An Author is Not Without Honor . . .
Posted by John M. Whalen on Sep 5, 2011 in News | 9 commentsIn 2012, with the release of John Carter of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs, who wrote A Princess of Mars, the novel the film is based on, may become more well-known and appreciated than he has been in the past. 2012 just happens to be the 100th anniversary of the publication of the first Mars volume as well as another well known work, Tarzan of the Apes. The Post Office is going to issue a commemorative stamp honoring Tarzan and Burroughs. The people who run Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., these days are planning centennial celebrations at various locations around the country honoring one of heroic fiction’s greatest writers. That’s all well and good. But in 1999 when I made a trip to Tarzana, Calif., the town named after Tarzan–where you would think he’d be the most famous and celebrated–I was shocked to find that, for the most part, nobody there knows who he is.
I was in Los Angeles for a few days that year doing research at the UCLA library for an article on Academy Award winning screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, (another “famous” writer few people have heard of) which I eventually sold to the Washington Post. While I was in LA I recalled that Tarzana was only 20 miles northeast of the city and, being a Burroughs fan, I had always been curious to see what it was like and if there were any memorials, museums or other landmarks celebrating the man who founded the town. I figured at least a statue or a plaque of some kind.
A little history. In the 1920s Burroughs was in the chips. Sales of his books were making him good money and there were lucrative deals with the movies and radio. He had enough dough to move with his family from Oak Park, Ill., and buy a fair sized ranch in the California hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley. He built a Kubla Khan-type palace, complete with stables, movie theatre, swimming pool. He had cattle, swine, horses, bulls, all sorts of birds, and his living quarters are described by the press of that time as “sumptuous and artistic.” There often were parties with guests from Hollywood. He also had an office in a small building not far away on Ventura Blvd., where he wrote many of his novels. He eventually had the 550 acres incorporated and turned into a town with its own Post Office. Nowadays, while the town of Tarzana remains, little of the original Burroughs pleasure palace remains.
I drove down Ventura Blvd., and was a bit disconcerted to see stores, restaurants, dry cleaners, gas stations and some low-slung two-and-three-story office buildings but no trace of ERB anywhere. I pulled into a gas station and asked a Mexican attendant if there were some sort of a museum or bookstore where you can buy Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books.
“What kind of books?” he asked.
“Edgar Rice – - -”
He shrugged.
“Is there any memorial or museum dedicated to Edgar Rice Burroughs?”
“Who is he?” he asked. He just shook his head. I drove to another gas station and asked the Vietnamese guy there the same thing. No soap.
I drove four or five blocks down Ventura and suddenly saw a sign that said I was now in Woodland Hills. Tarzana is that small. Woodland Hills is where the old actors home is. It’s where Johnny Weissmuller spent some of his last days in a wheel chair yelling out Tarzan calls in the middle of the night, before he was shipped down to Mexico to die.
I spotted a small news stand and bookstore ahead and went in there. At least there were some paperbacks. Surely somebody here would know who Edgar Rice Burroughs was. I found a blonde-headed guy inside with a suntan who looked like he’d rather be out surfing. I reminded him that Tarzana is named after Tarzan. “So is there anything around the town that acknowledges Burroughs?” I asked.
“This is Woodland Hills,” the guy said. “Tarzana is over there. I wouldn’t know what’s going on over there.”
I asked him for a telephone book and found a listing and address for the Tarzana Chamber of Commerce. There was also another listing for Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. They were both right on Ventura Blvd.
The Chamber of Commerce turned out to be one room on the second floor above a strip shopping center. A flight of steps led up to a balcony and a walkway ran past a beauty parlor and a dentist’s office and finally I opened the door to the Chamber of Commerce.
Here at last there were pictures of the man himself, framed copies of some of the original covers of the Tarzan novels and photos of Weissmuller and Lex Barker. There were only a few copies of the books available but there were some nice T-shirts. I got one that had an illustration from Tarzan and the Golden Lion on it. I told the lady who worked there that it was odd that nobody in this town seems to know anything about Burroughs.
“Odd? Really?” she said. “You think anybody in this town reads? Half of this town can’t speak English. And the traffic is terrible. Even if you want to get out of this place you can’t. I just got back from vacation in Oregon. That’s where I’ll be in a couple of years.”
After a bit more grousing, she directed me to go down Ventura Blvd. To the offices of ERB Inc. “Danton Burroughs (Edgar’s grandson, who died in 2008) is usually there,” she said. “He might talk to you and let you inside. By the way, did you know Edgar Rice Burroughs is buried under a tree right in front of the building?”
I got back to the car and drove down Ventura but I couldn’t find the address. I pulled over in front of a small, low-slung, beige California style house with no number on it hidden behind a big tree. It was literally sandwiched between a transmission shop and a furniture store. Could that be it? I asked the people in the furniture store if ERB Inc was around here?
“Yeah, right next door,” a lady said.
“How do you get in?”
“I don’t know. Maybe there’s an entrance around the back.”
She let me go through the store to the courtyard in the rear but the rear entrance was locked up and there was nothing there except a few cacti.
I went back around front and just about fed up with this whole weird odyssey, walked through the wrought iron gate, passed under the leafy boughs of a black walnut tree and knocked on the front door. A pregnant woman opened it. Behind her I could see the office. There were loads of pictures from Tarzan movies, a big wooden desk, book covers, and pics of ERB all over the walls behind her.
“Did you have an appointment with Danton?” she asked.
“No, actually —”
“He’s had a family emergency and had to leave. If you call ahead you can get an appointment and he’ll give you a brief tour of place. Will you be in town long?”
“No, I’m catching a plane back east tonight.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So this was Edgar’s house?” I asked.
“No this was Mr. Burroughs office. His ranch is up in the hills near the country club. But this is the place were he wrote the novels.”
“The lady at the chamber of commerce said he’s buried here under a tree.” I turned and looked at the black walnut tree behind me. “That one?”
“Mr. Burroughs was cremated and had his ashes placed under the tree in an unmarked grave, as he wished,” the pregnant lady said. “We’re not exactly even sure of the exact location of the urn, but it’s there somewhere under the tree.”
After she closed the door I stood there looking down at the gnarled roots of the walnut tree. There was a black wrought iron fence around it about six inches high. I remembered reading that Burroughs spent time in the Pacific during World War II as the nation’s oldest war correspondent. But when he returned home from the war he couldn’t find a suitable place to live in Tarzana and ended his days in a modest home in Encino. It was weird. There in an unmarked grave under a tree in the middle of a town where hardly anybody knew who he was — a town named after one of his own fictional creations — lay the ashes of one of the greatest authors of heroic fiction who ever lived. Very weird.
They say a prophet is not without honor except in his own country. Maybe the same’s true for authors. I haven’t been back to Tarzana in twelve years. I don’t know if anything has changed. Probably more traffic. I’ve heard that they sometimes open up what’s left of the ranch to fans for special tours. And there’s always talk about a museum being built in Tarzana someday. Maybe 2012, with the publicity about the centennial, will be Ed’s year. Who knows? Maybe he’ll even get a statue.
That’s a very sad story, John.
ERB was the Louis LaMour of fantastic adventure.
Can you tell us also about Johnny Weissmuller being shipped down to Mexico to die?
Wow, I would not have suspected that. It was once much the same for Robert E. Howard in his home of Cross Plains. There are still plenty of folks there who don’t care about Howard, but there is a great core of locals who have preserved his legacy and there’s an excellent small museum at his home.
Hi Charles,
Well, as I said in the article, at the time I was there you could get into the office for a tour if you arranged for it ahead of time, and maybe you still can. I suppose you could consider that a museum of sorts, although they were actually running the Burroughs Inc. business from there. I don’t know what has happend since Danton Burroughs died. There are events up at the ranch occasionally for the Burroughs fans, like the Burroughs Bibliophiles, etc. As in Howard’s case there are a core of true believers who do what they can. But as for the town itself and the people that live there, it’s like he never existed. I guess the moral is if you want to be a writer because you want to be famous, other than certain rare exceptions, you’d better pick another profession.
Jaq,
I suppose it is sad, but to me it seems just downright peculiar. As I was told by the pregnant lady, ERB wantd an unmarked grave. But you think somebody in fifty years would have done something more.
Regarding Johnny Weissmuler, in the early seventies he broke a hip and doctors found out he had a heart condition. Imagine that, after being a swimmer all his life. He had a stroke at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas and several more later and for a time was put in The Motion Picture and Television Country House in Woodland Hills. He was only there several weeks. I can remember reading news stories at the time that he would disturb the whole hospital by riding up and down the halls in his wheelchair doing his Tarzan call. His fifth wife Maria Baumgardner took him out of the hospital and they went down to Acapulco, where they had a small house. There are accounts that she used him in his feeble condition for monetary gain, including settin him up in bed with oxygen mask and IV so a National Enquirer photographer could take pictures of him. Now that is tragic.
Very good article. I remember reading that ERB was one of the first writing superstars (and a spec fic writer, to boot!) and gained quite a bit of fame and fortune. I was wondering whatever happened to the ranch and the town and all that.
Now I (kinda) know. Sounds like you need to make another trip out there and see how things are now.
Worth reading but kind of a downer! Here’s hoping ERB gets something more permanent next year.
Really fascinating account, John–thanks for sharing! I was about as surprised as everyone else. I think, standing there looking into that nondescript little office in that unmarked house, my eyes would’ve momentarily misted over, thinking of how much pleasure and joy of my youth originated in there.
I’m not the biggest ERB fan, but admittedly I’ve only read a few of his works and they didn’t do much for me. From time to time I give him another shot, so maybe something will jolt with me then.
Saying that, I still recognize the huge influence Burroughs has had and continues to have on speculative fiction. Without ERB we might not have had Flash Gordon which meant we might not have had Star Wars which meant we might not have had a ton of things we have today. And his influence stretched into thriller writing as well, setting standards for other pulp genres that still affect literature and cinema today.
Hopefully in the next year or two the man will receive at least as much recognition as Bob Howard has garnered over the last decade or so.
Thanks, everyone for your comments. It’s possible ERB will receive his due, especially when the John Carter film is released. Andrew Stanton the writer/director has put ERB in the film as a character, so that should definitely help. And the ERB Inc. people are planning celebrations of the centennial of the books’ publications. Remember, for a long time it wasn’t cool to like Edgar Rice Burroughs. Critics ridiculed his style, libraries banned Tarzan because of false accusations of racism, and church groups protested erroneously that Tarzan and Jane were living in the jungle in sin. As any real fan knows, Tarzan and Jane were married in the cabin in the jungle where he was born by Jane’s father Professor Porter, an ordained minister. As for his style, it was what it was, and reflected the times in which the books were written. But his ability to describe action, to let out all the stops of his imagination and let the story build, have no equal among fiction writers. The cliffhanger ending of The Gods of Mars is surely the product of some kind of genius. And I defy anyone to find a better first sentence for a novel than the one that begins “The Monster Men.” Kreegah!