writing fiction, and succeeded. So much so that his Tarzan stories, translated into all languages from a Turkestan dialect to Hindustani (not forgetting Esperanto), have sold 30 million copies; while a score of full length films adapted from his books have added to the rich proceeds of his imagination. In addition, he has gathered a small fortune from the use of his universally- famed ape-man in newspaper cartoons and comic books. He has also been on the radio, with Burroughs’ son-in-law playing the title role along with his daughter, Joan. Few dream-children have been as profitable for their creator as Tarzan, born 36 years ago and still going strong. He also debunked the story that he began to write because
he couldn’t sleep. “I wrote because I was hungry, not through insomnia,” he told us. “I had a wife and two children to support, and I wasn’t making much money. But I did have a lot of weird dreams—both sleeping and waking. I thought I’d put them down on paper and see if they would sell.” He was the 35 and, having tried several different jobs—
cowhand, policeman, railroad patrolman, salesman—was working for a patent medicine firm. It was his duty to check their adverts in the pulp magazines of the time, and he sampled some of the stories in them. He thought he could do as well, if not better; and so he began to write—but fast. In his early days, once he got started, he could turn out a novel in a month or two at the most. His first story, “Under the Moons of Mars”, ran as a serial in
was a huge vermillion jar decorated with ebon elephants, monkeys and other jungle figures.
Fortunes of Tarzan Amid this colourful tableau, we talked. I asked Burroughs
if it was true that he wrote his first stories on the backs of old envelopes, as I had read somewhere. That wasn’t so, he said; but he did use letterheads which he had printed when he went into business for himself years ago, and for which he had no better use when, as invariably happened,
his
ventures failed. He was an unsu ccessfu l business man for several years before he tried
All-Story Magazine (Feb.-July, 1912), which for seven years previously had been featuring the fantasies of Garrett P. Serviss, George Allan England and others. He was paid about half a cent a word for it. I have a copy, which he autographed for me: some day it will be part of the Fantasy Foundation, of which I told him something. He wrote this story under the pseudonym of “Normal Bean” (a pun on “normal being”), but the name appeared as Norman Bean. Five years later, after it had been reprinted by the New York Evening World, it appeared in book form as “A Princess of Mars” (McClurg, Chicago), to be followed by the rest of the Mars series hard upon their appearance in All-Story, Argosy, Amazing Stories and Blue Book. But before John Carter continued his exploits on Barsoom,
“Tarzan of the Apes” had made his bow in All-Story, in the October, ’12, issue. He appeared between hard covers two years later, and was such a success that All-Story and Argosy leapt at the chance to publish his adventures through the decades before they were presented in book form for the benefit of his followers throughout the world. The Munsey magazine also first featured Burroughs’ tales of the weird “At the Earth’s Core” (All-Story, April, ’14), “The Moon Maid” (Argosy, May-June, ’23) and “The Moon Men” (Feb.-Mar., ’25), the “Pirates of Venus” (Sep.-Oct., ’32), and others. “The Land that Time Forgot,” so beloved of early Amazing readers and all who grew up on his stories, and which he himself titled “The Lost U-Boat,” was first published in Blue Book in ’18.
No Fantasy Man I asked if he, as a youngster, had been fond of fantasy-fiction
if, for instance, he had devoured Verne, Wells or Rider Haggard, but he said no. The second story he wrote was “The Outlaw of Torn,” which appeared in New Story (Jan.-May, ’14), though
FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND • MAR/APR 2012 35
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