Maureen O’Sullivan: No Average Jane
by David Fury
   .

                          David Fury
Maureen O’Sullivan: No Average Jane (Artist’s Press 2006, 450 pages, 100+ photos, $40)
The first full-length biography of the beloved Irish actress Maureen O’Sullivan will be published this fall by author David Fury, who has also written biographies of Burt Lancaster, Chuck Connors, and Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen’s jungle mate in six Tarzan pictures.

While O’Sullivan is remembered as Jane of the Tarzan pictures, she was a major star with MGM in the 1930s and had lead roles in many classic films including The Thin Man (1934), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), David Copperfield (1935), A Day at the Races (1937), A Yank at Oxford (1938), and Pride and Prejudice (1940). The talented actress starred in 70 films over a sixty year career, added radio acting to her repertory in the 1940s and television drama when the medium boomed in the 1950s.

In 1962 she made a critical career move to the legitimate stage in the hit comedy, Never Too Late, which ran for two years on Broadway. In 1965 the lead actors of O’Sullivan and Paul Ford starred in a screen version of the play. The actress stayed on the stage for over 30 years and had another Broadway success in 1980, Morning’s At Seven, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival. Maureen also was presented a special Drama Desk award for her performance.

After being off the big screen for twenty years, she made a strong comeback in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), with one of the finest portrayals of her career. Maureen landed another memorable character as Kathleen Turner’s grandmother in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), and had featured roles in several additional dramas over the next few years.

Maureen was also a busy mother and had seven children with first husband John Farrow, who died of a heart attack in 1963. She married second husband Jim Cushing in 1983, and their very happy relationship lasted until her death in 1998. This biography follows her fascinating life after being discovered in Ireland at age 18 by director Frank Borzage, who brought her to Hollywood to star in Song O’ My Heart (1930) with the legendary tenor, John McCormack.

Her life became a storybook tale when she was chosen to co-star with Johnny Weissmuller in a series of Tarzan pictures, including Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932), the classic Tarzan and His Mate (1934), and four more jungle adventures. Maureen loved acting and never retired. She was still plying her trade as an octogenarian when her fellow actresses of the 1930s were long gone from the scene. In later years she accepted her legacy as Jane to Weissmuller’s Tarzan, but in this biography you will discover that she was "No Average Jane."

(Ship date: On or about December 10, 2006... More info: www.ArtistsPress.com)

Tarzan Alive
A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke 
By Philip Jose Farmer ~ New Foreword by Win Scott Eckert ~ Introduction by Mike Resnick “Farmer goes one step further than mere literary fun. He takes engaging advantage of the reader’s inherent susceptibility to myth.”—Publisher's Weekly. “Tarzan is seen as a 20th-century heroic figure having much in common with the mythical demigods of an earlier day, and this book will not fail to please and enthrall his many followers.”—Library Journal.

“The most innovative part of the book [is] Tarzan’s family tree linking him to every great hero in pulp literature. . . . Farmer is less well known today than he was forty years ago. Nevertheless, Alive ages well and gives the reader the sourcebook for so many writers today.”—American Book Review.

Through the tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs, generations of readers have thrilled to the adventures of Lord Greystoke (aka John Clayton, but better known as Tarzan of the Apes). In this biography Philip José Farmer pieces together the life of this fantastic man, correcting Burroughs’s errors and deliberate deceptions and tracing Tarzan's family tree back to other extraordinary figures, including Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Doc Savage, Nero Wolfe, and Bulldog Drummond.

Tarzan Alive offers the first chronological account of Tarzan's life, narrated in careful detail garnered from Burroughs’s stories and other sources. From the ill-fated voyage that led to Greystoke's birth on the isolated African coast to his final adventures as a group captain in the RAF during World War II, Farmer constructs a comprehensive and authoritative account. Farmer’s assertion that Tarzan was a real person has led him to craft a biography as well researched and compelling as that of any character from conventional history. This definitive Bison Books edition also includes Farmer’s “Exclusive Interview with Lord Greystoke” as well as “Extracts from the Memoirs of ‘Lord Greystoke’” first anthologized in Mother Was a Lovely Beast.

Philip José Farmer has had a long and illustrious career in science fiction, winning three Hugo awards, the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement award, and the Nebula Grand Master award. Mike Resnick is the winner of five Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. His novels include Santiago, Kirinyaga, the Widowmaker series, and Ivory. Win Scott Eckert is the editor and author of Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe and the editor of the Web site An Expansion of Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe.

Paper ~ 2006.  xc,  316 pp.  Illus. ~ 0-8032-6921-8 ~ $19.95 

For more information about the author, visit http://www.pjfarmer.com/.
and the Farmer/Burroughs Connection at: ERBzine 0065
Ordering information at: http://unp.unl.edu/bookinfo/5028.html or Amazon or B&N
 

 

Burroughs, Edgar Rice Complete inscribed Tarzan collection,
all 1st editions, all in dustjacket (Chicago, NY and Tarzana, 1914-1947)

An unbroken, 22 volume run of the Tarzan 1st editions. All are in dustjacket. Each is a signed presentation copy of estimable association, including his publisher, his wife and more than half to his younger son of whom he often thought while writing these books. Apes is inscribed to his first publisher, Return to his wife, Beasts to his third publisher, Son to his son, Opar to his wife, Jungle Tales, Untamed and Terrible all to his son, Golden Lion to himself, Antmen to his son, Lord to his wife, Lost Empire to nobody (still reading?), Earth's Core, Invincible, Triumphant, City of Gold and Lion Man all to his son, Leopard Men to Carole Lombard (with Gable's bookplate) and finally, Quest, Forbidden City, Magnificent and Foreign Legion, all to his son. Only Son of Tarzan is a 2nd issue, varying from the 1st issue solely by the addition of a printed dedication to his son, and this is the dedication copy inscribed to him. Rarity flows deep and condition is satisfying throughout including a striking run of 22 dustjackets, all of them the earliest state, excepting only Return. Some inner paper hinges strengthened and a few jackets with a small tear or chip very skillfully restored. Still, it is neither dustjackets nor completeness but rather meaningful inscriptions and the closest of associations that set these books apart. No other assembly of this stature has ever been amassed. In herds, smarter animals stay near the center exposing dumb ones to predators. Some of these plotlines are on the edge of the herd, but Burroughs was clever enough to create the most worldly renowned figure in all of American literature and a conglomerate for his perpetuation. Tarzan say, "Scoreboard." Such a collection is never to be seen again but 21st century film versions will be plentiful, just like those in the 20th century, as new filmmakers revisit the first super-hero, American fiction's most famous fictional character. Together: 22 vols. 260,000

http://www.biblioctopus.com/catalog20/cat20.html

.A New Dover Edition of 
A Princess of Mars

  $4.95 from Dover Publications
160 pages ~ Dimensions: 5 3/16" x 8 1/4"
"In this landmark of science fiction, Civil War veteran John Carter is transported to a dying planet, where he must elude capture by giant green barbarians to rescue a Martian princess from certain doom. Author Edgar Rice Burroughs, best known as the creator of Tarzan, published this novel in 1911 and introduced a new style of writing that combined the genres of fantasy, adventure, and science fiction. His imaginative setting--an advanced but decaying civilization, where Olympian heroics play out against malevolent forces and ever-changing fortunes--endures as a timeless world, in which love, honor, and loyalty form the basis for fast-paced romantic adventures." 

This book collects, for the first time, the exquisite pen, ink, and pencil illustrations of the grand Tarzan artist J. Allen St. John. Some of these flights-of-fantasy illustrations were found in the top pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, such as Amazing Stories, Blue Book, and Weird Tales. Other illustrations include those found in Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic works Tarzan and the Golden Lion, Tarzan the Terrible, as well as in Burroughs' sci-fi creations, At the Earth's Core, and Pirates of Venus.

The Limited Hardcover Edition comes in a slipcase and features an exclusive BONUS PORTFOLIO ~ A 16-page section! 

Hard Cover, 168 pages, B&W,  $34.95. Vanguard Productions.
Deluxe Hard Cover, 184 pages, B&W, $49.95
THE DRAWINGS OF J. ALLEN ST. JOHN can be ordered at:

www.creativemix.com/stjohn
The Diamond Item Code is SEP042972 for the hard cover edition.
The Diamond Item Code is SEP042973  for the deluxe hard cover edition.

 www.creativemix.com/vanguard
e-Mail: vanguardpub@att.net

Visit our J. Allen St. John Tribute Pages starting at:
ERBzine 0602

Price:  34.95  (DX $49.95)
ISBN:   1-887591-53-2 (DX …54-0)   Binding: HC & DX HC    Trim size: 8.5 x 11
Page count: 132 heavy, gloss, pages (DX + 16pgs) Pub Date:  SEPTEMBER 2004 
Category:  ART / Fantasy / sci-fi     ~ Black, White & COLOR.
DELUXE LIMITED EDITION features SLIPCASE and 16-pg. COLOR BONUS PORTFOLIO

Influenced by early masters J. Allen St. John, J. C. Coll and Franklin Booth, Roy G. Krenkel has inspired generations of fantasy artists with his portrayals of futuristic cities, prehistoric beasts, Mongol hordes, jungle men and bodacious beauties. From pulp-styled drawings of the late 40s to early work in EC Comics’ Weird Science, and defining art on Tarzan, Conan, and Wizard of Oz, RGK: The Art of Roy G. Krenkel is of interest to anyone whose imagination has been inspired by the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard!

• RGK is the first major collection of the fantasy artist’s work in 20 years
• Profusely illustrated with over 250 illustrations and photos that provide a rich overview
• Commentary by associates including Star Wars illustrator Al Williamson.
• Tarzan interest heightened by new WB TV series and Disney films.
• Krenkel’s mainstream work is well represented along with a plethora of never-before-published drawings.
• Of interest to Tarzan, Conan, fantasy, sci-fi & comics fans.
• Krenkel and associate Frank Frazetta were the top Edgar Rice Burroughs book cover illustrators of the 1960s.
• RGK is full of the iconic characters with the full approval of Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc.

 

THE LATEST FROM JERRY SCHNEIDER'S ERBVILLE PRESS

The Eternal Lover ~ The Uniform Hardcover Edition Series
First published in All-Story Weekly  ~ March 7, 1914
ART: Frontispiece (original pulp cover) by P.J. Monahan ~ Interiors by Dorothy Dulin

Order the next editions in the series:
The Mad King ~ October 15, 2004
The Red Hawk ~ November 15, 2004

Tarzan of the Apes
A Comparison of the Book Text vs the Magazine Text 
Story by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Comparison by Richard C. Spargur 
Richard C. Spargur has taken the text from the original All-Story magazine appearance and compared it to the original A.C. McClurg book text. The resulting differences between the two texts are contained in this fascinating reference work. 

For full information visit the ERBville Website:
www.erbvillepress.com
 

Pearls from Peoria assembles over sixty previously uncollected pieces of fiction, faction, poetry and autobiography that demonstrate the extraordinary range and vitality of Philip Jose Farmer’s imagination.

Many of the pieces appear for the first time anywhere, while others have previously appeared only briefly in small run magazines (Scintillation, Gegenschein, the Baker Street Journal, and the Burroughs Bulletin to name a few) and have remained ellusive and avidly sought after by Farmer afficionados.

These tales provide the reader with a grand tour of the literary pocket universes that make up Philip Jose Farmer's private cosmos: myths and paramyths, sex and science fiction, Tarzan and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Doc Savage and Sir Richard Burton, Riverworld and Oz, Sherlock Holmes and Ralph von Wau Wau.

The section on ERB includes:
The Princess Of Terra
The Golden Age And The Brass
An Appreciation of Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Arms Of Tarzan
The Two Lord Ruftons
A Reply To "The Red Herring"
The Great Korak Time Discrepancy
The Lord Mountford Mystery
From Erb To Ygg
A Language For Opar
The Purple Distance

For full ordering information visit 
The Suberranean Press Site

See the PJF Tribute Features in ERBzine at:
www.erbzine.com/mag0/0065.html
www.erbzine.com/mag0/0065a.html
www.erbzine.com/mag0/0065b.html
.

"Edgar Rice Burroughs - 
Bibliography of 'Pre-War" Grosset & Dunlap Books 1918-1941"

A "must" for collectors and booksellers, the new EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS - Bibliography of Grosset and Dunlap editions 1918-1941 is the first fully-documented bibliography of the G&D reprints that flooded a thirsty market in the years between world wars. 

Beginning in 1918 with A PRINCESS OF MARS Grosset and Dunlap became Burroughs' primary publisher, with a total of 47 titles printed. Joe Lukes' project had roots in the pages of TARZINE back in 1982. This current effort is based on those findings and the resources of three collectors who kept in communication for well over a year while adding around 200 hardcover editions and 100 dust jackets to bring the book up to it's current level of 450+ books and about 300 jackets. Some differences, like the dozen-odd bindings for A PRINCESS OF MARS are obvious, while some titles require patience, a magnifying lens and other copies of the same book to compare them to. Over 130 pages decorated with covers, title pages, dust jackets and advertising blurbs from many of G&D's 47 ERB books. Four color pages of books and jackets highlight this meticulously researched bibliography. Each title is prefaced by Lukes with a brief account of it's chronological place and publishing history prior to Grosset and Dunlap. 

There's never been a Burroughs book devoted exclusively to the G&D's, but they sold more books than any of ERB's other publishers, including himself. To the millions of us who have read and loved those uniform-sized editions with the incredible illustrations and dust jackets this is a chance to re-visit those books. For the collector it's a chance to put their books in proper publishing sequence for the first time. For the bookseller it's a chance to identify your Burroughs reprints and provide a reference source. Years in the making, this book is available here for the first time. Limited to 350 copies, 250 currently available for sale. 

Here's your chance at an invaluable reference book on one of the world's best-loved authors. Dick Lupoff provides the preface for this ground-breaking work. Please check the 2 pictures carefully and email questions if interested in purchasing a copy of the book. 

A copy is available for $20.00 using Paypal, money order or personal check. Checks may delay shipping while they clear. Please include $2 for media rate, $4 for priority postage.

Contact: Tom Tolley at Pre50fiction@aol.com

TARZAN PRESLEY  by Nigel Cox

Published June 3, 2004 ~ isbn 0 86473 4808 ~ 464 pages
$29.95
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
PO Box 600 ~ Wellington, New Zealand
www.vuw.ac.nz/vup
email: victoria-press@vuw.ac.nz
Phone: 04 463 6531 ~ fax 04 463 6581

"Raised by gorillas in the wild jungles of New Zealan, scarred in battles with vicious giant wetas, seduced by a beautiful young scientist, discovered by Memphis record producer Sam Phillips and adored by millions -- the dirst-to-dreams life story of Tarzan Presley is as legendary as his 30 number one hits. That story came to a dramatic end in 1977 when Tarzan took his own life. But now, in a sensational new development, a manuscript, written in old age by Tarzan himself, has emerged which proves that his story didn't end there. At last we can know: why did he leave us? What did it all mean to him? And -- for the first time -o- what did it feel like to be Tarzan Presley?"

NEW ZEALAND HERALD ONLINE REVIEW
By DAVID LARSEN ~ 2004.05.31
That thunder you hear is the drumming of 100,000 feet, racing to the nearest book store to pick up one of the most  interesting novels of the year. You should join them. But first join me: we need a moment's stupefied gaping. This book should not exist. I can't believe it does.

Granted, any novel is a staggeringly unlikely artefact — there are an infinity of possible novels, and a tiny fraction of them actually get written. But this one? "Raised by gorillas in the wild jungles of New Zealand, scarred in battles with vicious giant weta, seduced by a beautiful young scientist, discovered by Memphis record producer Sam Phillips and adored by millions, the dirt-to-dreams life story of Tarzan Presley is as legendary as his 30 number one hits."

In the film industry, this is the kind of brilliant high concept that would convince producers they were on to something very marketable. Tarzan! Elvis! Hey, what if they were really the same person? And what if this person faked his death and wrote a memoir in old age? So that all the myths about Elvis being still alive were, you know, really true! Only it would be Tarzan!

The film would be a disaster, and my job as a reviewer would be to sound as witty as possible while saying so. Whereas Nigel Cox's fourth novel has me jumping up and down excitedly because I can't believe how good it is. To take such an unlikely, attention-getting idea and develop it into such an intelligent book — it's like seeing someone suddenly make a successful film of Lord of the Rings in Miramar. Go back in time a decade and tell people about it, and you'd be laughed right back into the present.

Cox breaks his story into three sections, each of which presents challenges quite capable of sinking the novel. The first third is the tale of a little boy raised by gorillas in the wilds of the Wairarapa, circa 1935. Cox could have treated the outrageous idea that gorillas should be roaming the New Zealand bush as a sort of magic realist game, so silly that we'd simply have to laugh and swallow it. Instead he treats the gorillas, and Tarzan's life with them, the way the very best science fiction writers might: he builds them into hard reality by giving us lots of convincing detail, so that very soon we know how these gorillas live and smell, how the world looks to them and to the strange hairless ape they've adopted. Of course there are gorillas in New Zealand, how could we have doubted? Oh, and also cow-sized weta.

Having written a much more believable and thought-provoking account of a human raised by gorillas than Edgar Rice Burroughs ever managed, Cox then has his Kiwi Tarzan discovered, taken to America, adopted into the Presley family, and almost destroyed by mega-stardom.  The logic of the transition is impeccable, which is just one sign that Cox is in the demigod league. You know he's doing something deeply artificial right in front of you— grafting one legend on to another — and you can't see the stage machinery or hear the gears grinding. It all makes perfect sense.

That isn't to say it feels comfortable. Tarzan's slow morph from ape man to bloated, drug-raddled singer is a heart-breaking study of innocence betrayed. It also feels painfully arbitrary. By this I don't mean that Cox fails to establish Tarzan credibly in his new, over-civilised role, but that Tarzan enters the human world almost as a tabula rasa, crackling with potential. What kind of understanding of humanity will this boy be capable of? What will he see in us, and in himself, that we aren't capable of seeing, because we're too used to ourselves? This is a character who could become anything. Watching all those possibilities dwindle down to the charade of the Vegas years is saddening.

By making Tarzan live every detail of Elvis' adult life, Cox turns him into an explanatory metaphor, a new way of thinking about a very strange career. The third part of the novel is where Tarzan re-emerges as an independent character, old enough and experienced enough now to see all the wrong turns that led to Vegas, and determined to see what kind of life he can make for himself once he's escaped his fame. We're off the map here, past re-workings of Burroughs and re-tellings of the Elvis story, and Cox quietly gives the culmination of Tarzan's life its own proper form. It's neither sensational nor predictable; you read it and think, "Yes. That rings true."

This whole book rings true. It's superbly written and utterly original. You'll never look at a weta quite the same way again. David Larsen is an Auckland reviewer VUP, $29.95

---

Christmas Giving Made Easy
The New Zealand Herald ~ December 13, 2004
Nigel Cox’s Tarzan Presley (VUP, $29.95) got David Larsen excited. There is a boy (Tarzan) raised by gorillas in the Wairarapa (Tarzan), then adopted by the Presley family. You have to read it, Larsen said so: "That thunder you hear is the drumming of 100,000 feet, racing to the nearest book store to pick up one of the most interesting novels of the year. You should join them."