24. The name of this Indian has been spelled various ways. Grey spelled it Nas Ta Bega. On the plaque installed at the site in 1927, his name is presented as Nasjah Begay and my references to this person employ that spelling.
25. Comfort, Rainbow to Yesterday, 18–23, 55–66.
26. Cummings, “Great Natural Bridges,” 157–67, and Pogue, “Great Rainbow Natural Bridge,” 1048–56.
27. Zane Grey, “The Painted Desert,” 8 (unpublished, incomplete manuscript, ZGM—L). Pogue, on p. 1052 under a photograph of the Bridge, likewise noted that the Flatiron Building would fit under it.
28. Grey, Journal 1910–12, May 6, 1911 (JW).
29. “The Painted Desert,” 11–14.
30. Grey stated in a journal entry that this first trip went “to Marsh pass.” Journal 1910–12, October 1, 1911, 108 (JW). Whether he actually reached Kayenta and saw the attractions nearby is unclear. In “Nonnezoshe,” Grey incorrectly states that he made three visits to Kayenta before going to the Rainbow Bridge. His journals and letters from 1912 reveal that he intended to return there in both the spring and fall of 1912, but Dolly’s difficulties with the birth of Betty and the demands of his work forced him to cancel both trips. Grey later incorporated a dozen pages from “The Painted Desert” into a 1924 article entitled “Down into the Desert” which recounted his 1922 trip to the Rainbow Bridge. The manuscript reveals that at the point that the group reached Marsh Pass, he abandoned the typewritten pages from “The Painted Desert” and started new handwritten pages. However, his description of Betatakin employs a typewritten section like the early pages and suggests that this description was from his 1911 trip (GH).
31. Grey, Journal 1910–12, May 11, 1911 (JW).
32. Grey wrote, “Some weeks back, when I finished my romance ‘Riders of the Purple Sage,’ I was tired out.” Journal 1910–12, September 20, 1911 (JW).
33. Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage, 1–2.
34. Kant, “Zane Grey and the Mormons,” 1, 8–10.
35. Zane Grey, Letter to David Rust, December 4, 1910, and February 15, 1911 (LDS).
36. Zane Grey, Letter to Dan Murphy, June 2, 1907 (Edwin Markham Collection, Wagner College).
37. Grey, Journal 1912–15, September 7, 1913 (GH).
38. John Tuska, “Foreword,” Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage (2005), 7. Tuska believes that editors at Harpers made these changes without consulting Zane, but he does not provide any documentation to support his claim. Hitchcock’s letter of acceptance (note 43 below) expresses no reservations and does not request changes. Several years later, when editors at Harpers did modify Grey’s grammar and punctuation, he noticed and denounced their unauthorized tampering with his work. In defense of his staff, the editor-in-chief stressed that it had always made only minor formatting changes. Even later, when the editors did request changes, Grey was left to make them.
39. Grey, Journal 1910–12, October 1, 1911, 108 (JW).
40. Ibid., October 1, 1911.
41. Grey, “My Own Life,” 18–19.
42. Ripley Hitchcock, Letter to Zane Grey, September 15, 1911 (LG).
43. Charles MacLean, Letter to Zane Grey, September 21, 1911 (LG).
44. Grey, Journal 1910–12, December 20, 1911 (JW).
45. Ibid., December 20, 1911.
46. Zane Grey, Letter to George Allen, October 27, 1912, Zane Grey Review 13 (February, 1998), 17.
47. Grey, “Baracuda of Long Key,” 271.
48. Zane Grey, Letter to Lina Grey, January 30, 1912 (LG).
49. The best example of the “high brow/low brow” debate appears in Brooks, America’s Coming of Age, 3–35.
50. For important background on these developments, see Mott, Golden Multitudes, 204–6, and History of American Magazines, vol. 3, 431–38. Also see Justice, Bestseller Index, 4–5.The two best-known books on the history of best sellers are Hackett, Fifty Years of Best Sellers, and Korda, Making the List. However, both say little about this important background and apparently were unaware of Mott’s groundbreaking research. Justice excavated other elements in his Bestseller Index, but this important chapter of publishing history warrants further research.
51. Bookman 35 (March–August, 1912), 218–19.
52. Ibid., 321.
53. Ibid., 396.
54. Zane Grey, Letter to Lina Grey, February 10, 1912 (LG).
55. Grey, Journal, 1910–12, April 11 and 12, 1912 (JW).
56. Grey started Desert Gold shortly after he finished Riders and hurriedly wrote it during the fall of 1912. By early December, Harpers had the finished manuscript. It started as a serial in March 1913 and was published the month following. The Light of Western Stars was written from March to August 1912, started as a serial in May 1913 and was published in January 1914.
57. Grey, Journal, 1910–12, April 23, 1912 (JW).
58. Lina Grey, Diary, 1912, October 13, 1912 (CK).
59. Zane Grey, Letter to Ripley Hitchcock, July 28, 1912 (Fales Library, New York University).
60. This represented a change from an initial title of Light Everlasting, whose religious overtones Zane did not like. When he proposed the title Under Western Stars, Hitchcock informed Grey that Joseph Conrad had already published a book with that title and so the author changed it again—this time to The Light of Western Stars.
61. Zane Grey, Letter to Robert H. Davis, March 19, 1912 (Fales Library, New York University).
62. Grey, Light of Western Stars, 4.
63. Zane Grey, Letter to Lina Grey, Oct. 13, 1911 (NAU). On March 30, 1909, Zane sent Lillian a copy of The Young Pitcher along with the inscription: “There are some old friends of yours in it. I am hoping you will be glad to meet them again.” Dolly also mentions Lillian in a letter to Zane Grey, March 6, 1909 (mss. 1262, OHS).
64. Ashworth, Arizona Triptych, 164–85. Ashworth quotes Lillian’s journal (174) and she provides a fuller discussion of Lillian’s family background and early life. She also claims that Zane knew Lillian long before 1909.
65. Lina Grey, Diary, 1912, October 13, 1912 (CK).
66. Lina Grey, Letter to Zane Grey, February 18, 1913 (BY-G2).
67. Lina Grey, Letter to Zane Grey, March 9, 1913 (BY-G).
68. During April and May 1913, Dolly wrote to Zane from 133 South Street, which was next door to the house that Ellsworth was renting at 135 South Street.
On September 7, 1913, Zane wrote in his journal, “I am here in this slow, dull, overgrown village and expect to make it my permanent home.” Grey, Journal 1912–15 (GH).
69. Lina Grey, Personal Notes (marked: “Private—do not read”), December 31, 1913, n.p. (CK).
70. Grey acknowledged his indebtedness to Hughes in his preface to The Lone Star Ranger.
71. Coconino Sun, May 30, 1913, 1.
72. Zane Grey, Entry dated September 21, 1929, Register of Kayenta Trading Post (Harvey Leake). Grey folded this description into “Fading Indian Trails” (mss. 1262, OHS).
73. For a fuller discussion of this background, see Hassell, Rainbow Bridge, 43– 65, and Comfort, Rainbow to Yesterday, 62–68. Also McNitt, Richard Wetherill, 80–83.
74. Grey, “Nonnezoshe,” in Tales of Lonely Trails, 6.
75. Wetherill guided Arthur Townsend and his sister to the Bridge weeks after his return with Cummings. By the end of 1910, he had already taken eleven people to the arch and six of them were women. List of Visitors to the Bridge (Rainbow Bridge Collection, Folder 17, no. 239, NAU). Also Hassell, Rainbow Bridge, 66.
76. Roosevelt published three articles in Outlook about his trip: “A Cougar Hunt on the Rim of the Grand Canyon,” Outlook 105 (October 4, 1913); “Across the Navajo Desert,” (October 11, 1913); and “The Hopi Snake Dance,” (October, 18, 1913). All three were included in Roosevelt, Book Lover’s Holidays, 1–97.
77. On October 14, 1914, Grey wrote to the editor of Century magazine offering his recently completed sequel to Riders for serialization. Because The Last of the Duanes started to run as a serial in May 1914 and the
serialization of The Lone Star Rangers commenced in September, they were both written before The Rainbow Trail, and Grey probably did not start this novel until he returned from his trip to Arizona in the early summer of 1914.
78. Grey’s idea for polygamists crossing state boundaries to visit their wives derived from his visit to Kanab, Utah, and Fredonia, Arizona, where he learned about the multiple wives of Dee Wooley and several other Mormons.
79. Grey, Rainbow Trail, 14.
80. During his 1913 trip to Kayenta, Grey stayed in camp while Doyle took the others on an outing. Before their return after dark, he was sitting alone by a fire when a menacing Indian rode into camp, but the sound of the group’s approach frightened him away before he did anything. The next day, Grey learned from Wetherill that the Indian’s name was Tse Ne Get and that he was very dangerous. The bad Indian Shadd in The Rainbow Trail was inspired by Tse Ne Get. Zane Grey, “Fading Indian Trails” (mss. 1262, OHS).
81. Dan Murphy, Letter to Ray Long, [Spring, 1915?] (BY-G).
82. Loren Grey, “Foreword,” in Grey, Desert Crucible.
83. In this sequel to Riders, Grey made Lassiter too old to be a significant character and thus foreclosed the possibility of developing this hero of his original story into a central figure for a series of novels. Grey attempted to do this with Ken Ward in his novels for adolescents, but decided early that he did not want his Westerns bound by this proven but restrictive formula for success.
84. Grey sent the Book News Monthly two photographs of the Rainbow Bridge for its three articles about him in the February 1918 issue. He used another in his article “What the Desert Means to Me,” 8. A fourth one was included in Zane Grey: The Man and His Work, 46.
85. Hassell cites governmental directives to Wetherill, who served as custodian of the Bridge, to remove all defacement of the site by visitors. Hassell, Rainbow Bridge, 63. However, Wetherill left the inscribed names of the Cummings’ party and Grey’s. A photograph of Grey’s name dating from 1966 shows that it was still quite distinct then, but it is barely discernible today.
Chapter 5: Moviemaking and Button Fish: 1915–19
1. Zane Grey, Postcard to Robert Davis, n.d. [ca. Spring, 1914] (NYPL).
2. Publishers Weekly 85 (March 14, 1914), 905, and (May 2, 1914), 1435.
3. Ibid., June 14, 1914, 1923.
4. Bookman 40 (January, 1915), 484.
5. Zane Grey, Letter to Robert Davis, June 5, 1914 (NYPL). Initially, Grey awarded Davis one-quarter of the sale of the film rights to Desert Gold and one-half of the sale of film rights to Light.
6. Lina Grey, Letter to Zane Grey, February 18, 1913 (BY-G2). A few months later, Totten and Davies took over this project, and their option delayed Grey’s sale of the film rights to Riders.
7. Ripley Hitchcock, Letter to Zane Grey, February 24, 1913 (BY-G2).
8. A fuller discussion of the background of The Squaw Man can be found in Tuska, Filming of the West, 59–62.
9. Zane Grey, Letter to Thomas Ince, January 28, 1915 (LG). On July 10, 1916, Grey wrote to Davis that the deal with Ince had fallen through because “he was afraid of the Mormon Church.”
10. Slide, Big V, 65–67.
11. Zane Grey, Letter to Robert Davis, March 26, 1916 (NYPL).
12. Robert Davis, Letter to Zane Grey, March 28, 1916 (NYPL).
13. Ibid.
14. Zane Grey, Telegram to Robert Davis, March 28, 1916 (NYPL).
15. On June 5, 1914, Grey contracted Davis to be his agent for films of seven novels, including The Last of the Duanes and The Lone Star Ranger, but not The Heritage of the Desert and Riders of the Purple Sage. In an October 7, 1916, letter to Davis, Grey mentioned that rights to all his novels so far, except The Border Legion, had been sold. Since Fox filmed five of his novels—The Last Trail, Riders of the Purple Sage, The Last of the Duanes, The Lone Star Ranger, and The Rainbow Trail—Davis undoubtedly sold the rights to the last three sometime between March 30, 1916, when he sold the rights to the first two Grey novels, and the October 1916 date when the rights to the other three were no longer available.
16. Zane Grey, Postcard to Robert Davis, [1915?] (NYPL).
17. Zane Grey, Letter to Robert Davis, November 26, 1915 (NYPL).
18. Slide, Big V, 67–68. Hampton described these efforts in his History of the Movies, 146–69.
19. This important chapter in Paramount’s history has not been much discussed nor well documented. This summary has been derived from Irwin, House That Shadows Built, 179–221 and Whitfield, Pickford, 139–49.
20. Benjamin Hampton, Memorandum to Percival S. Hill, August 11, 1916. Quoted in Slide, Big V, 69.
21. Ibid., 67–70.
22. Clipping file on “Benjamin Hampton” (Herrick Library, Academy of the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). Hampton does not discuss his involvement with Zane Grey Pictures in his History of the Movies.
23. Zane Grey, Letter to Lina Grey, June, 1916 (JW).
24. Originally Dustin Farnum was supposed to play Shefford, the lead in The Rainbow Trail. Catalina Islander, April 3, 1917, 1.
25. In a February 20, 1918, letter to Dolly, Zane included a wire from H. A. Sherman stating: “Bought Western Stars from Selig for our first production.” Zane Grey, Letter to Lina Grey, February 20, 1918 (BY-G2).
26. Zane Grey, Letter to Benjamin H. Hampton, May 2, 1919 (Thomas Nelson Page Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University Library).
27. Zane Grey, Letter to Lina Grey, June 26, [1918] (BY-G).
28. Romer C. Grey, “Fishing with Famous Fellows,” 255–62.
29. Macrate, History of the Tuna Club, 153.
30. Robert H. Davis, Letter to Zane Grey, October 17, 1913 (LG). This letter is quoted in full in Loren Grey, “Foreword,” in Grey, Last of the Duanes, 8.
31. Ripley Hitchcock, Letter to Zane Grey, November 13, 1913 (LG).
32. Loren Grey believes that the editors at Harpers created The Lone Star Ranger from the two serials. “Foreword,” in Grey, Last of the Duanes, 10. The consolidation of these serials involved changes far more extensive than those done to The Desert Crucible and Riders of the Purple Sage. It is hard to believe that any editor would ever accept a job demanding so much work and so fraught with risk of offending the author. Grey probably hurried this careless consolidation in order to appease the objections of his editors at Harpers and to get his two serializations published as a novel.
33. Bookman 42 (January 1916), 518, and American Library Annual 1916, 149– 50.
34. Zane Grey, Letter to Robert H. Davis, [September, 1915?] (NYPL).
35. Zane Grey, Letter to Lina Grey, February 10, 1912 (LG).
36. Davis, “At Sea with Zane Grey,” in Bob Davis Again!, 346–47.
37. Davis, “Porpoise on Tarpon Tackle,” 878–82.
38. Field and Stream 17 (December, 1912), 898.
39. Field and Stream 17 (July, 1912), 622–23.
40. Grey, “Following the Elusive Tuna,” 475–79.
41. Zane Grey, Letter to Lina Grey, March 23, 1913 (GH). In his article “Sailfish,” Grey explains that “sailfishing is really swordfishing” and mentions how some anglers believe sailfish to be in the same family as Pacific marlin. Grey, Tales of Fishes, 75.
42. Grey, “Swordfish, the Royal Purple Game of the Sea,” 256.
43. Davis, “Porpoise on Tarpon Tackle,” 879.
44. A photograph of Zane Grey in the fighting chair that was included in the original magazine version of “Swordfish, the Royal Purple Game of the Sea” appears in Tales of Fishes, 33.
45. Holder, Salt Water Game Fishing, frontispiece and 89.
46. In the frontispiece photograph to Salt Water Game Fishing, Charles Holder is shown standing with a rod and a Catalina boatman behind him. A photograph (204) in his Big Game at Sea also shows him again standing with his rod, but behind him is a chair that was a precursor of the fighting chair.
47. Grey, “Swordfish, the Royal Purple Game of the Sea,” 260.
48. Macrate, History
of the Tuna Club, 14 and 17.
49. Ibid., 149. This drop in large tuna, along with improvements in tackle, prompted the Tuna Club to create a red button in 1906 for tuna over fifty pounds taken with “light tackle,” consisting of a rod shorter than six feet and a 9-thread line with a breaking strength of twenty-six pounds.
50. Holder, “Catching Swordfish,” 752. Macrate says that Edward Llewellyn caught a 125-pound marlin in 1903 on heavy tackle, but does not say if he was in a boat. Macrate, History of the Tuna Club, 127.
51. Holder, Big Game at Sea, 102.
52. Macrate, History of the Tuna Club, 68 and 162. The gold button was originally awarded to the angler who took the largest tuna for the year.
53. Ibid., 153.
54. Ibid., 153 and 162.
55. Holder, Salt Water Game Fishing, 147.
56. Ibid., 90.
57. Ibid., 143.
58. The Tuna Club established a white button for broadbill in 1909, but Boschen was the first to win it. Macrate, History of the Tuna Club, 127.
59. Grey, Tales of Fishes, 30–37.
60. Macrate, History of the Tuna Club, 153.
61. Grey relates his fishing experiences at Clemente in “Swordfish, the Royal Purple Game of the Sea,” 259–61.
62. Zane Grey, Letter to Lina Grey, August 31, 1915 (BY-G).
63. William Boschen, who was among the first to catch marlin and broadbill and held the earliest records for both, wrote two articles about swordfish, but they did not appear until three years later. Boschen, “Marlin Is an Acrobat,” 70 and 82, and “True Swordfish and Its Capture,” 54 and 106.
64. Grey, “Swordfish, the Royal Purple Game of the Sea,” 255. The editors also anticipated this article’s appearance with a report the month before on Grey’s record catch of season, his 316-pound marlin, and his vow beforehand to improve upon his setbacks the year before. Recreation 53 (November, 1915), 231.
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