First and Only Weekly Webzine Devoted to the Life and Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs Since 1996 ~ Over 15,000 Webpages in Archive Volume 0769 and ERB C.H.A.S.E.R ENCYCLOPEDIA A Collector's Hypertexted and Annotated Storehouse of Encyclopedic Resources Present Click for large cover art image Click for DJ image THE GIRL FROM HOLLYWOOD ERB started writing this in November 16, 1921 under the working title: "The Penningtons." Read the e-Text Edition: HERE

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THE GIRL FROM HOLLYWOOD: A Review
An excerpt from a longer analysis by R.E. Prindle that is featured at ERBzine 1457

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Burroughs' The Girl From Hollywood opens with a vignette of what might have been a scene from 1870 to 1890 as a man and a woman are riding their horses through a western landscape.  It might have been paradise but Prohibition quietly intrudes into the opening scene to remind us that paradise has been lost.  The hero, Custer Pennington, is quietly admonished by his sweetheart, the lovely and virginal, Grace Evans that he drinks a bit too much.  'Funny,' Cus says, 'I never wanted it all that much until it was illegal.' and thus a whole era is introduced.

     The name Custer recalls times that Burroughs would always remember fondly while Grace perhaps also refers to a time when women were imagined to be innately pure.  The foreboding of a lost paradise is in the air.  Continuity is introduced as Custer Pennington is a Junior, the son of that fine old Virginian gentleman of a long gone by time, the elder Custer Pennington.  The Ben Cartwright or his time.

   The Penningtons own a ranch which is modeled on Burroughs' own Tarzana which he places a hundred miles from Los Angeles.  Tarzana is about forty miles or so from downtown LA.  Even as Burroughs bought his really wonderful estate Los Angeles was creeping steadily toward him while the San Fernando Valley was quickly filling up around him.

     Just as Chicago had spread rapidly across the prairies in the nineteenth century so now the migrating tens of thousands expanded Los Angeles like a brush fire.  Harry Leon Wilson jokes about the migration from the other states in his anecdote about Merton's 'society' landlady who was concerned with society- the Illinois Society, the Michigan Society, the Ohio Society, but especially with the Iowa Societies.  For some reason Iowans migrated to the sunny Southland in droves.  Makes you wonder about Iowa, doesn't it?

     Also LA was becoming one of the more cosmopolitan areas of the country as not only the Jews made it their capitol but the dispossessed Russian nobility appeared in droves.  Actors from around the world found their way to Hollywood.  In its own way it became a clearing house for Revolutionary activities long before the thirties.

     Thus from the beginning one is aware that the Pennington's paradise is doomed.  Old Virginny and Custer Pennington are things of the past.

     We slowly learn that a ranch hand, one Slick Allen, a man of criminal proclivities, had induced Grace Evan's brother, Guy Thackeray Evans, to store a shipment of booze stolen from an East Coast bonded warehouse in a draw on the ranch.  There was a real robbery in New York of this magnitude also.  Unbeknownst to Evans there was also a large cache of heroin.  Young Evans tries to back out but he is already in too deep being compelled to distribute the booze.  He sells a couple bottles to Young Cus with the prophetic words:  You won't ever regret this.

     Evans wants to marry Eva Pennington but as a wastrel and aspiring writer -- he has no income.  Sort of like the Young ERB and Emma.  Eve being a little on the practical side refused to marry without some sort of financial security.  Evans plans to use the fifteen thousand coming to him as an inducement, even going so far as to lie about selling a story to account for his having some money.  Burroughs gets in some hilarity concerning his sale of Tarzan Of The Apes as Evans claims to have sold his story for the identical seven hundred dollars Burroughs received.  Probably he and Emma talked about it as a thousand dollars being only three hundred short as do Guy and Eva.

     Guy had wanted to move them in with his mother but as Eva sagely remarks her parents advised her that living with parents was unwise for newlyweds, one might live close enough to visit them daily but not to live with them.

     One imagines that ERB and Emma, who did move in with her parents, found it a less than pleasant experience.  They did move across the street from which Emma could visit her mother daily.

     Evans' middle name Thackeray is interesting as the Penninton's are very similar to William Makepeace Thackeray's fine old gentleman, Col. Pendennis.  Old Custer is a Col. too.  One also wonders if the Guy refers to Guy de Maupassant although none of his books were in ERB's library and he appears not to have referred to him otherwise although he would surely have been aware of such a famous author.

     Burroughs spends a chapter or two building up scenes of idyllic family rapture out there sitting directly on top of nature.  You just know it can't last.  Drugs and alcohol and movies cast a pall over the picture.  Grace Evans, the sweet and virginal, wants to try her hand at acting; apparently she hasn't read Harry Leon Wilson's Merton Of The Movies or she might have thought twice.  The threat of alcoholism hangs over Young Custer Pennington while Guy Thackeray Evans is involved with Slick Allen's booze and drug scheme for which the dirty work is done by 'Greasers', that is to say Mexicans.

      Now, Burroughs is far from alone in portraying Mexicans in a derogatory manner.  His contemporary, Zane Grey, also refers to them as Greasers while Wilson also portrays them negatively.  One must therefore assume that the generation thought the same.  The movies would introduce the 'South Of The Border' theme with many 'Latin' actors and actresses which would soften the image but the Mexican bandito has always been portrayed as a repulsive character.

     A lovely older woman named Burke arrives in the valley to buy an orchard.  She is the mother of Shannon Burke acting in Hollywood under the name of Gaza de Lure.

    The scene now shifts to Hollywood and the story of Shannon Burke.  In Bridge And The Kid ERB hints at the notion that he would form his own Three Musketeers consisting of Bridge, Billy Byrne and Billy Burke.  While we know Byrne and Bridge Burke never materialized nor did the further adventures of the trio.  One wonders whether Shannon is perhaps the sister of Billy Burke.  I would like to have seen the further adventures of the three Bs - Bridge, Burke and Byrne.

     At any rate Shannon has come to Hollywood, a beauteous young thing, to find her future on the silver screen.  After undergoing trials not too dissimilar from Wilson's Merton, Gill, who chose as a stage name Clifford Armytage, while Shannon chose Gaza de Lure, Shannon falls under the evil influence of Wilson Crumb, the famous actor and director.

     If Freud was promoting sex the film industry made his vision a reality.  Careers could be made  or broken on the casting couch- for both men and women.  One could have a possible career in the films or not.  It was your choice.  In this case Shannon, who was her mother's daughter is holding out. For her it's marriage or nothing.  Crumb is diabolical.  For him Shannon is a challenge.  He induces her to pep herself up with some cocaine which he tells her is aspirin.  How he could have used modern hypnotic drugs.

     Crumb runs into Slick Allen who is quite a character.  Slick had smuggled a huge cache of heroin in from orient as one of his other careers other than being a ranch hand was a seaman.  In disposing of his heroin he became involved with the gang which, among other illegal activities, received the booze from the bonded warehouse.  With an assured supply of cocaine, morphine and heroin Crumb puts the now hooked Shannon to work peddling drugs.  She is still holding out for marriage however.

     Here ERB displays what seems to be some detailed and accurate knowledge of the drug business.  If his information is true he seems to know the exact dimensions of the packets of cocaine and how they are folded.  This s pretty convincing writing.  Characterization is excellent, the details of Crumb's and Shannon's drug business are absolutely convincing.

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     Shannon takes in the money for the drugs, for which she demanded and got half the profits which is where her mother got the money to buy the Rancho, and gives the rest to Crumb who has taken the drugs on credit from Slick Allen.  He spends the money being unable to meet his obligation to Allen.  He fobs Allen of the payment delaying it for a couple days then asking Allen to deliver a packet of morphine for him.

     The unusually trusting Allen agrees.  Crumb then phones the police setting up Allen for the fall.  Allen is thus removed from circulation postponing the inevitable for the year of Allen's sentence.  At the same time Shannon receives a telegram notifying her that her mother has had a heart attack which sends her up to Pennington country.

     Shannon's mother died of that heart attack.  The neighborly big-hearted Penningtons take the little girl in, never suspecting that she is a dope addict.  Now, here's a little detail ERB picked up along the way, in the movie industry it didn't do to leave tracks running down your arm where the camera might pick them up so Shannon injects herself in the hip.  You have to wonder where and how Burroughs picks up little details like that.

     As one might expect the wholesome family life of the Penningtons, plus the ever changing tableaux of the Old Master Painter, work together to make Shannon ashamed of being a dope addict.  Listen to the old Virginian wax poetic after the manner of Kipling, who Burroughs must have in mind throughout this story:

     And the first haze of the mountains that seem to throw them first a little out of focus, to make them a perfect background for the beautiful hills which the Supreme Artist is placing on the canvas today.  An hour from now He will paint another masterpiece and tonight another, and forever others, with never two alike, nor ever one that mortal man can duplicate and all for us, boy, all for us, if we have the hearts and soul to see!

     Right on, man.  Kipling and Burroughs, rah, rah, rah.

    And so, as Shannon falls in love with Cus Pennington, it takes only a week for her to break herself of her vicious habit.  ERB could have made a second fortune as a drug counselor.

     The evil outside world is creeping ever closer to Rancho Ganado.  Rancho Ganado?  Can you imagine a character called Ganado Of The Apes?  Grace Evans leaves for the big H to become a movie star.  As might be feared she falls into the clutches of the ever ubiquitous Wilson Crumb who destroys her sweet and virginal innocence, gets her addicted and pregant then causes her death by dashing her violently against a table.

     His sister's death is witnessed by brother Guy Thackeray Evans who happens in as she lies dying.  He doesn't know who Wilson Crumb is but he intends to kill him if he finds him.

     In the meantime the veil of bliss at Ganado is ripped aside when the Young Cus is set up for booze smuggling and takes a six month fall in the county hoosegow.  Thus, all the way from that bonded warehouse robbery in New York City the tentacles of corrupt civilization have reached into the heart of Rancho Ganado one hundred miles from nowhere to tear it apart.  Young Custer Pennington son of the noble Virginian scion of that great family is now a convicted felon.  Not to be taken lightly.  In the eyes of the world he is convicted and therefore guilty.

     Cus's arrest had been orchestrated by his enemy Slick Allen from jail where Custer then joined him.  The worst is yet to come.  Burroughs has been developing his story in an especially orderly way.  His pacing is good, no undue emphasis is placed on any segment while no segment is scamped which is frequent with ERB.

     Now the great criminal Wilson Crumb invades Ganado itself.  He and his company, KKS, (can't make anything of the initials unless they refer somehow to the Ku Klux Klan which was emerging at the time) need to film on the Rancho.  The Old Gentleman would have refused them but daughter Eva, enamored of the movies, persuades the Old Cus to let them film.  Little Eva, is she the same one who offered Adam the apple?  At any rate she sets the conclusion in motion.

     With only a carp or two on my part which I'll explain, Burroughs pulls this off quite decently.  This book may be the best of his realistic novels.  All the threads come together.  Young Cus declares his love to Shannon but then overhears a conversation between Crumb and Shannon which shatters his illusions sending him on a drunken binge which transcends his noble Virginia origins.  He drinks himself into oblivion.  While he is out Wilson Crumb makes a pass at the beautiful Little Eva - shortly thereafter being murdered with the finger being pointed very clumsily, from my point of view, at Young Custer.  ERB could have handled this better.  I should think a good lawyer could have succeeded in exonerating Cus but it was not to be.  Our man in Ganado is convicted and sentenced to death.  No long appeal processes in ERB's novels, Custer can expect to feel 'the hempen noose' within sixty days.

     Now comes the part ERB could have worked on a little.  Guy Evans was exposed by Slick Allen, who is vengifying himself with reckless abandon,  and in conjunction with his sister's death goes insane.  A stretcher if there ever was one.  Little Eva on hearing that Guy had betrayed her trust is shattered attempting suicide by shooting herself in some undefined place.  Cus is on death row so the rural paradise has been turned upside down by encroaching civilization becoming a rural hell.

     ERB still has a surprise up his sleeve, but its one he's used before.  Of course if you haven't read everything he's written, which few people have, the trick would be fresh with you.  You gotta remember those of us who study this stuff read with different eyes.  Well, Slick had been watching Shannon during the trial.  For a long time he's thought he recognized her from somewhere.  During the trial when her place of birth, back in Iowa or somewhere, is mentioned it comes to him.  Slick is a very well traveled guy, he's been everywhere, man, he's been everywhere.  One place he was twenty some odd years ago was back in Iowa or wherever when he found time to impregnate Shannon's mother.  Yep, he's Shannon's long lost daddy.  Bet you didn't see that coming, did you?

     Slick takes pity on his long lost darling daughter and, even though he hates Custer Pennington, he gives her the means to exonerate him.  This ending, while plausible is very weak.  Slick got out of jail the day before Crumb was shot.  Slick was going to shoot him himself.  Before he had a chance to do so, coming up on Wilson at almost the exact moment the insane Guy Evans did he watched Guy shoot Wilson Crumb dead.  Then it was back to the sanatorium for Guy.

Was it enough for Slick that he was avenged on Crumb?  Heck no.  Always a man who could think on his feet, Slick was a bad actor, he figured out a way to pin the blame on Custer Pennington.

     The denouement is really clumsy but I'll let you read it for yourself.  Armed with the information from Slick, Shannon petitioned the Governor of the great State of California who issues a reprieve just as the 'hempen collar' is being tightened on Young Custer's throat.  Yeah, well, I'm sure it happens but I've seen enough movies to know it doesn't happen often.  Then Shannon drops the bomb on the shattered and beaten family that Slick was her father.  Exuent omnes.

     Thus ends rather lamely perhaps the finest and most sustained realistic novel ERB wrote and what is actually a good Hollywood novel. In those days before they exposed themselves as the Porn Capitol Of The World the film colony didn't take kindly to exposure of this sort.  I'm sure ERB hadn't endeared himself to the film colony for what is a brutal if revealing look at their culture.

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Meet R. E. Prindle and Follow the Navigation Chart for His Series of Articles

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From George T. McWhorter's  Some Scientific Names in the Burroughs Books  ERBzine 1519 "LOVEJOY AND COLTON: Authorities on hog breeding in America. Shannon Burk tells Custer Pennington: "I've spent hours in the office reading Lovejoy and Colton." Andrew James Lovejoy was born in 1845 and, in 1914, published his Forty Years' Experience of a Practical Hog Man, teaming up with Foster Dwight Coburn (not "Colton," as ERB apparently mistyped) to produce the Sal-Vet Swine Book  (1912), undoubtedly the manual to which ERB refers. He raised Berkshire hogs at his Tarzana Ranch for several years. (The Girl from Hollywood)"

From ERBzine 1263 The Joan Burroughs Pierce Personal Library   Dedications & Autographs from her father,    Edgar Rice Burroughs  Inscription in Joan's personal copy of The Girl from Hollywood To my dear little girl  with love from   Papa  Tarzana Ranch   Aug 23, 1923

From ERBzine 0067 The H. H. Heins Title Abbreviation for The Girl From Hollywood is: "GH"

From the ERB/Jack London Connection in ERBzine 1273 ERB subdivided much of his land and created advertising  encouraging free thinkers to move to the new development. In a Tarzana promotional booklet he wrote: "I invite you to choose your home-site and become my neighbor, enjoying with me the peace and beauty that is Tarzana. Here you may build the home of our dreams -- and expression of your own individuality, embodying in an artistic whole those practical features which make a home livable as well as beautiful. . ." Ed had many friends and film business associates in nearby Hollywood, who were often invited to Tarzana parties. For a time, the entire valley attended regular Friday night dance parties and  showings of feature films at Ed's newly constructed theatre/ballroom.

From Trivia Motes & Mots ~ ERBzine 0010 "My father did considerable research on the story [The Girl from Hollywood] and our ranch was used as the basis for the background. Dad even instilled some of my speeches and mannerisms into the character of one of the girls. He believed very much in this story and always felt that it was killed quickly by certain Hollywood elements." ~ Joan Burroughs

From the ERBzine ERB Bio Timeline: 1920s Decade November 16 - January 7, 1922: "The Penningtons" (The Girl from Hollywood) is written. It is accepted by Munsey's but rejected by McClurg. Other titles considered were: "Shannon", "Fetters of Snow", "The Snow Slave", "The Demon of the Snow", "Rancho del Ganado", "The Little Black Box" - and editor Davis' suggestion, "The Needlewoman."

From AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR OF TARZAN  Writers Monthly December 1926 ~ ERBzine 0059 Mr. Burroughs himself is a worker, and a very rapid writer. That is one reason he is so prolific. He often works through the day without stopping for lunch. He dictates to a secretary and has found that best, after trying dictaphones, typing it himself, and various other schemes. He has a downtown office where he usually goes to work as punctually and steadily as any business man.  "I like your 'Girl From Hollywood,'" I said. "It ought to have a wide sale."  "It ought to, from the way the critics have 'panned' it," returned Mr. Burroughs, humorously. "The critics said that no ranch such as I described in the story ever existed. The joke of it was that I merely described my own ranch!"

Angelic gets Burroughs “Venus” & “Hollywood”  ERBzine News ~ October 28, 2005  Angelic Entertainment in San Diego has acquired theatrical options on six Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, Mark Maine, Angelic’s CEO, announced today.  “Pirates of Venus” [and four subsequent sequel novels], and “The Girl From Hollywood”.  The Venus series of novels are in the Fantasy/Sci-Fi genre, while “The Girl From Hollywood” is a gritty drama set in prohibition era Los Angeles. More>>>

An ERBzine Photo Mosaic ~ ERBzine 0956 and ERBzine 0957 LORD PASSMORE'S TARZANA RANCH SAFARI ~ Pts. 1 &2 Following in the footsteps of ERB, The Girl From Hollywood, and Red Hawk

~ El Caballero/Tarzana Ranch Souvenir Booklet ~ Tarzana Ranch Photos with Art by Studley O. Burroughs 1. Introduction and Overview 2. Text and Art Work Pt. I 3. Text and Art Work Pt. II Click for full-size collage of Tarzana photos

From a series of ERB Time Shift Adventures by Bill Hillman Back to Tarzana 1921 ERB's Tarzana Ranch Although the main source of research material used in this docu/novel was the Danton Burroughs family archive, ERB's The Girl From Hollywood provided much added descriptive background and local colour information.

TARZANA RANCH FEATURES IN ERBzine

www.tarzana.ca Tarzana Ranch in World War II by Ralph Herman Back to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzana Ranch 1921 An Illustrated Docu-Novel by Bill Hillman starting at ERBzine 1041 Tarzana Hall of Fame

The Tarzana Ranch Story in ERBzine 0008

Ranch Tour: ERBzine 0064

Tarzana Ranch Mosaics: ERBzine 0954 and ERBzine 0955

El Caballero Promotional Booklet  Photos ~ Text by ERB ~ Art by Studley Burroughs ERBzine 1091 ~ ERBzine 1092 ~ ERBzine 1093

THE STORY OF TARZANA   A rare booklet from the '20s  written and published by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzana Trek A Photo Diary by Bill Hillman

Home Article and Letters describing Tarzana by Edgar and Mary Evaline Burroughs

TARZANA ECOF CONVENTION 2002

Tarzana News Clipping Archive ERBzine 1358

Farewell Tarzana A Photo Tribute and Poem by Larry Lingenan with The Last Photos of Tarzana Ranch by: Steve Ramada and Peter O'Keefe  of the Tarzana Cultural Center

Tarzana: Then and Now ERBzine 1161

George McWhorter Reviews THE GIRL FROM HOLLYWOOD
From Burroughs Bulletin Issue New Series 31
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Click for full-size images of Tarzana Ranch

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COVER GALLERY

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First Appearance in the Munsey Pulp Zines
From our ERBzine Illustrated Pulp Bibliography
www.erbzine.com/mag2/0224.html


From the Dave Sorochty Collection
Click for full-size collage

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Methuen Edition

Jerry Schneider's ERBville Press Edition 2004

ERBville Edition Interior Art Gallery
A selection gathered from various pulp magazine sources
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The ERBville Edition contains the original unedited and uncensored magazine text and is fully illustrated.
Available at: www.erbvillepress.com

Interesting item from eBay Auction Site
A MacaulAy first edition of THE GIRL FROM HOLLYWOOD.
Inscribed and signed to Carrie Fisher by her mother Debbie Reynolds in green ink on the half-title page,
“For Carrie From your girl from Hollywood Love Moma 1991”
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Art restored by Charles Madison
G. W. Goss illustration for Methuen Books

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Graphic Interpretation by Charles Santino (script) and Joel Zain Rivers (art)
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www.edgarriceburroughs.com

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Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzana Ranch
was the inspiration for his novel:
THE GIRL FROM HOLLYWOOD
By Bill Hillman
PART ONE
 www.erbzine.com/mag68/6893.html
PART TWO
www.erbzine.com/mag68/6894.html

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