PEARL ZANE GREY - born January 31, 1872 Zane Grey was an indifferent scholar, barely achieving a minimum average. Outside class he spent his time on baseball, pool, and creative writing, especially poetry. The more books Grey sold, the more the established critics, such as Heywood Broun and Burton Rascoe, attacked him. They claimed his depictions of the West were too fanciful, too violent, and not faithful to the moral realities of the frontier. They thought his characters unrealistic and much larger-than-life. Broun stated that “the substance of any two Zane Grey books could be written upon the back of a postage stamp. His novel The Vanishing American (1925), first serialized in The Ladies’ Home Journal in 1922, started a heated debate. People recognized its Navajo hero as patterned after the great athlete Jim Thorpe. Grey portrayed the struggle of the Navajo to preserve their identity and culture against corrupting influences of the white government and of missionaries. This viewpoint enraged religious groups. Grey contended, I have studied the Navaho Indians for twelve years. I know their wrongs. The missionaries sent out there are almost everyone mean, vicious, weak, immoral, useless men. Greys American Western novels include Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lone Star Ranger. Many of his works were adapted for the screen, and several of them became the basis for Dick Powells Zane Grey Theater, a popular television series of the late 1950s. Grey became one of the first millionaire authors. With his veracity and emotional intensity, he connected with millions of readers worldwide, during peacetime and war, and inspired many Western writers who followed him. The success of Greys The Lone Star Ranger (a novel later turned into a 1930 film) and King of the Royal Mounted (popular as a series of Big Little Books and comics, later turned into a 1936 film), inspired two radio series by George Trendle (WXYZ, Detroit). Later these were adapted again for television, forming the series The Lone Ranger and Challenge of the Yukon (Sgt. Preston of the Yukon on TV). Many famous actors got their start in films based on Zane Grey books. They included Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott, William Powell, Wallace Beery, Richard Arlen, Buster Crabbe, Shirley Temple, and Fay Wray. Victor Fleming, later director of Gone with the Wind, and Henry Hathaway, who later directed True Grit, both learned their craft on Grey films.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 16:51:52 +0000
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