And so in the early months of 1912 a new star of the pulps was born, and Burroughs would soon tower as the strongest force in the pulps, a purveyor of “scientific romance” that would soon evolve into science fiction later in the century -- a century whose first half would be dominated by Burroughs.
Burroughs and Hollywood 1912-1950
In a letter on March 6, 1912, shortly after Under the Moons of Mars had been published, Burroughs described a new novel he was working on:27
The story I am now on is the scion of a noble English house -- of the present time -- who was born in tropical Africa where the parents die when he was about a year old. The infant was found and adopted by a huge she-ape, and was brought up among a band of fierce anthropoids...
Burroughs completed the 98,000 word story, which he called Tarzan of the Apes, on May 14, 1912, and sent it immediately to Metcalf. Meanwhile Burroughs, out of money and not able to support his family from his primary position at Coleman’s Stationery, took a second position as manager for the Bureau of Systems: The Magazine of Business Efficiency. Tarzan would so please Metcalf that he paid Burroughs $700 for serial rights, with the much needed check reaching Burroughs on June 26, and devoted an entire All-Story edition, October 1912, to the publication of the full story.
Yet even though Burroughs was a smashing success with both Under the Moons of Mars and Tarzan, with readers clamoring for a sequel to both, Metcalf objected to the approach Burroughs took with the sequel, Return of Tarzan, and turned it down. Burroughs, exhibiting hardheadedness for the first time, stuck to his version and sold it to rival Street and Smith for $1000, which was $300 more than Metcalf had paid for the serial rights to Tarzan. Metcalf was incensed; what is more important, he was in trouble his managing editor Bob Davis, for letting the most successful author in the All-Story stable go to a rival publisher with the sequel to the most successful story ever published by All-Story. Soon thereafter Metcalf informed Burroughs that he was being reassigned, and from that point on it was Davis who handled Burroughs.
The dustup with Metcalf behind him, Burroughs began to churn out stories at a remarkable pace. In 1913 Burroughs, by his own reckoning,28 wrote and submitted stories totaling 413,000 words including At the Earth’s Core, the first Pellucidar novel of an inner world within the Earth; The Return of Tarzan; The Cave Girl; Number Thirteen; The Girl from Harris; The Mucker; and Warlord of Mars, the third installment and completion of the initial Martian Trilogy.
Even as his pulp career flourished, Burroughs’ efforts to get his serialized novels published as books met obstacle after obstacle. Throughout 1913 and into 1914 Burroughs submitted Tarzan of the Apes and Under the Moons of Mars to book publishers -- but there were no takers. Besides the blow to Burroughs’ ego, this meant that there was no royalty stream of income -- only the payments from the pulps for first serial rights -- and that meant that the money flowed only as long as Burroughs remained productive, which he did.
As the fall of 1913 arrived in Chicago, Burroughs felt the lure of the warm sunshine of California, and in September the author and his family of five left Chicago for California with the expectation that they would spend the winter there, and return to Chicago in the spring.
With the move to California would come the first steps toward the century-long journey of John Carter, gentleman of Virginia, from pulp pages to cinema screens.
The Burroughs family spent the fall and winter of 1913-1914 in San Diego. Although he was unsuccessful in getting his stories published as novels, Burroughs encountered more success in arranging secondary serialization with newspapers and magazines. By the time the family arrived in California, Tarzan of the Apes had been successfully serialized in the New York Evening World Magazine Newspaper. Other stories ran in the Evening World, and more newspapers began to pick up Burroughs’ output. Burroughs and family returned to Chicago, and remained there for two more years -- but the lure of California remained strong.
During the summer of 1916, Burroughs took his entire family, including an Airedale named Tarzan, on a 6,000 mile journey which Burroughs called “auto-gypsying” and lasted three months, ending with the family alighting in Los Angeles. There they took up residence for the winter at a rented house on Hoover Street, a scant four miles from Hollywood. Burroughs continued his prodigious writing output, logging 277,000 words published in spite of the lengthy “gypsying” respite, while also continuing his efforts to get his works produced as motion pictures. Once in Hollywood, he redoubled those efforts.
Hollywood’s first Edgar Rice Burroughs story to be released as a film, The Lad and the Lion, premiered in May of 1917, less than a month after the US had declared war on Germany and entered World War I. Aside from The Lad and the Lion, progress was being made toward the first Tarzan of the Apes movie, and in August of that year, trade magazines reported that National Film’s Los Angeles studio was in preparation for the production of Tarzan of the Apes. For the rights, Burroughs was paid $5,000 cash and given a $50,000 equity share in the movie.
During the fall of 1917, National Film went into production of Tarzan of the Apes, principally in Louisiana. It was a grand scale production that included 11,000 extras, 40 aerial acrobats, four lions, six tigers, several elephants, and 18 apes.29 The struggles of the production were extraordinary and Burroughs, unhappy with the casting of Elmo Lincoln and disappointed with the script of the movie, dumped his 10,000 shares of motion picture stock in December, and in January 1918 declined to attend the premiere. The film was a huge success, becoming one of the first motion pictures to gross one million dollars. A year later a second Tarzan movie, The Romance of Tarzan, was released, and was also successful.
In spite of his unhappiness with the National Film production of Tarzan of the Apes, Burroughs decided that he wished the family to live permanently in California. In 1922, Burroughs purchased the legendary Mil Flores country estate for $125,000 -- 540 acres in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains in the San Fernando Valley a few miles north of Hollywood. Burroughs re-christened the estate, which included a spectacular Spanish style villa overlooking the mountains to one side and the valley to the other, as “Tarzana.” The grand house stood atop a hill and had eighteen rooms and six baths. The hill on which is was situated contained fifteen acres set in flowers, shrubs and trees. Half a mile up the canyon there was a foreman’s house, bunkhouses, barns, and corrals.
By all accounts, Burroughs thrived at the Tarzana ranch. Early mornings he would ride into the Santa Monica Mountains; the gardens and pools surrounding the property were delightful for the children, and the proximity to Hollywood was convenient, as evidenced in a letter to Herbert T. Weston dated May 8:30 “There have been three motion picture men up in the past two days.....I guess our move to sunny Southern Cal will provide profitable from the m.p. standpoint, as I am nearer to where they do it.” Burroughs also wrote that “a guy bobbed up day before yesterday with the plan of a whole village he wished to plant in my front yard -- school, city hall, banks, business houses, motion picture theater, and it was labelled: City of Tarzana, which sounds like a steamboat.”
By 1919, The Romance of Tarzan had been completed and successfully released to cinemas. On the Barsoomian front, his Martian trilogy consisting of A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, and Warlord of Mars, was complete, but he had yet to get any bites from Hollywood for the series. Interest remained high in Tarzan, and in 1921 Burroughs’ involvement in motion picture production increased with The Son of Tarzan, a 15-episode serial by National Film, the same company that had aroused Burroughs’ ire with their handling of Tarzan of the Apes. Burroughs himself, using his Tarzana Ballroom Theater as editing studio, cut the 15-episode serial into a single feature length picture.
Later that year Burroughs sent a scenario, Angels’ Serenade, to Century Film Corporation in Hollywood, only to be rejected. Another Tarzan movie -- this one again starring Elmo Lincoln -- followed, entitled The Adventures of Tarzan.
Attesting to the popularity of Tar
zan, in 1922 the film rights to Jungle Tales of Tarzan and Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar were sold for what was then an astronomical price of $40,000 to the Stern Brothers and Louis Jacob, who a few months later and partly on the strength of the acquisition of the rights, formed Universal Pictures.
Still no Mars project.
By 1926 the last of the Tarzan silent movies, Tarzan and the Golden Lion, was in production, but when Burroughs saw the final product, his only comment was that he wished he knew enough about film production to have directed it himself.
Still no Mars project.
Meanwhile, Burroughs fame, and for the most part, his wealth, continued to grow. By the early 1920s, his annual domestic royalties topped $100,000 a year and that was in addition to his first serial rights payments. He became an advocate for author’s rights, and he was the first author to self-incorporate, creating Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., the company that remains active today and continues to administer his rights. The offices for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., a small bungalow and warehouse built in the style of Spanish farm architecture, were created in 1926 at 18354 Ventura Boulevard and remain the offices of the company today, where a small staff continues to administer the rights and look after the interests of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The Flash Gordon Fiasco
There would always be two strands of the story of how Burroughs’ imagination arrived on screens and in the public consciousness -- the direct route, through adaptation of Burroughs material with attribution to Burroughs, and the indirect route, where Burroughs’ imaginative output would be mined (some would say strip-mined) by others. The first major incidence of the latter would take place in the early 1930s, and would concern Flash Gordon.
In 1931, at a time when the Tarzan comic strip was hugely popular, Edgar Rice Burroughs approached United Feature Syndicate, who distributed the Tarzan strip, and pitched the idea of a John Carter Martian comic strip series to them. Among Burroughs’ letters is a 1932 response from George Carlin of United Feature Syndicate indicating that UFS was not on board, and considered the idea as one that could potentially damage their interests in the Tarzan strip. “I cannot emphasize too strenuously my own personal feeling that the production of the Martian strips would seriously handicap the Tarzan feature.”31
Two years later, in 1933, Burroughs was in correspondence with King Features Syndicate, a main rival to United, about a John Carter strip. That effort progressed encouragingly, with King Features hiring artist Alex Raymond and writer Don G. Moore to develop the script. Burroughs was enthusiastic, but by this time was very savvy about the value of the rights he was offering, and negotiations bogged down. Burroughs insisted on retaining all spin-off rights to the serial, including radio, move serials, TV -- even Big Little Books.
Finally, on January 4, 1934, Burroughs received a letter: “I am sorry to say that at this writing it seems impossible for us to arrange syndication under terms which would suit you.” Three days later the “Flash Gordon” series, a King Features production, began its run. Burroughs’ explanation for what happened is found in a letter written a year later, in 1935:32
As to the syndicate that was dickering for the Martian strips, this was the King Features. They approached us, and sample material was sent them which included art work. The New York office okayed everything as well as the terms, but when the idea was submitted to Mr. Hearst for the final stamp of approval it was quickly disapproved, probably because Mr. Hearst felt that a Martian strip could be gotten out cheaper by not having to pay royalties to us. Shortly thereafter 'Flash Gordon' made his appearance in the comics, and this no doubt was the upshot of the matter.
There can be no doubt that Flash Gordon, which went on to huge success as not just a comic strip, but eventually serialized with major success in radio and film, was based in large part on John Carter. Indeed, many of the plot lines are lifted from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars and Venus novels, and Flash himself is described as being a superb swordsman operating in places where swordplay is a key form of combat, with powerful earth-man muscles which allow him to make giant leaps.
In 1934 Burroughs formed “Burroughs Tarzan Enterprises” with Ashton Dearholt, an actor who managed after several tries to persuade Burroughs to finance a production company with offices in Hollywood and New York. The first film produced by the company was The New Adventures of Tarzan starring Herman Brix (who later changed his name to Bruce Bennett) as Tarzan.33 Additionally, the company pitched dozens of Burroughs’ completed novels and scenarios to various studios. While the company did not prosper, Burroughs’ familiarity with Hollywood increased.
Clampett and the Animated John Carter
Bob Clampett was born in 1913 and had grown up next door in Hollywood to Charlie Chaplin, and in 1931 had gone to work as a cartoonist at Harman-Ising Studio, a company who had an output arrangement with Warner Brothers, churning out cartoons that included the very first Merry Melody, which Clampett worked on as a young cartoonist.
The young Clampett knew his place, up to a point, and that included quietly learning the craft of animating. As he progressed, he was gradually getting involved in generating the story ideas for cartoons, but even then, the idea of contributing ideas for new characters or new series of cartoons was still out of bounds. He was years away from being viewed as senior enough to create new characters or do what he really wanted to do, which was to direct animated shorts and features.
Clampett believed that animation offered far richer possibilities than just the kind of slapstick farm and animal humor that Harman-Ising was delivering to Warner Brothers. Growing up in the twenties, he had eagerly devoured all of Burroughs books, especially the Barsoom series, and saw in them an opportunity for an ambitious realistically drawn fantasy series that would skew more toward adults, but still be accessible to children, and would capture the spirit of adventure and wonder that he had felt when reading the Barsoom novels.
He knew where to find Burroughs -- Tarzana Ranch was by then a landmark in Southern California -- and so he journeyed to the estate and met with Burroughs and told him of his idea to create a series of animated cartoons based on the John Carter character and series.
Burroughs was immediately interested. One of his great frustrations was that Hollywood, while obsessed, it seemed, with Tarzan, was hesitant to tackle Mars, or any otherworldly Burroughs series. Burroughs well understood the reasoning, that the special effects of the day just couldn’t match the imagination of what he had created. Lions, and elephants, and tigers -- yes; banths, and thoats, and ulsios -- not so much.
Perhaps animation was a solution....
Burroughs had another reason for reacting positively. Burroughs’ son John Coleman had just graduated from college and had artistic inclinations. He saw in the young Clampett someone who could teach John Coleman a thing or two -- and so he encouraged the project and introduced John Coleman into the mix as a collaborator with Clampett.
Clampett and John Coleman Burroughs worked diligently for months -- nights and weekends for Clampett, since he continued his full-time work for Warner Brothers through Harman-Ising. John Coleman Burroughs created detailed colored sketches and sculptured models. Clampett’s idea was that the stories would break down into a series of 9 minute installments that could either stand alone as serial installments, or could be combined into a feature length movie.
That Burroughs was enthusiastic was evidenced by the fact that he went out of his way to talk to MGM about it--MGM being the studio of the Johnny Weismuller Tarzan films which were then hugely popular, beginning with Tarzan the Ape Man in 1932 and continuing with Tarzan and His Mate in 1934, and Tarzan Escapes in 1936. The movies, which were the equivalent of the James Bond series of the day, had quickly become a major source of revenue and profits for MGM, so it was logical that Burroughs would look to them -- and logical that they would be open to his approach.
To sell the idea to MGM, Clampett and the younger Burroughs settled on creating six minutes of test footage
, to be accompanied by a pitch portfolio that included artwork, selling points, and illustrations from the Barsoom novels.34
A cover letter, carefully double-spaced on the letterhead of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc, read:
For twenty-five years we have been awaiting a medium that could properly depict on the screen the highly imaginative Martian creations of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
In the recently greatly improved cartoon animation technique in color we see that medium, which, in connection with the increasing demand for motion picture shorts, suggests that this is the opportune time to offer the animated cartoon rights in our series of nine Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian novels recording the adventures on the Red Planet of
JOHN CARTER, WARLORD OF MARS
The following pages give a brief summary of a few of the reasons why such a series of animated cartoon shorts in color should produce outstanding results at the box office.
In addition to the nine Martian novels and the magazine publication of these stories, there is now appearing in a cartoon magazine, with a circulation of 500,000 copies a month, a series of four pages of John Carter of Mars cartoons in colors, which give this character still wider circulation and publicity. You will find several of these cartoons mounted elsewhere in this brochure.
John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood Page 4
