Filming the West of Zane Grey by Ed Hulse

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Introduction

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Zane Grey and the Movies

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The Silent Films Graft (1915) 47 The Heart of Texas Ryan (1917) 48 Riders of the Purple Sage (1918) 51 The Rainbow Trail (1918) 53 The Light of Western Stars (1918) 55 The Border Legion (1918) 57 The Lone Star Ranger (1919) 59 The Last of the Duanes (1919) 61 Desert Gold (1919) 63 Riders of the Dawn (1920) 67 The U. P. Trail (1920) 69 The Man of the Forest (1921) 70 The Mysterious Rider (1921) 71 The Last Trail (1921) 73 When Romance Rides (1922) 73 Golden Dreams (1922) 75 The Lone Star Ranger (1923) 76 To The Last Man (1923) 77 The Call of the Canyon (1923) 80 The Heritage of the Desert (1924) 81 Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924) 84

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The Last of the Duanes (1924) 86 The Border Legion (1924) 90 The Thundering Herd (1925) 92 Riders of the Purple Sage (1925) 95 Code of the West (1925) 100 The Rainbow Trail (1925) 102 The Light of Western Stars (1925) 103 Wild Horse Mesa (1925) 106 The Vanishing American (1925) 108 Desert Gold (1926) 110 Born to the West (1926) 112 Forlorn River (1926) 114 Man of the Forest (1926) 116 The Last Trail (1927) 120 The Mysterious Rider (1927) 122 Drums of the Desert (1927) 125 Lightning (1927) 128 Nevada (1927) 130 Open Range (1927) 133 Under the Tonto Rim (1928) 136 The Vanishing Pioneer (1928) 140 The Water Hole (1928) 144 Avalanche (1928) 147 Sunset Pass (1928) 150 Stairs of Sand (1929) 153 The Sound Films 159 The Lone Star Ranger (1930) The Light of Western Stars (1930) 162 The Border Legion (1930) 165 The Last of the Duanes (1930) 168 El Ultimo De Los Vargas [The Last of the Duanes] (1930) Fighting Caravans (1931) 176 Riders of the Purple Sage (1931) 180 The Rainbow Trail (1932) 187 Heritage of the Desert (1932) 192 viii Contents

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The Golden West (1932) 195 Wild Horse Mesa (1932) 198 Robbers’ Roost (1933) 202 The Mysterious Rider (1933) 204 The Woman Accused (1933) 207 Smoke Lightning (1933) 209 Under the Tonto Rim (1933) 212 Sunset Pass (1933) 215 Life in the Raw (1933) 217 Man of the Forest (1933) 220 The Last Trail (1933) 223 To the Last Man (1933) 226 The Thundering Herd (1933) 229 The Last Round-up (1934) 233 Wagon Wheels (1934) 235 The Dude Ranger (1934) 238 Home on the Range (1934) 241 West of the Pecos (1935) 245 Rocky Mountain Mystery (1935) 247 Wanderer of the Wasteland (1935) 250 Thunder Mountain (1935) 252 Nevada (1935) 255 Drift Fence (1936) 259 Desert Gold (1936) 261 Arizona Raiders (1936) 264 King of the Royal Mounted (1936) 266 268 The End of the Trail (1936) Arizona Mahoney (1937) 270 Forlorn River (1937) 274 Roll Along Cowboy (1937) 277 Thunder Trail (1937) 280 Born to the West (1937) 282 The Mysterious Rider (1938) 285 Rangle River (1939) 288 Heritage of the Desert (1939) 291 Knights of the Range (1940) 295 Contents

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The Light of Western Stars (1940) 299 King of the Royal Mounted (1940) 302 The Border Legion (1940) 305 Western Union (1941) 309 The Last of the Duanes (1941) 313 Riders of the Purple Sage (1941) 316 The Lone Star Ranger (1942) 319 King of the Mounties (1942) 321 Nevada (1944) 323 West of the Pecos (1945) 328 Wanderer of the Wasteland (1945) 331 Sunset Pass (1946) 334 Code of the West (1947) 336 Thunder Mountain (1947) 338 Gunfighters (1947) 342 Under the Tonto Rim (1947) 344 Wild Horse Mesa (1947) 347 Red Canyon (1949) 350 Robbers’ Roost (1955) 352 The Vanishing American (1955) 355 The Maverick Queen (1956) 357 Riders of the Purple Sage (1996) 359 Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theatre

by Karl Thiede Selected Bibliography

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people assisted in the research, writing, and compilation of this book. For their help in loaning me 16mm prints of Zane Grey movies (including some extremely rare titles), I thank Richard W. Bann, the late Alan G. Barbour, Bob Birchard, John Cocchi, Dave Domagala, the late William K. Everson, Mark Heller, Joe Judice, Sam Sherman, and Marty Soos.

Sincere thanks to Elizabeth Gulick for her dedication to the cover design, and my appreciation to Michael Bifulco for his tireless work on the book’s interior. For the loan of the scarce and in some cases never-reprinted stills used to illustrate this book, my gratitude goes to Richard W. Bann, Bob Birchard, Mike Hawks, Ed Phillips, Debbie Dunbar and, above all, Packy Smith, who also happens to be this book’s editor and has been trying to get it into print since I first proposed writing the damn thing in 1994.

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ZANE GREY AND THE MOVIES

Zane Grey Productions and Other Early Efforts Zane Grey’s literary career and the motion-picture industry evolved more or less simultaneously during the first decade and a half of the Twentieth Century. In 1903, the author self-published his first novel, Betty Zane. That same year, the Thomas A. Edison Company released The Great Train Robbery—which, while neither the first Western nor the first narrative film (as is often claimed), was a landmark production nonetheless.

Over the next half-dozen years, while Grey toiled at The Spirit of the Border, The Last Trail, and The Last of the Plainsmen, motion-picture producers squabbled over patent rights and gradually turned a technological novelty into a thriving business. By 1915, Zane Grey was a best-selling author with the successes of Heritage of the Desert, Riders of the Purple Sage, Desert Gold, and The Light of Western Stars under his belt. In February of that year, the Epoch Producing Corporation released D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, a twelve-reel culmination of the famed director’s efforts to define and employ all the elements of film grammar. Feature-length subjects (a feature film being defined in those days as one consisting of five or more reels) were challenging the dominance of one- and two-reelers as program highlights, and the storefront nickelodeon would soon recede in favor of the extravagant downtown movie palace. With Zane Grey and the motion-picture industry both in their ascendancy, a meeting was bound to take place sooner rather than later.

Actually, Zane Grey’s first movie credit is a dubious one. He was listed among “eighteen of the most famous authors in all America” allegedly recruited by Carl Laemmle’s Universal Film Manufacturing Corporation to collaborate on Graft, a serial story originally intended to consume sixteen episodes but extended to twenty after production had already gotten underway. The framing story established by scenario writers Joe Brandt and Walter Woods revolved around the efforts of crusading district attorney Bruce Larnigan (played by actor-director Hobart Henley) to break up a graft trust running roughshod over New York City.

Each of the “most famous authors in all America” was said to have contributed a subplot, devoted to one particular racket, that could be resolved within the space of a single two-reel chapter. But it is unclear whether these notable scribes actually wrote

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anything or simply supplied ideas that were fleshed out by the scenarists. It is certainly possible that they contributed nothing and were paid solely for the use of their names in connection with the serial’s marketing and advertising. The episode credited to Grey, for example, focuses on racketeers controlling traffic in and out of New York Harbor and has Tom Larnigan shanghaied by smugglers who spirit him away on a ship bound for Rio de Janeiro. Aside from the fact that Grey’s experience in New York was limited to the few years he practiced dentistry uptown in Manhattan, a synopsis of the Graft episode he supposedly wrote does not read like anything he would have concocted. Although Graft is included in our filmography as one of Grey’s credits, we have our doubts.

Little doubt exists as to Zane Grey’s connection to the 1917 Western titled The Heart of Texas Ryan. Produced by Colonel William Selig, perhaps best known for the jungleadventure films he made with animals from the extensive zoo he maintained, this fivereeler starred former real-life cowboy Tom Mix, already well on his way to becoming the screen’s preeminent Western star. Originally planned as an adaptation of The Light of Western Stars, the picture went into production late in the summer of 1916. Movieindustry trade journals reported that the film was shot in and around Newhall, California. Apparently, however, Selig’s claim on the screen rights to Grey’s story was tenuous at best, and with another party set to license the property, an injunction was issued against the veteran producer.

Rather than scrap the entire film, Selig ordered it recut and retitled to minimize any resemblance to The Light of Western Stars. Grey’s heroine, Majesty Hammond, became Texas Ryan (played by Bessie Eyton). Hero Gene Stewart became Jack Parker (Mix).

Reissued in 1923 under the title Single-Shot Parker, the film was subsequently licensed for non-theatrical distribution by Eastman-Kodak’s Kodascope Library. As a result, it survives via a number of extant 16mm “safety” (non-combustible) prints. Any astute observer familiar with Grey’s novel would have little difficulty identifying Light of Western Stars as the skeleton on which Texas Ryan was fleshed out.

The film is not a bad one by any means, although by necessity the Grey storyline was telescoped, resulting in the shortening of key sequences and the elimination of plot points that probably should have been retained. And, of course, it suffers from the same basic structural flaw that afflicts every screen version of this particular novel: the final reels unfold with Stewart imprisoned in Mexico, awaiting execution. Thus the audience is denied the opportunity of seeing their hero riding, roping, and shooting his way to victory.

The Heart of Texas Ryan was released nationally in February of 1917. The “legitimate” adaptation of The Light of Western Stars did not see the light of a carbon arc until October 1918, when it was screened in New York City for members of the trade. Shot on location in Arizona, Mexico, and New Mexico, it was two reels longer than Texas Ryan but apparently still had difficulty conveying the intricacies of Grey’s narrative.

Reviewers uniformly praised the artful lensing of picturesque locations, but several harped on the picture’s jagged continuity.

2 Zane Grey and the Movies

The 1918 Light of Western Stars was produced and presented by Harry A. Sherman, who would later bring to the screen another great Western hero, Clarence E. Mulford’s Hopalong Cassidy, and revitalize Paramount’s Zane Grey series with a quartet of exceptionally fine adaptations in the late Thirties. Like many prominent entrepreneurs of Hollywood’s early years, he got his start in exhibition and moved into distribution before finally becoming a producer. The Boston-born Sherman was running theaters in Minneapolis when he licensed rights to distribute Griffith’s Birth of a Nation exclusively in a number of states west of the Mississippi River. In the days before major studios established nationwide networks of exchanges to service exhibitors, it was common practice to secure territorial distribution rights by ponying up large sums of money. The exact amount depended upon how large a territory the licensee expected to cover.

Sherman reportedly paid $100,000 to distribute Birth of a Nation in a region that covered part or all of sixteen states. The film’s enormous success made Sherman a small fortune and put him on the movie-industry map.

Sherman Productions, Incorporated leased the screen rights to Light of Western Stars and Sherman acceded to Grey’s request that the film be shot on location. Of course, he was nothing if not a canny showman, and it probably did not take much persuasion on Grey’s part. Sherman had to have known that the author’s appeal to readers lay at least partially in his ability to describe vividly the magnificent Southwestern areas in which his yarns took place.

Sherman cast Dustin Farnum to play Gene Stewart—a shrewd decision on his part, given that Farnum’s slightly younger brother, William, was starring in William Fox’s concurrently produced Zane Grey adaptations. Obviously, the producer figured a furtherance of the Farnum-Grey connection to be good for business.

T. Hayes Hunter was the next independent producer to license a Grey property for translation to celluloid. In The Border Legion he had one of the author’s most popular stories, a genuine blood-and-thunder thriller that took place in the wilds of Idaho and Montana. Its plot was tailor-made for screen melodrama: Accused of cowardice by his fiancée, a young man joins an outlaw band headed by a charismatic bandit. When the guilt-stricken girl impulsively follows her betrothed to the Legion’s camp, the outlaw leader protects her from his men and ultimately enables the lovers to escape by sacrificing himself.

The outlaw leader, Kells, was played by stage and screen veteran Hobart Bosworth, who in 1918 already had more than one hundred and eighty film appearances to his credit. Also an accomplished producer, writer, and director, he was the epitome of mature virility: steely-eyed, ruggedly handsome, and solidly built. A perfect choice for the role, he easily upstaged juvenile lead and relative newcomer Eugene Strong.

The Border Legion’s major flaw—one that attracted the attention of many reviewers— was the casting of stage actress Blanche Bates as the youthful, impetuous heroine. At forty-seven years old, she was old enough to be Strong’s mother, and the unforgiving Zane Grey and the Movies

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Dustin Farnum.

camera severely undermined her credibility in the ingénue role. A reviewer for Motion Picture News tried to be tactful: “[T]he fresh appeal of youth is not hers.”

With William Fox making money hand over fist with his Zane Grey adaptations and independent producers continually approaching him about licensing other novels, Grey in 1919 entered into a partnership with Benjamin B. Hampton. He wanted more control over the picturization of his books and realized he could best do that by producing the movies himself.

An advocate of authorial involvement in motion-picture adaptations of best-selling fictional works, Hampton had previously been a principal in the short-lived Rex Beach Picture Company, which in 1917 turned out a faithful but not terribly successful film version of Beach’s The Barrier. Earlier, he had been involved in some way with producer Jesse L. Lasky, and that association enabled him to secure distribution for the Westerns he planned to make with Grey. . . .

W. W. Hodkinson was a Scotsman whose experience in the picture game dated back to 1907. Hailing from Ogden, Utah, he owned and operated motion-picture theaters 4 Zane Grey and the Movies

and film exchanges for a number of years, eventually became Pacific Coast representative of the General Film Company, and following the dissolution of that firm went back into distribution on his own account. It was Hodkinson who, in 1914, organized the Paramount Pictures Corporation, a distribution company handling the output of Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players, the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, and Bosworth, Incorporated. Squeezed out when Famous Players and the Lasky Company combined, he began the W. W. Hodkinson Corporation to distribute films made by small, independent producers. He relied on Pathe Exchange, Incorporated for the actual delivery of prints to exhibitors.

With distribution in place, the newly formed Zane Grey Pictures, Incorporated selected Desert Gold for their first adaptation. T. Hayes Hunter was hired to direct and popular leading man E. K. Lincoln (not to be confused with Elmo Lincoln, the screen’s first Tarzan) engaged to play adventure-seeking Dick Gale.

Sources differ as to the extent of Grey’s participation in the production of the motion pictures released by his company. According to some reports, he poured over the scenarios and edited them ruthlessly, altering entire sequences and rewriting intertitles by the dozens. In Zane Grey: Romancing the West, Stephen J. May asserts that Grey was “adamant” that his films be shot on locations mentioned in the books from which they were adapted. Yet, on the very same page, May reports that Hampton filmed Desert Gold near Palm Springs, California—quite a distance from the Arizona and Mexico settings identified in the novel.

In any case, Grey must have been satisfied with the end result. In a May 1, 1919 letter to Hampton, he stated: “You have put the spirit, the action, and the truth of Desert Gold upon the screen.” Publicity material for the movie quoted him as saying, “The film is my book as I wrote it.”

At this late date it is all but impossible to quantify the box-office success of Desert Gold, but clearly the film’s financial return to Zane Grey Pictures, Inc. justified continuation of the Hampton-Grey joint venture. The next two adaptations, Riders of the Dawn (taken from The Desert of Wheat) and The U. P. Trail, starred stolid Roy Stewart and were directed by Hugh Ryan “Jack” Conway. In addition to star and director, both productions shared the same scenarist (William Clifford), cinematographer (Harry Vallejo), and key supporting players (Robert McKim, Joseph J. Dowling, Frederick Starr)—an indication that they were prepared and shot together, although released six months apart. The action-packed Riders somewhat muted the political content of Desert of Wheat, which made its antagonists professional labor agitators belonging to the radical, communistic Industrial Workers of the World (also known as “wobblies”). Reviews of the film suggest that the I. W. W. was not specifically named.

Robert McKim, who generally played heavies and is perhaps best remembered as the villainous Captain Ramon in the 1920 Mark of Zorro starring Douglas Fairbanks, was cast against type in The Mysterious Rider (1921). He played Grey’s “good bad man” Zane Grey and the Movies

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This picture accompanied an Exhibitors Herald article in which exhibitors decried the lack of assistance they received from distributors in promoting films based on Zane Grey stories.

protagonist, Hell Bent Wade, in the only one of four film adaptations to stick reasonably close to the novel.

The Mysterious Rider was directed by Hampton, who also wielded the megaphone on the Zane Grey Pictures versions of The Man of the Forest (also 1921) and Golden Dreams (1922), the company’s last Western and apparently one not derived from a previously published Grey story. Eliot Howe, a minor director with only a handful of films to his credit, helmed When Romance Rides (also 1922), an adaptation of Wildfire that, not surprisingly, skipped over the book’s most memorable sequence: the one in which heroine Lucy Bostil is stripped to the waist by a crazed captor and tied to the back of a horse, which is turned loose to gallop across a burning prairie.

An examination of the synopsis for When Romance Rides indicates that it deviated significantly from Grey’s novel. The film was not successful, and Hampton’s tampering with the original story likely led to Grey’s disenchantment with his erstwhile partner.

Zane Grey Pictures, Inc. was summarily dissolved, and shortly thereafter the author entered into another arrangement that guaranteed him more money and more control over the motion pictures adapted from his yarns. With only one exception—the 6 Zane Grey and the Movies

competent but undistinguished Lightning, a 1927 independent production taken from one of Grey’s lesser stories—the remainder of the Zane Grey films released during the Twenties would come from Paramount or Fox, the two Hollywood companies that kept his most valuable properties tied up through the World War II years.

The Paramount Films Nineteen twenty-three found Jesse L. Lasky on the horns of a dilemma. As Famous Players-Lasky’s vice-president in charge of production, he was responsible for supplying a steady stream of product to Adolph Zukor’s Paramount Pictures. Westerns, always a staple of motion-picture programs, were enjoying a surge in popularity, due in part to the recent proliferation of Western-themed novels and magazines. Another factor in the genre’s improved standing with the moviegoing public—an important factor—was the ascendancy of Fox’s Tom Mix, whose audience was growing by leaps and bounds.

Paramount was releasing the films turned out by William S. Hart, the screen’s first great Western star. But Hart, who enjoyed complete creative control over his pictures, preferred to make movies that were more austere than the circus-like romps for which Mix was already famous. Moreover, at fifty-nine years of age he was far too mature to be a convincing romantic lead. It did not help that his leading ladies were invariably young enough to be his daughters. Hart’s Westerns were losing ground among Roaring Twenties moviegoers clamoring for snappier horse operas with younger stars and more vigorous action.

Hart balked at suggestions that he pep up his well-made but lethargic films with chases and gunfights. His most recent opus, Will Bill Hickok (1923), had lost money but he remained steadfast in his determination to produce sober Western dramas and eschew fast action for its own sake. Zukor, having failed to persuade his old friend Bill that times were changing, instructed Lasky to move in a new direction while the popularity of Westerns was still surging.

Lasky sought out Zane Grey. Together they negotiated a contract that licensed to Famous Players-Lasky a slew of Grey’s novels. The agreement also gave to Lasky the right of first refusal on all future yarns generated by the author. The deal naturally excluded the stories that had been licensed to Fox—Riders of the Purple Sage, The Rainbow Trail, The Lone Star Ranger, The Last of the Duanes, and The Last Trail—but it allowed Lasky to adapt everything else, including those novels most recently picturized

by Zane Grey Pictures.

The contract stipulated that Grey was to receive an initial payment of $25,000 per story licensed. Renewals of the original seven-year licenses would cost Famous PlayersLasky an additional $10,000 per. Some sources—including Jon Tuska’s earnest but error-riddled The Filming of the West (Garden City: Doubleday, 1976)—state that the Zane Grey and the Movies

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author was additionally entitled to a fifty-percent share of each film’s net profits, but this contention has not been verified to our satisfaction.

A more interesting contractual stipulation called for each adaptation to be shot, to as great a degree as possible, on the real-life settings specifically identified by Grey in his yarns. This enabled the author to ensure that Famous Players maintained a degree of fidelity to his works even when screenwriters saw fit to change his plots and characters.

Lasky assured Grey—with whom he became quite friendly—that the adaptations would be done respectfully.

Additionally, Zane offered to accompany casts and crews on location whenever his own schedule permitted, and he frequently made time to do just that. Even today, more than eighty years after the fact, it is not difficult to find publicity stills of Grey and Famous Players film crews on location in Arizona. Many such photos were taken during the filming of Wild Horse Mesa (1925), and a surprising number show Grey with leading lady Billie Dove, on whom he was said to have had a mad crush. A fairly consistent womanizer at this point in his life, Zane was particularly attracted to young females. It is not known for certain whether or not he succeeded in seducing Dove (who was then married to director Irvin Willat), but a framed photograph of the actress and Grey hung in the living room of her Palm Springs home until she died in 1997.

Of the two-dozen silent Zane Grey films released by Paramount between 1923 and 1929, only a few survive complete. Their loss is a major blow not only to Western-movie buffs and fans of the author, but also to Hollywood historians. The Lasky-produced Grey films were not “B”-class horse operas ground out like sausages on short money; they were carefully made pictures with substantial production values. Their stars included seasoned veterans such as Jack Holt and Antonio Moreno, along with up-andcoming players including Richard Dix, Gary Cooper, and Richard Arlen. Their direction was entrusted to capable journeymen: Victor Fleming, William K. Howard, George B. Seitz, Irvin Willat, John Waters, and others. Talented cinematographers Bert Glennon, James Wong Howe, and Lucien Andriot gave them an expensive-looking sheen.

With the pictures themselves mostly unavailable for appraisal, we are left with only reviews and exhibitors’ reports to evaluate. This is hardly the ideal way to document silent movies, but with between eighty and ninety percent of all pre-1930 feature films apparently lost to the ages, we are left with no other choice. Therefore, some of the opinions expressed below are not our own but, rather, represent a consensus view reached by critics and theater owners.

To the Last Man, the first Zane Grey film produced by Famous Players–Lasky, was shot in Arizona’s rugged Tonto Basin country—the site of many Grey Westerns—not far from where the actual Graham-Tewksbury feud had unfolded thirty and forty years before. Richard Dix, coming off his recent success in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, played Jean Isbel to Lois Wilson’s Ellen Jorth. Both would appear in subsequent series entries, as would the film’s heavy, Noah Beery. In fact, Beery became 8 Zane Grey and the Movies

a ubiquitous presence in the Paramount Zane Greys, plying his villainous trade not only throughout the silent years but well into the talkie era as well. Victor Fleming’s direction was hailed as straightforwardly effective, and the cinematography of James Wong Howe and Bert Baldridge received fulsome praise.

The favorable impression created by To the Last Man might well have been erased by the next picture, The Call of the Canyon (1923), but for the presence of the returning Dix and Wilson and Howe’s expert lensing of magnificent landscapes near Sedona, Arizona. A Grey novel virtually devoid of rough-and-tumble action, Canyon chronicled the spiritual and physical regeneration of World War veteran Glenn Kilbourne (Dix), who goes West to regain his health. Most of the “action,” such as it was, unfolded in and around breathtaking Oak Creek Canyon and the popular Lolomi Lodge, which director Fleming and photographer Howe captured beautifully. Grey had discovered Sedona and the lodge on an earlier trip and specifically wrote them into the original story, which did not actually appear in hardcover until after the movie’s release.

Although reception to Canyon was tepid, the eye-popping scenery made Sedona a fairly popular location for filmmakers, and nearly one hundred feature films have been shot there since 1923.

Director Irvin Willat took cast and crew to the Painted Desert to shoot exteriors for Heritage of the Desert (1924), the first motion-picture version of a true Zane Grey classic.

Like most other series entries, it was brought in for around $200,000. The sojourns to Grey’s locations ate up most of the budgets, but the pictorial beauty of those remote, still-unsettled areas provided lots of “production value,” that amorphous, indefinable quality separating worthy films from routine ones. Although Albert Le Vino’s scenario condensed Grey’s complex story quite a bit, it retained the essential plot elements and offered a number of genuinely thrilling sequences. Not at all a familiar Western type, handsome Lloyd Hughes was perfectly suited to play the Eastern tenderfoot, Jack Hare. Willat had worked with Hughes before and knew how to elicit a good performance from the square-jawed, slick-haired juvenile. Bebe Daniels, in skindarkening “Bole Armenia” makeup, made a fetching Mescal, the Spanish-Indian ward of desert lion August Naab (Ernest Torrence). Playing the ruthless, reprehensible Mal Holderness in all his scenery-chewing glory was the delightful Noah Beery.

(Publicity material for Heritage quoted Grey as saying, “Not until Paramount started producing my stories have I ever had any hand in supervising them for the screen.

Regardless of what has been printed, that is the truth.” This remark contradicted publicity released by Zane Grey Pictures, Inc.) In November of 1923, Jesse L. Lasky—eager to publicize and promote the Zane Grey series—contracted with Dr. Herbert Kalmus to shoot an entire film in the latter’s new Technicolor process. The previous year, Kalmus had overseen the production of Toll of the Sea, a short feature film that employed the process to good effect. Lasky was interested in seeing how much a Zane Grey production might be enhanced by what Kalmus touted as “natural color,” but there was a catch: he wasn’t willing to increase his Zane Grey and the Movies

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On the set of To the Last Man in Northern Arizona: cinematographer James Wong Howe (with hat in hand), Zane Grey, Richard Dix and Lois Wilson (seated). Future director John Huston is standing to the right of Howe.

budget. Technicolor’s camera operators would have to shoot just as rapidly as any cinematographer working in black-and-white. This posed a real challenge to the good Doctor, whose Boston plant would additionally have to absorb the cost of shipping film stock from and to California. But Kalmus was eager to persuade Hollywood that his patented process was commercially viable and agreed to Lasky’s terms.

10 Zane Grey and the Movies

The story chosen for this grand experiment was Grey’s self-proclaimed masterwork, Wanderer of the Wasteland. Filming would be done in and around Death Valley, where daytime temperatures routinely soared above one hundred and twenty degrees. It was risky territory in which to transport and use flammable nitrate film. But the arid, desolate area offered one advantage: the crystal-clear skies and unfiltered desert sunlight provided perfect illumination for the highly critical color-film exposures.

Willat again directed, with his wife Billie Dove—one of the screen’s most beautiful women, having the perfect complexion for Technicolor—cast in the female lead. Her radiant close-ups were frequently mentioned in reviews. In his first appearance as one of Zane Grey’s stalwart heroes, virile Jack Holt played the wanderer, Adam Larey.

Technicolor cinematographer Arthur Ball followed Willat’s lead and captured many striking images in sequences scripted to showcase color effects. One review cited a fight scene that took place in a mill. As one combatant was caught in the revolving wheel, Willat cut to a close shot of the millrace water, which suddenly turned red with blood.

A simple but shocking gimmick, it reportedly drew gasps from audiences.

Released in the summer of 1924, Wanderer of the Wasteland received uniformly positive reviews; even the jaded New York critics were impressed, not only with the Technicolor photography but also with Willat’s skillful handling of the story.

Billie Dove and Zane Grey.

Zane Grey and the Movies

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A new version of The Border Legion followed on Wanderer’s heels. Helmed by William K. Howard, who cut his directorial eye-teeth on low-budget action films starring daredevil stuntman Richard Talmadge and perennial juvenile Johnny Walker, it came in for less than $130,000, making it the cheapest Famous Players entry yet. Tradepaper reviewers noticed, calling the film “a fair program picture” not up to the standard set by Heritage and Wanderer. Working against the film was a weak cast. Antonio Moreno, who made an acceptable leading man in Vitagraph serials of 1919 and 1920, wasn’t a Western “type” and failed to impress critics with his portrayal of Jim Cleve.

Stage actor Rockliffe Fellowes, a physically unimposing man whose exaggerated gestures typified the excesses of silent-movie acting, had to have made a weak Jack Kells. And leading lady Helene Chadwick, a favorite during the Teens, was clearly past her prime and headed for Poverty Row, where she finished her career in cheap potboilers.

The savings on Border Legion were gobbled up by director Howard on his next assignment. Cost overruns on The Thundering Herd (1925) made it the most expensive Paramount Zane Grey to date. But every penny showed on the screen, and the film received glowing reviews, which translated into plenty of extra coin collected at the nation’s box offices.

Lucien Hubbard’s scenario called for a buffalo stampede of epic proportions, but there weren’t enough members of the endangered species in private hands. Grey’s story took place in northern Texas, but Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park was the only place Howard could find enough bison for his purposes. After cutting a deal with Paramount, Park superintendent Horace Albright authorized buffalo keeper Bob LaCombe and eighteen Park rangers to round up seven hundred bison from the big herd grazing in Lamar Valley—a job that took several weeks.

Howard, his crew, selected cast members, and stunt performers subsequently arrived in Yellowstone and staged the most thrilling buffalo stampede ever captured on film.

The lengthy sequence was Thundering Herd ’s undisputed highlight, and Lucien Andriot’s spectacular footage was recut and reused many times in later years, most extensively in Paramount’s 1933 remake. The remarkably cooperative Albright also allowed sixteen head of buffalo to be shipped down to Hollywood and employed as “extras” in scenes shot at the Paramount ranch.

The Yellowstone shooting aroused a fair amount of controversy. Accusations of abuse were leveled at Howard and his crew. It was said that the herd had been stampeded eight or nine times in one day so that camera operators could record the action from various angles. And according to rumor, the filmmakers feasted on buffalo steaks during their stay. Of course, the moviegoing public never got wind of this, and The Thundering Herd was a thundering success.

Howard’s next entry, Code of the West, was nothing but fluff and constituted the first serious misstep Paramount had made since establishing the Zane Grey franchise. A silly film adapted from an equally silly novel, it offered the badly miscast Owen Moore 12 Zane Grey and the Movies

as a rancher who fell for a bubble-headed flapper played by Constance Bennett. The critics were not amused and, judging by the less-than-favorable reports of exhibitors commenting in such trade journals as The Exhibitors Herald, neither were audiences.

Back for its third appearance on theater screens, The Light of Western Stars (1925) reunited Jack Holt and Billie Dove under the direction of William K. Howard, taking his last turn behind the megaphone on a Zane Grey movie. This remake significantly altered the original story by dispensing with the Mexican villains and having Holt’s Gene Stewart captured and imprisoned by Anglo rustlers headed by . . . who else? . . .

Noah Beery.

With Victor Fleming and William K. Howard assigned to more important pictures, the Zane Grey series was handed over, for the time being, to former serial director George B. Seitz, who reported for work at Paramount’s Hollywood studio just days after completing the 1925 Pathe chapter play Sunken Silver, shot on location in Florida. An old hand at Westerns and action films, Seitz was accustomed to working fast, both indoors and outdoors. Not as stylish or skillful a director as Howard or Willat, he had a nononsense attitude that enabled him to complete his productions on time and on budget.

His first two Zane Grey adaptations are among the few silent Paramount releases that still survive. Wild Horse Mesa (1925) featured the Holt-Dove-Beery triumvirate and threw in fifteen-year-old Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (playing Holt’s kid brother) for good measure. It boasted the usual splendid location photography and faithfully followed Grey’s novel.

Although Wild Horse Mesa is obviously a well-mounted film, today’s viewers are likely to find it rather draggy and insufficiently actionful. Some scenes go on longer than necessary, while others seem extraneous. Seitz and cinematographer Bert Glennon capture a stampede thrillingly, and the director elicits a gasp with his staging of a brief fight between Chane Weymer (Holt) and Bert Manerube (George Magrill) that ends with the latter being hurled into a barbed-wire fence. But overall the movie seems fairly tame. Its most entertaining moments, frankly, are those in which old pros Holt and Beery approach each other warily. Their characters are so clearly defined that more information is conveyed by their facial expressions and body language than by any halfdozen intertitles. Seitz’s tyro effort may well be representative of the Paramount Zane Grey series at this juncture, but one cannot help but wish that Heritage of the Desert, Wanderer of the Wasteland, or The Thundering Herd survived instead of Wild Horse Mesa.

Seitz’s second installment in the series, released only a month later, also survives.

Preserved several decades ago by the Library of Congress and commercially released on DVD in 2000, The Vanishing American is unquestionably the best of the extant Zane Grey silents. What’s more, it comes reasonably close to being a masterpiece.

Although a lengthy prologue (reportedly directed by Lucien Hubbard, who also provided the film’s scenario and supervised its production) describes the supplanting of ancient Indian tribes by more aggressive descendants who are themselves conquered in succession, the story proper begins a few years before the Great War. The once-mighty Zane Grey and the Movies

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Navajo are reduced to living on a government-funded reservation managed by a crooked Indian agent (Noah Beery) who confiscates money intended for the tribe’s betterment. Nophaie (Richard Dix), the hereditary Navajo leader educated in the white man’s schools, laments his people’s mistreatment and falls in love with the sympathetic schoolteacher (Lois Wilson) he can never hope to marry.

Clearly, Jesse Lasky and the Paramount brass realized that Seitz had crafted an intensely emotional motion picture. The old serial director’s shortcomings were in evidence—especially in his failure to restrain Beery’s overacting—but he had delivered a remarkably engaging film that made good use of the palpable chemistry between Dix and Wilson. Hubbard’s prologue, added after the completion of principal photography, extended the picture’s length from eight reels to ten and thus made it a “special” to be sold for more money.

Shot on location in Monument Valley and the Betatakin Cliff Dwellings in northern Arizona, The Vanishing American paints a sad, dark portrait of a once-proud people, and in its sympathy for the plight of Native Americans in the Twentieth Century the film retains the power to move its audiences. Indeed, a 1971 theatrical screening of the recently preserved archival print reduced hundreds of viewers to tears, their sniffles echoing throughout the auditorium.

No subsequent entry in Paramount’s Zane Grey series, silent or sound, had the scope or impact of The Vanishing American. There was no attempt to capitalize on the film’s success. The adaptations that followed reverted to the standard six or seven-reel length, and the budgets remained fixed at $200,000 or thereabouts. Seitz had established a high-water mark that neither he nor his successors ever duplicated. In fact, the next installment, Desert Gold (1926), was deemed a lackluster follow-up to Vanishing American and led to Seitz’s ouster as the unit director.

Beginning with Born to the West (1926), John Waters assumed control of the Zane Grey Westerns. Primarily an assistant director—and one who later won an Oscar in that capacity for his work on Viva Villa! (1934)—he probably landed the job as Seitz’s replacement by virtue of his previous association with Irvin Willat. Although Born to the West ran over budget (something every first-time director dreads), it turned out to be a solidly entertaining Western thriller that teemed with horseplay and gunplay.

Although Grey was credited with the original story, this film’s plot doesn’t correspond with any of his novels and the title appears nowhere in his bibliography.

Holt starred in the next three Waters-directed films: 1926’s Forlorn River and Man of the Forest, and 1927’s The Mysterious Rider. They maintained a generally high standard— if the reviews and exhibitor reports can be believed—but reflected the beginning of a tendency to deviate significantly from Grey’s stories. Man of the Forest, for example, retained the book’s basic situation but eliminated several characters, changed the names of others, and injected unwelcome comic relief in the person of El Brendel, a Pennsylvania-born vaudevillian who affected a Swedish accent. The Mysterious Rider jettisoned Grey’s plot altogether, substituting a story about land grabbers who used a 14 Zane Grey and the Movies

Jack Holt.

recently discovered Spanish land grant to wrest control of property belonging to homesteaders. In this “remake,” Bent Wade lived up to the title by becoming a masked vigilante acting on behalf of the aggrieved ranchers.

Nevada (1927), based on Grey’s all-time best-selling novel, starred Gary Cooper in the title role. Fresh off his triumph in Wings and now a box-office attraction in his own right, Cooper had already worked as an extra and wrangler on several Paramount Zane Greys, including The Thundering Herd and The Vanishing American. Although a sequel to Forlorn River, Nevada made no reference to Paramount’s version of that novel, which had starred Holt in the role Cooper now played.

Nevada survives—just barely—in the form of 16mm copies made from a damaged, deteriorated 35mm print with some footage missing. Not surprisingly, the film’s continuity is impaired, but that hardly matters because what footage remains is scarcely impressive. Cooper cuts a dashing figure, of course, and William Powell makes an oily villain. Thelma Todd, best known for her work in talkies as a comedienne, is a lovely ingénue. Unfortunately, the movie never really clicks into high gear. Instead, it meanders along, seemingly uninterested in quickening the pulses of viewers. The location photography is pleasing, as always, but it is not enough to compensate for a dearth of fast, thrilling action.

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Available evidence suggests that the remaining silents in Paramount’s series—and now it really was Paramount’s, Famous Players-Lasky having recently been absorbed by Adolph Zukor’s company—failed to achieve the critical and commercial success of the 1923–25 entries. An uneven lot, they occasionally sported novel premises but just as often presented typical horse-opera clichés. Although Paramount continued to budget each film at $200,000, the expenditures did not result in especially good pictures.

Reviews seldom sparkled with praise any more; the dreaded phrases “just a program picture” and “just another Western” popped up with disturbing frequency.

Of course, Paramount by this time had exhausted the supply of first-rate Zane Grey yarns to adapt. Of the four 1928 releases, only Under the Tonto Rim, which featured Richard Arlen, came from a novel—and a weak one at that. The Water Hole and Avalanche, both Jack Holt starrers, originated as novelettes, although the latter apparently made a better movie than it did a story. The Vanishing Pioneer, a routine effort, did not even have a Zane Grey source; it attributed the original story to him, but J. Walter Ruben concocted the plot.

Several things conspired to weaken the series. First was Zane Grey’s diminishing popularity. The anomalous success of Nevada notwithstanding, his sales started slipping in the late Twenties. Bookstore shelves bulged with Western novels and Grey no longer dominated the genre. Second, the film market was glutted with Westerns, many of them low-budget offerings that filched elements from Grey’s better stories and artfully camouflaged the thievery. Thus, Twenties adaptations of his early novels may have seemed overly familiar to moviegoers.

In 1930, Grey renegotiated his deal with Paramount. Very much aware of his diminished standing in the marketplace, he dropped his insistence that the adaptations be filmed on locations named in the stories. He also abandoned any pretense of holding Paramount screenwriters accountable for major departures from his plots. The Great Depression was underway, and with his fiction markets becoming more finicky, Grey could hardly afford to make demands on a company that paid him so much money.

For its first Zane Grey talkie, the studio fell back on the inexplicably well-regarded Light of Western Stars (1930). Richard Arlen and Mary Brian, frequent Paramount costars who at one time were romantically linked off-screen, took the leads. Otto Brower and Edwin H. Knopf assumed responsibility (and, later, blame) for the picture’s direction. With Grey’s original altered almost beyond recognition—right down to the character names—this Light was the dimmest to date. Torpid and unengaging, it occupied eight seemingly endless reels and was a total washout.

Somewhat better was The Border Legion (also 1930), back for its third cinematic goround. This time the casting was better: Jack Holt’s hard edge made him a perfect Jack Kells, while Richard Arlen and Fay Wray seemed well suited to play Jim Cleve and Joan Randall. Brower and Knopf once again wielded the megaphone, but with scripters Percy Heath and Edward E. Paramore Jr. hewing closely to Grey’s original plot, they were able to deliver a more satisfying Western.

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