At the time of the club’s censure, Grey’s thinking gravitated to his longstanding membership in this prestigious organization and its enormous influence upon the history and development of sport fishing. Despite his complaints about the damage of commercial fishing, Catalina still had the most challenging fishing in the United States, and the club was central to that challenge. Even though Zane had long disliked the Tuna Club’s stuffiness, elitism, and intense competition, Catalina and the club were key factors in his 1918 relocation to California and his 1920 decision to purchase a residence in Avalon. Belatedly, he realized that he had offended many Club members with his published characterization of Boschen as an angler who “horses in [a fish] before he wakes up to real combat,” and his statement that Boschen’s record broadbill offered no fight because he had been hooked in the heart.114 Anonymous phone calls following Mrs. Spalding’s catch urging Grey to try Jergens, a popular hand lotion for women, caused him to realize the hostility and jealousy that his fishing articles had provoked. Locals as well as club members believed that Grey’s success as a writer got his articles published and that he did not merit the reputation they had brought him. When Will Dilg’s wife wrote an article about Mrs. Spalding’s catch and published it in her husband’s Izaak Walton League Monthly, Grey was so outraged that he nearly ended his friendship with Dilg and his support for the league.115 Amid the agitation of the moment, Grey decided that he did not want Mrs. Spalding’s fish and these annoyances to spoil everything. Club affiliation was too important to both himself and Dolly for him to contest the decision, refuse to comply, or terminate his association.
But the animosity and humiliation inherent in the board’s action left Grey with festering resentment and second thoughts. The 1922 season added to his frustration. Although they hooked numerous broadbills, neither he nor R. C. landed one. The Islander reported that R. C. had lost his seventh broadbill that year.116 Ever since R. C. had caught seven marlin in a single day back in 1918, his persistent failure with broadbill provoked worsening embarrassment.
By season’s end, Grey was convinced that the Tuna Club’s rule limiting the strongest line to twenty-four threads was unfair and outdated. Ever since the Tuna Club was founded, fishing lines had been made from interwoven strands of linen thread; more threads made the line stronger, but also less maneuverable. Because many threaded lines were unwieldy and allowed fish little chance to escape, Tuna Club founders established rules that cued the number of threads to the size of the fish and limited the largest usable line to twenty-four threads.
Back in 1917 when he caught his first broadbill, Grey was a solid supporter of the Tuna Club’s rules about line. During his 1918 visit to Long Key, he made a concerted effort to use “light tackle,” involving 9-thread line, and was so successful that he wrote several articles encouraging fishermen to use it.117 That same year, he founded the Long Key Fishing Club, and in his role as its first president, established several buttons for light tackle. However, his intensifying quest for broadbill and his belief that they could reach a thousand pounds convinced him that anglers could not land a potential record if they were restricted to 24-thread lines. This thinking placed him at odds with Catalina anglers who were moving toward even lighter tackle. Support was building within the Club, and outside as well, for a revival of the defunct “Light Tackle Club” that favored “3-6” (6-thread line, 6-foot rod, 6-oz. tip). James Jump’s remarkable success with fewer thread lines convinced locals that he represented the future for sportfishing.
The Spalding matter left Grey determined to act on behalf of his controversial beliefs. Starting with the 1923 season, come what may, he resolved to fish a 39-thread line for broadbill. As support for his rebellious course, Grey commissioned J. A. Coxe to build him a special 18/0 reel. If his main objective was a quality reel capable of holding 400 yards of 39-thread line, he also wanted it to surpass the currently available products. Several years before, Coxe was sufficiently disenchanted with vom Hofe’s highly respected B-Ocean reel that he designed a reel that functioned better and was more resistant to breakdown.118
By 1923, Coxe had been making reels for only two years, but they were already superior to the B-Ocean.119 The one Grey commissioned involved greater complexity; the intricacy and precision of its gearing was watchlike. For years, it would be his personal favorite. Coxe built only one more of these reels, which he kept on display in his shop, and that one has disappeared. The $1,500 that Grey paid Coxe would make it an expensive reel today, but perhaps the best measure of this price at the time is the fact that Grey could have purchased five new Model-T Fords with that same amount and still had money left over.120 Here was another example of his willingness to spend exorbitant sums on innovative products for his avid pursuit of big fish.
During the early spring of 1923, Zane was invited to add his name to the list of prominent anglers who supported “The Light Tackle Club” and he pointedly refused.121 When he later learned that the Tuna Club had appointed a tackle committee to review the current regulations, he submitted a petition requesting that the club allow 39-thread for large swordfish, large tuna, and broadbill. At a meeting on February 12, the tackle committee affirmed its long-standing rule that limited heavy tackle to “24 thread linen line manufactured from the grade of linen yarn known in the trade as ‘No. 50.’”122 Grey was not surprised, but he knew that the time for him to quit had arrived. On March 15, 1923, two months before Dolly left for Lackawaxen and Europe, Grey resigned from the Tuna Club.123 Unlike Zane, his brother R. C. was both liked and respected as a fisherman by the club membership, but his long-standing loyalty to his brother and his dependency upon Zane’s boat and tackle for his fishing placed him in an impossible position. On May 31, 1923, he too resigned from the Tuna Club.124
* * *
Over the summer of 1923, Zane’s distress over his women, his writing, and his fishing overlapped, intensified, and delivered a series of blows that left him battered and stumbling. At the time of her June departure for Europe, Dolly was characteristically upbeat and reassuring of her love, but she also knew that she was leaving Zane with all the responsibilities that she had been dutifully shouldering. From abroad she wrote him long, cheerful letters about her activities, her love for him, and a handsome European nobleman who kept showing up at the same places. Zane’s early letters were equally positive. “You are now on the big ship leaving your native land,” he stated for her embarkation. “It was hard to let you go. Be as careful as possible and have the best time that you can. This is your opportunity. All fine here. The kids are happy and improving. I am well & in good spirits. Life is particularly good to us.”125
These acknowledgments of Dolly’s importance took on more sincerity and urgency as he updated her on all that was going wrong and his darkening mood. A couple of weeks before Dolly’s departure, Zane was visited by John Pritchett, an editor from American Magazine, and when Pritchett left, he wrote in his journal “The reality of publishing MS, against the vision of my dreams, gave me a sense of disappointment and disillusion.” This unpleasant experience revived his January fears and several weeks later he was regretting the forthcoming appearance of Call of the Canyon and wishing that it could somehow be postponed. Having sent Ladies’ Home Journal his recently completed The Thundering Herd, he informed Dolly that he very much wanted her to read it and that he was “deathly afraid that you don’t like it.”126 A week later, he announced to Dolly, “Bad news. I’m sorry to have to tell that I am sunk.” Barton Currie had “roasted h-” out of Herd, informed him that his recent stories were “inferior to those before,” and demanded that he rewrite his novel’s conclusion.127 Initially, he refused, but his position was undermined by the appearance of a long, negative article on Wanderer in the New York Evening Post. Contending that the account was filled with “stinking ridicule” and “the most villainous thing I ever read,” Zane confessed that “it made me ill.”128 What would he do, he wondered, if held out against Currie and readers agreed that the conc
lusion to Herd was weak?
“The situation here with Louise is intolerable,” Grey added in the same letter about the Post article. A week earlier, she had been “sick with her ridiculous fears” about local gossip,129 and now she was cheerfully awaiting the arrival a boyfriend from Zanesville and, even worse, eager to go dancing with him. “I am sorry that I must distress you with my troubles,” he concluded. “But if you were only here! I need you so badly.”130 Several days into this awkward situation, Zane and Louise had a violent argument, and he sent Louise back to Zanesville. He immediately contacted Dorothy and invited her to accompany him on his upcoming trip to Arizona. Initially, she accepted, but then reneged a few days later.131 Meanwhile, Elma sent him an announcement of her upcoming marriage to Fred Nagle. With undisguised anguish and self-absorption, Zane complained to Dolly:
If she had trusted me, and had told me I would have taken it well enough. But a deliberate double-cross like this is a humiliation I have never suffered before. She writes as if she expected me to be pleased as punch, and do favors for her.
You, with your great heart and understanding of the frailties of humanity, and the inevitableness of life, will be sympathetic and get her point of view. But if you could have a look at me now, after 24 hours of shame, you would not be so sympathetic, I imagine.132
Shaken by this crashing of his pillars of support, he appealed to Dolly to contact Dorothy and persuade her to return with her to Altadena. “If you don’t, I will not have anyone left,” he moaned. “I’ll be unable to work.”133
In August, Currie wired back his satisfaction with the rewritten conclusion to The Thundering Herd, Grey wrote Dolly with tinges of doubt, “That’s a turn of the tide, I hope,” but he added, “Things have been tough for me. I’ll have a tale of woe to unfold that will harrow up your soul.”134
On August 13, five months after Grey’s resignation, Dan Phillips told fellow Tuna Club members that he saw Zane fighting a swordfish that R. C. was credited with catching.135 Since Tuna Club rules clearly stipulated that a person who hooked a fish had to fight it in order to receive credit for the catch, this was a serious infraction. Zane, on the other hand, insisted that Phillips’s claims were untrue and slanderous. Coming on the heels of the Mrs. Spalding incident, these charges were upsetting, and the outcome even more so. The club, which had rushed to the defense of Mrs. Spalding, who was not even a member, now turned a deaf ear to his complaint, and blithely allowed one of its members to say what he pleased. Grey was even more vexed that the charge came from one of the pair who had lured Captain Danielson away from him and that his close friend Wiborn did not contest the lie. Since Wiborn was with Grey and knew what actually happened, he could have supported him, but did not; as with the Spalding incident, he chose to remain silent and neutral. “Wiborn sat right next to him (Phillips), according to what I can learn, and never said a word,” Zane informed Dolly. “He has gone back to his cheap cronies. They are a cheap set.”136
Grey’s mounting distress was worsened by the poor fishing of that summer. During a two-week period of intense searching, he did not sight a single swordfish. Ninety-three days into the season he had managed to spot over a hundred, but he had received only eleven strikes, and he had not boated a single big fish. In his published account of this season, which he entitled “Herculean Angling,” Zane admitted: “We had endured two months of bad luck, one way or another. I lost patience with Sid [Boerstler] and the little boat [Gladiator!!]. We were all downcast. It was impossible to be cheerful.”137
During the final week of fishing, sunshine finally penetrated the thunderheads swirling around Grey. On August 21, he landed a broadbill, then a second one on the 22nd, and finally a third on the 31st.138 However, his exuberance over this unprecedented achievement was restrained by the fact that two of these fish weighed less than 300 pounds, and the largest was only 360 pounds. Even worse, he learned from Dolly several weeks later that A. R. Martin, a Tuna Club member, had successfully landed a 474-pound broadbill, eclipsing Boschen’s long-standing record, and dashing his hopes that his three broadbill would spite “the envious gang at the Tuna Club.”139
This deepening angst sapped Zane’s health and caused him to fear that he would be unable to take his upcoming trip to Arizona. Since December, Zane had been planning to meet Jesse Lasky and his crew for an on-location filming of The Call of the Canyon, The Vanishing American, and The Heritage of the Desert. This represented the fulfillment of two long-standing dreams. First, Grey badly wanted his novels to be made into first-rate movies. During 1922, he lost confidence in Hampton’s handling of Zane Grey Pictures and hired James Forgey, a Los Angeles lawyer, to pursue funds that were past due. “I am amazed at the money coming from the Hampton outfit,” he rejoiced to Dolly several months later. “I’ll write Forgey, ‘Congratulations, Keep after the Bastards.’”140 When he belatedly realized that he could have made more money from sales of rights than he did from Hampton’s films,141 Grey delegated Forgey to break his contract with Hampton.142 In December, he split with Hampton and immediately sold the remnants of his film company to the Famous Players–Lasky Corporation, currently renamed Paramount. Lasky badly wanted exclusive rights to Grey’s new novels, and in addition to the purchase of Grey’s film company, he agreed to pay Grey an outright fee of $30,000 for each and a modest percentage of the film’s return.
Left to right: Richard Wetherill, Zane Grey, and Jesse Lasky, en route to the Rainbow Bridge, 1923. (Courtesy of Loren Grey.)
Second, Grey had long wanted his novels to be filmed in the settings that inspired them, and Lasky guaranteed that his first three films would be. The Call of the Canyon was filmed in the Oak Creek area that Carley visited in the story. The Heritage of the Desert used the scenery around Gap and Lee’s Ferry. The Vanishing American became the first Western to utilize the breathtaking scenery of Monument Valley. Call and American were also feature productions with handsome budgets and well-known stars—Lois Wilson and Richard Dix. Grey and Lasky agreed to confer about these productions during a fall trip to the Rainbow Bridge.143
Grey hoped this trip would mend his health, but everywhere he went there were more problems. The three hotels in Flagstaff were woefully inadequate for the large film crews. Heavy rains drenched his outing with Lasky and delayed shooting. Sets got washed away and had to be rebuilt. The director for Heritage, Irvin Willatt, accidentally shot himself in the leg and created more delays.144 Grey had arranged for his outfitters there to be paid for providing livestock and provisions. He allowed Babe Haught and Lee Doyle to include his own horses in the herd they rented to the filmmakers. When agents for Lasky complained about excessive charges and he too received a steep bill for feeding his horses, Zane sought to renegotiate the fees and got embroiled in a bitter feud with his close friends.
The final blow was a letter from Louise. After denouncing his “childish threat” at their parting, she declared, “I am no longer a child,” and announced, “We can no longer remain even friends, so I say good-bye.”145
Zane was still in Arizona when Dolly returned from Europe. She dutifully complied with his request and persuaded Dorothy to travel with her back to Altadena. During their long hours in the car, Dorothy enlightened Dolly about Zane’s disastrous summer. Although neither knew about his recent breakup with Louise, Dorothy provided Dolly enough information about their involvement to squelch the good will in her letters from abroad. She immediately posted this blunt account of her altered mood:
There are many things about which I ought to write you, but I think I’ll save them for your return. I was terribly put out about a number of things that had transpired about which I now can laugh; especially about your “little O.K.er,” who was so absolutely indispensable to you, but really didn’t get the credit for it etc. I was almost ready to throw up my job—but I guess your work still needs me more than anyone who has happened on the scene thus far. Any time you, however, find an indispensable “O.K.er” to take my place, let me know. No use or place f
or waste in my system. If I’m not indispensable to you, I can be to myself. Dot told me a lot about this summer which you never mentioned to me. You surely had some unpleasant experiences didn’t you, but I guess we all have to reap our own sowing. My estimate of Mrs. A. was exactly right, it appears—but I cannot blame Louise.146
Needless to say, Zane confronted a chilly reception when he returned to Altadena. Though he badly needed the nursing regularly provided by the heroines of his novels, both Dolly and Dorothy were too offended to oblige. And he was too overwhelmed and preoccupied to make amends. When Thanksgiving arrived, he withdrew to his study, and wrote in his journal that 1923 was the worst year of his life. When he learned that Dorothy had been drinking with Claire during their stay in Lackawaxen the previous summer, he got into a violent quarrel that sent her packing. On December 15, he wrote in his journal in secret code, “Dorothy went home today. I may never see her again.” Returning to normal prose, he elaborated:
If there is one thing I cannot stand it is to see someone I care greatly for suffer on my account. It hurts, stings, wrenches me, and then rouses me to impotent fury and at last a coldness of despair. That is the way I have been lately.
There is a constant pain in my breast, a recurrent memory of injustice and wrong, of a cruelty that deplored, but somehow could never avert.
And now it is over—the daily sight of that pain I caused. But I can remember the pale face, the shadows, the lines of sleeplessness and tears, the dark sad eyes, and then the poignant words, expressive of the simple anguished soul.
So I am wretched. I suffer. I cannot do anything.147
A few days later, he was so incensed by Romer’s impertinence to him and Betty that he struck his son for the first time in years.148 Desperate to escape the whirlwind of his destructive emotions, he pressured the family into celebrating its Christmas on the 24th and left early the next day for New York City.149 In her letter to him there, Dolly commented on the wake of misery that followed his offensive departure:
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