By James Aitchison

It’s hard to believe that the two men who wrote the best known, two-fisted, gun-slinging Western novels had such odd, even inappropriate names.  One was named Pearl.  The other, Clarence.  They were born eleven years apart and their work dominated the popular book market and movies for decades.

Born 31 January 1872, Pearl Zane Grey was a dentist by profession.  His birthplace, Zanesville, Ohio, had been founded by an ancestor.  Rumour has it that his name “Pearl” may have been inspired by newspaper descriptions of Queen Victoria’s mourning clothes as “pearl grey”.  Small wonder he dropped Pearl and used “Zane” as his first name.  Grey grew up reading history and adventure stories, especially dime novels featuring Buffalo Bill and Deadwood Dick.  He wrote his first story when he was fifteen.  Enraged, his father tore it to shreds and beat him.

Grey went to the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship and studied dentistry.  He continued writing, bombarding publishers with little success.  He and his brother Romer were both keen sportsmen and loved fishing.  Canoeing together in 1900, Zane met and courted seventeen-year-old Lina Roth, known as Dolly, who came from a wealthy family of physicians.  They married in 1905.

Publishing success did not come easily.  Plagued by depression, Grey said he wrote to escape “life as it is.”  His first novel was rejected by Harper & Brothers (now HarperCollins).  He studied story structure and wrote dialogue as he heard it spoken.  Harper’s editor Ripley Hitchcock rejected his fourth book, declaring “I do not see anything in this to convince me you can write either narrative or fiction.”

It wasn’t until 1912 that Grey wrote his best-known book and one of the most successful Western novels of all time, Riders of the Purple Sage.  Hitchcock rejected it outright, but this time Grey went over his head.  He took the manuscript directly to the vice-president of Harpers who accepted it.  It was the last time Harpers argued with Grey.  He was one of the first millionaire authors, with book sales exceeding 40 million.

Grey suffered bouts of depression and mood swings all his life.  While many authors could write steadily every day, Grey had intense dry spells.  Then, in a sudden burst of energy, he could turn out 100,000 words in a month. 

While his wife Dolly managed his career and contract negotiations with agents and movie studios, he was on the road, writing and spending time with many mistresses.  One such mistress earned special admiration: “I saw her flowing raven hair against the rocks… I thought it was an apparition…She seemed to be the embodiment of the West I portray in my books…”

Dolly turned a blind eye, knowing that Grey’s love for her was unwavering. 

Grey roamed as far afield as Tahiti, Australia, and New Zealand.  According to his son Loren, Grey fished on average 300 days a year.  He helped establish deep-sea sport fishing in Bermagui, Australia, now famous for marlin fishing.

Despite critics who derided his books as “too fanciful, too violent, not faithful to the moral realities of the frontier” and “lacking fluency and facility”, Grey’s ninety novels shaped the mythology of the Old West.  Fifty were adapted into 112 films and a TV series.  Famous actors such as Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott and William Powell got their start in films based on Zane Grey novels.  Directors who learned their craft on Zane Grey films included Victor Fleming (Gone With the Wind) and Henry Hathaway (True Grit).

Grey died of a heart attack, on 23 October 1939, aged 67.

…

The total opposite to Grey in terms of personality andcraft, Clarence Edward Mulford was born in Streator, Illinois, on 3 February 1883.  At the age of 21, Mulford created one of Wild West literature’s most enduring characters: Hopalong Cassidy.

Mulford, who lived in Maine, about as far as one could get from the Old West, brought to life a detailed and authentic world drawn from his extensive, dedicated library research.  He also pioneered the first series of western novels featuring the same continuous characters who aged over the course of the stories. 

Hopalong Cassidy, and other men from the Bar-20 ranch, soon became staples of Wild West lore, appearing in short stories and 28 novels, radio and television shows, feature films and comics.

The scholarly Mulford died on 10 May 1956 in Portland, Maine, bequeathing much of his fortune to local charities.  But Hopalong Cassidy’s story was far from over, thanks to William Boyd.  Originally a silent movie idol, Boyd had gained a second life portraying Cassidy in films.

The sixty-six Hopalong Cassidy movies (or “Hoppies” as they were known) were filmed on shoestring budgets by independent producers who released the films through the studios, firstly Paramount and later United Artists.  When producer Harry Sherman gave up the series in 1944, Boyd took over; he co-produced twelve more films himself, from 1946 to 1948, but with even lower budgets.

When “B” westerns were finally phased out in cinemas, Boyd believed Hopalong Cassidy might have a future in television.  He courageously sold or mortgaged everything he owned and bought the character rights from Mulford as well as the backlog of his old movies from Sherman (for $350,000).  Boyd convinced the NBC network to screen the films and in June 1949 Hopalong Cassidy became the first network TV series, ranking Number 7 in that year’s Nielsen ratings.  Boyd’s gamble had paid off.  The character and series were so popular that Boyd earned millions as Hopalong Cassidy — $800,000 in 1950 alone — when more than 100 companies manufactured $70 million worth of Hopalong Cassidy products.  All of which led to a new demand for Hopalong Cassidy features in movie theatres!

….

The Western genre was defined firstly by Zane Grey and then Clarence E. Mulford.  Their books have faded from public appeal, as did the old Western movies in cinemas.  But whenever the western is declared “dead”, a new iteration appears.  Whether it’s the spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood or the current Netflix hit American Primeval, the genre’s sharply drawn good-versus-evil stories, with justice always triumphant, strike a chord with every new generation.