Science-Fiction newsletters and
fan magazines began to proliferate in the late 1930s and early 1940s, most
of them amateur publications mimeographed in purple and seeking to share
enthusiasms for the emerging genre. Most of these publications were distributed
gratis or with nominal fees, to cover mailing costs. These works frequently
referred to Burroughs as “the Grandfather of American Science Fiction,”
but the first magazine devoted exclusively to the author and his work was
the Burroughs Bulletin, founded and edited by Vernell Coriell, a
circus performer and acrobat who produced his first issue in July 1947
with the blessing of Burroughs, then in retirement at Encino, California,
after having served as the oldest war correspondent in World War II.
Thirteen years later at Pittsburgh
the charter members of the Burroughs Bibliophiles voted to make the
Burroughs
Bulletin their official magazine, with Coriell as editor. The board
of directors of the new society also voted to publish The Gridley Wave,
a monthly newsletter that Coriell had already begun publishing in December
1959 and that would feature news of the latest Burroughs books, films,
and merchandising activity. The title of this newsletter refers to a fictional
device for sending and receiving messages to and from Earth, the Earth’s
core, and the planet Mars – a device that Burroughs’s character, Jason
Gridley, discovers in
Tarzan at the Earth’s Core (1923). Using Burroughs’s
nomenclature for other club events, the Bibliophiles christened their annual
conventions “Dum-Dums,” after the meetings of the anthropoid apes who dance
by the light of the moon in the depths of the African Jungle. Dum-Dums
have been held in many major American cities, with those in Los Angeles
having attracted the largest crowds; two conventions, in 1988 and 1997,
have been convened at Cumbria in Northern England at Greystoke Castle.
In 1998 the Burroughs Bibliophiles celebrated their thirty-seventh Dum-Dum
in Baltimore, Maryland, with Gabe Essoe, author of Tarzan of the Movies
as the guest of honor.
The greatest and best-loved illustrator
of the first editions of Burroughs’s books was Chicago artist J. Allen
St. John, who created memorable images for thirty-three first editions,
beginning with simple black-and-white headpieces for The Return of Tarzan
(1915)
and ending with Tarzan’s Quest (1936). One of his most vivid paintings
that was made for Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1923) became the official
logo of the Burroughs Bibliophiles. He also designed the masthead for the
Burroughs
Bulletin, and this has been used since 1962. St. John died in 1957,
three years before the Burroughs Bibliophiles was organized, but his widow,
Ellen St. John, was the club’s first guest of honor at the Dum-Dum held
in Chicago in 1962. An attractive blonde with delicate features, she had
been the model for Jane and many other Burroughs heroines in her husband’s
paintings. In 1963 the Burroughs Bibliophiles honored science-fiction writers
L. Sprague deCamp and Sam Moskowitz by presenting to each an engraved silver
bowl adorned with St. John’s “Golden Lion.” The Burroughs Bibliophiles
tested several different Golden Lion Award trophies before settling on
the current gold engraved plaque mounted on wood, in regular use since
1978. In 1984 a second annual award, a Life Achievement Award, was designed
by George T. McWhorter for long and distinguished service to the memory
of Burroughs. At the 1984 Dum-Dum in Baltimore, Coriell, known as “the
father of Burroughs fandom” and in terminal illness at the time, was the
first recipient of this award. He died less than three years later.
A list of Dum-Dum honorees through
the years reads like a Who’s Who of actors, artists, writers, and publishers
involved with Burroughs’s works. Tarzan actors include Johnny Weissmuller,
Jim Pierce, Buster Crabbe, Frank Merrill, Herman Brix, Gordon Scott, Denny
Miller, and Jock Mahoney. Twenty-five years after Weissmuller’s guest appearance
at the Boston Dum-Dum in 1971, his costar, Maureen O’Sullivan, made her
first Dum-Dum appearance in Rutland, Vermont. Other well-known Burroughs
artists who have been honored are St. John, Rex Maxon, Frank E. Schoonover,
Frank Frazetta, Hal Foster (who set the standard for Tarzan comics from
1931 to 1937 before leaving the strip to create Prince Valiant),
William Juhre, John Coleman Burroughs (son of the author and illustrator
of eleven first editions), Joe Kubert, Burne Hogarth, Boris Vallejo, Michael
Whelan, Bob Abbett, Gray Morrow, Thomas Yeates, and Joe Jusko. Authors,
editors, and publishers who have been honored include Forest J. Ackerman,
Ian Ballantine, Lester del Rey, Donald Wollheim, Richard Lupoff, Erling
B. Holtsmark, and Burroughs’s children.
The Burroughs Bibliophiles have
done more than honor famous people at conventions and publish magazines
and newsletters. Their first major project was to collect short stories
that had been published only in pulp magazines and to republish them with
the permission of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., a family corporation that
Burroughs founded in 1923 to protect his enterprises in book publishing,
motion pictures and radio and television shows, syndicated newspaper Tarzan
strips and comic books, and trademark merchandising of everything from
Tarzan ice cream to glue, wristwatches, knives, belts, and Tinkertoys.
For many years the Burroughs Bibliophile reprints of The Girl from Farris’s,
The
Efficiency Expert,
The Scientists Revolt, Beware!, The Red Star
of Tarzan, and The Illustrated Tarzan Books, No. 1 were the
only editions available of these works.
In 1972 the Burroughs Bibliophiles
began a new series of publications under the House of Greystoke imprint.
This included works such as The Battle of Hollywood by James H. Pierce,
Oldest Living Tarzan (1978), the autobiography of the fourth actor
who played Tarzan and who married Burroughs’s daughter, Joan. Pierce
and she starred together in the 1932-1933 Tarzan radio programs sponsored
by Signal Oil. The most recent House of Greystoke publication is The
Edgar Rice Burroughs Memorial Collection: A Catalog
(1991) by McWhorter,
who donated his collection of 70,000 volumes to the University of Louisville
Library, where he is curator.
In promoting the image of Burroughs
as a master storyteller, trendsetter, and original thinker, it was necessary
for the Burroughs Bibliophiles to find prominent spokesmen. Such advocates
have been L. Sprague deCamp, who wrote an introduction to the 1986 Easton
Press edition of Burroughs’s first novel, A Princess of Mars; Ian
Ballantine and Lester del Rey, whose reprints of Burroughs’s works in Ballantine
paperbacks are collectors’ items; and Ray Bradbury, whose introduction
to Irwin Porges’s biography
Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Man Who Created
Tarzan (1975) is a classic accolade. Sam Moskowitz – Burroughs scholar,
editor, publisher, teacher, literary agent and pulp-magazine historian
– was the first to anthologize Burroughs in the mainstream press and frequently
contributed scholarly articles to the Burroughs Bulletin. Erling
B. Holtsmark, chairman of the Classics Department at the University of
Iowa, is the author of two major studies of Burroughs, including Tarzan
and Tradition (1981), which explores the classic Greek and Latin roots
of Burroughs’s writing. Leigh Bracket has acknowledged Burroughs’s inspiration
for her own Martian concepts in writing science fiction, and Henry Hardy
Heins’s
Golden Anniversary Bibliography of Edgar Rice Burroughs
(1964) has become a standard reference for auction houses and antiquarian
bookdealer catalogues. Astronomer Carl Sagan, primatologist Jane Goodall,
actor Ronald Reagan, and comedienne Carol Burnett have also been unexpected
spokespeople.
In recent years members of the Burroughs
Bibliophiles have brought increasing public attention to the society. They
have served as authorities for interviews or as writers of articles for
magazines and newspapers, and they have participated in documentaries such
as Tarzan: The Legacy of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the 1997 television
biography produced by the Arts and Entertainment network and hosted by
Peter Graves, and In Search of Tarzan, the American Movie Classics
documentary televised during AMC’s film festival of thirty-two vintage
Tarzan movies. Another 1997 documentary, Moi, Tarzan, is being shown
in many European countries, where the Tarzan myth is even more popular
than in the United States.
The Walt Disney Studios are producing
an animated Tarzan movie due for release in theaters by late spring 1999,
and the commercial success of this movie will most likely add to the merchandising
of Tarzan products. In summer 1997 the Palmdale Playhouse in California
staged the premiere of You Lucky Girl!, an unpublished play that
Burroughs wrote in 1927 and in which his daughter Joan was to star. In
1998 Donald M. Grant published this play, with illustrations by Ned Dameron,
along with “Marcia of the Doorstep,” a story about a foundling that
Burroughs wrote but could not market in 1924. McFarland published in December
1996 a much-needed update to the Heins Golden Anniversary Bibliography
by Burroughs Bibliophile Robert Zeuschner, a professor at Pasadena City
College. Publication plans for new Burroughs Bibliophiles books and catalogues,
including pictorial manuals for Burroughs collectibles and a complete history
of the Tarzan radio shows, have been announced.
The Burroughs Bibliophiles is an
international organization with headquarters at the Burroughs Memorial
Collection in Louisville, Kentucky, where the magazine and newsletter are
published and where the board of directors makes plans. Active regional
chapters have been established in Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; Chicago;
Atlanta; Cleveland; and Baltimore – as well as in the states of Michigan,
Florida, and Arizona and in countries such as Holland, France, Germany,
and Australia. Some of the chapters publish regional newsletters, such
as The Panthan Newsletter of the Washington, D.C., National Capital
“Panthans.” During the last fifty years more than two hundred Burroughs
fan magazines have appeared, also with titles incorporating recognizable
Burroughs-inspired nomenclature such as Amtorian, Barsoomian, Jasoomian,
Oparian, Erbania, Tarzine, Burroughs Newsbeat, and Erbivore.
Some, such as the Barsoomian Blade and ERBzine, have appeared
on the Internet. For more information on the Burroughs Bibliophiles or
for subscriptions to the Burroughs Bulletin, write to:
Henry G. Franke III,
318 Patriot Way,
Yorktown, VA 23693-4639
email: hfranke@cox.net
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