as
it is named; had Mr. James H. Pierce, a former cinema Tarzan who eventually
wedded Miss Burroughs, return to service as the radio Tarzan; and, in two
years, through the independent radio producer, had sold the “Tarzan Radio
Act” to stations in every state of the union.
This would have pleased a man of lesser clay; but Mr.
Burroughs was not happy. He likes to keep Tarzan entirely in the family.
Just as he did with his books, so he took over the entire radio business.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., announced to the trade: “The elimination of
a middleman’s profit and overhead allows us to furnish this program at
a very reasonable figure, while permitting an increase in the cost of production
to insure the best act it is possible to offer.”
So far, forty-one sponsors, including such well-known
firms as the Signal Oil & Gas Co., Reed Tobacco Co., Royal Baking Powder
Co., and the venerable H.J. Heinz Co., have sold merchandise by means of
Tarzan records broadcast throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia.
In all his multitudinous activities Mr. Burroughs may be hell on the middleman,
but his two organizations have excluded splendid dividends throughout the
depression.
Two years ago Mr. Burroughs had another brilliant idea.
He contracted with a national newspaper syndicate to sell Tarzan comic-strips.
By August of this year, one hundred and sixty daily papers were using the
daily strip, drawn by Mr. Rex Mason from material based on the Tarzan stories;
ninety-three Sunday newspapers were publishing a full page in color of
Tarzan adventures, drawn by Mr. Harold Foster from original material by
a ghost writer, under Mr. Burroughs’ supervision.
Back in 1913, Mr. Burroughs had the foresight to register
“Tarzan” as a trade mark. To date, he has licensed twenty-eight commodities
to use the Tarzan name, the list including such items as Tarzan sweat shirts,
Tarzan bread, Tarzan ice-cream cups, candy, masks, card games, rubber inflated
toys, sponge balls, celluloid buttons, bats, bathing suits, gum, garters,
and coffee. Tarzan bill-boards advertise to the devout public that a new
commodity has “The Strength of Tarzan”. One company received permission
to develop a Tarzan club: 125,000 members were enrolled. “Every member
a potential salesman”, declares a Tarzan broadside; this same document
states that any business may receive an “official instruction book for
the formation of the Tarzan Clan among boys and girls”—a valuable service,
which, of course, is not offered free by the Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
From his vast experience, Mr. Burroughs has returned
to one of his earlier vocations and again provides merchandising counsel
to businessmen. One of his brochures states: “We have an organization that
is prepared to assist in working out merchandising campaigns for sponsors;
and as owners of Tarzan copyright and a wide range of Tarzan trade marks,
we are in a position to make use of the Tarzan name in many lines.”
He continues to write as diligently as when he started.
His presses are already hard at work, turning out (1) his Tarzan saga,
(2) a Martian epic, (3) a many-volumed account of adventures at the earth’s
core, (4) a new saga of life on the planet Venus.
This incredible activity seems to have no effect on
him. He rides horseback, plays tennis regularly, learned to fly a few months
ago, and now his private plane. He is nearly sixty. He could pass for forty-five.
He is brown and bald, stocky, has small, sharp eyes with a curiously genial
squint, talks in short, quick sentences like a stock-broker with one eye
always cocked at the tape, and allocates his time according to the second
hand of a watch. He has sold his Tarzana home long ago. He works at his
office in the pleasant Spanish-type building of the Edgar Rice Burroughs
Corporation in Tarzana, but lives at Malibu near the motion-picture stars.
Finally, having exploited Tarzan as diligently as would
the owner of a tooth-paste or washing-machine factory, he is making certain
that his Tarzan saga will continue beyond the span of the founder. He is
setting up a Tarzan dynasty.
Mr. Hulbert Burroughs, a young man of twenty-five or
so, is already in active charge of Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. He is being
trained to step into his father’s position. Modestly, Hulbert Burroughs
admits that he “will carry on with Tarzan.”
A few weeks ago, Mr. Burroughs organized a second corporation—Burroughs-Tarzan
Enterprises, Inc.—and put Hulbert Rice Burroughs in charge of that, too.
Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises Inc., will film a new series of Tarzan epics
with authentic scenic background. The first will be called Tarzan in Guatemala;
it will follow M.G.N.’s still untitled Tarzan romance. Although the new
Tarzan adventures ma eventually be produced in darkest Africa, Mr. Burroughs,
Sr. doesn’t think he will go. He hasn’t ever been there.
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