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"Filming in the West of Zane Grey” by Ed Hulse is the definitive reference guide to all 113 feature films and serials adapted from Grey’s published yarns and stories, supplied directly to movie producers. No other book has covered Zane Grey motion pictures in this detail, and with many of the early films either lost or unavailable, this book is an invaluable reference source for casual fans and serious researchers alike.
Citation preview
� vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
Zane Grey and the Movies 1
The Silent FilmsGraft (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
CONTENTS
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 FilmsThe Lone Star Ranger (1930) 159
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) 174
Fighting Caravans (1931) 176
Riders of the Purple Sage (1931) 180
The Rainbow Trail (1932) 187
Heritage of the Desert (1932) 192
viii � Contents
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
The End of the Trail (1936) 268
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 � ix
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 363
by Karl Thiede
Selected Bibliography 383
x � Contents
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.
� xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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
� 1
ZANE GREY AND THE MOVIES
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 jungle-
adventure films he made with animals from the extensive zoo he maintained, this five-
reeler 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. Movie-
industry 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
trans lation 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 � 3
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
Dustin Farnum.
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 � 5
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
This picture accompanied an Exhibitors Herald article in which exhibitors decried the lack ofassistance they received from distributors in promoting films based on Zane Grey stories.
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 Players-
Lasky 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 � 7
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-and-
coming 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 skin-
darkening “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 � 9
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
On the set of To the Last Man in Northern Arizona: cinematographer James Wong Howe (withhat in hand), Zane Grey, Richard Dix and Lois Wilson (seated). Future director John Huston isstanding to the right of Howe.
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.
Zane Grey and the Movies � 11
Billie Dove and Zane Grey.
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. Trade-
paper 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 no-
nonsense 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 half-
dozen 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 � 13
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
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.
Zane Grey and the Movies � 15
Jack Holt.
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 co-
stars 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 go-
round. 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.
16 � Zane Grey and the Movies