EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 10/21/1944 - HFSID 254613

FROM HAWAII TO HIS DAUGHTER JOAN WHO, WITH HER HUSBAND JAMES H. PIERCE, HAD BEEN TARZAN AND JANE ON RADIO
 
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS. Typed Letter Signed: "Papa", 1p, 8½x11. Honolulu, Hawaii, 1944 October 21. On "Edgar Rice Burroughs/Tarzana, California" stationery, marked "Clipper" at upper right, indicating this was to be sent by air aboard the Clipper. To his daughter. Begins: "Joan darling". In full: "Under separate cover I am mailing to you via steamer some photos that have been cluttering my desk for some time. I thought you might like to look at them and then paste them in your hat. The one in front of Pacific Tramp (General Landon's Liberator) was taken on Mullinex Field, Tarawa, March 27 1944, just before we took off for Kwejalein. From left to right are Col. Clarence Hegy, Capt. Scheur (?), Genl. Landon, ERB, Lt. Col. Jay Rutledge. Another is of Wilma and Phil Bird, ERB, and Kitty Braye (rhymes with zowie), one of the guests at Louise Rogers' party, who dances a mean hula. I didn't have a stomach ache. I was merely holding on to my palpitating heart. Phil is not frightened. He was letting his hair grow so that he could part it again and look like a human being. Wilma, Col. Fielder (his boss) and I had razzed him into it. The third is of your dear old father after Sue Brown had painted on eyebrows and what she thought a mustache should look like. It happened like this. 'Duke' Willey, a man in his fifties, was teamed up in a mixed doubles tennis tournament set with a wahine he didn't like; so he prevailed on me to play with him, taking the part of the kane [man] opposite his wahine [woman]. He put on one of his wife's bathing suits, she painted his face and rouged his lips, and a Red Cross man pasted false eyelashes on him. He was something to look at! And he was in character all the time, mincing and simpering. When I pinched his leg, he slapped me. He was darned good and got a lot of laughs. We lost the set. I don't know when you will get the pictures. I have to get an Army O.K. to send the one of Genl. Landon, and then they will go by steamer mail. You will probably get them around the first of January, if at all. Haven't seen Hulbert for a couple of weeks. He still wants to go home. I wish that he might. I think he would soon get it out of his system. Ralph tells me to stay here, that there is nothing that I could do there; and I know he is right. When am I going to get decent pictures of you and Mike? I have one of Joanne. Just talked with Phil, and he is going to stop at my office on his way home and get the pictures to O.K. Lots of love." HULBERT was Burrough's son. Three years earlier, Hulbert had come to Hawaii to visit his father and the two were playing tennis on the morning of December 7, 1941 when nearby Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS then served as the oldest war correspondent in the Pacific theatre in WWII and, at times, saw Hulbert who was a war photographer. "DUKE" WILLEY was the manager of the Remington-Rand branch in Honolulu. From June 10th to September 11, 1944, Burroughs wrote Tarzan and the Foreign Legion. The book dedication is to Brigadier General Truman H. Landon, mentioned in this letter. It was in General Landon's B-24, Pacific Tramp, that Burroughs flew on two combat missions and had his first no-nose-wheel-landing. Seventeen years earlier, during a party at Burroughs' Tarzana ranch in 1927, Burroughs had convinced JAMES H. PIERCE, who had acted in a few silents, to play Tarzan in a new film. Taking the role in the silent film Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1927) required Pierce to back out of the aviator part already offered him in Wings; it went to Gary Cooper. In 1928, Pierce married Burrough's daughter Joan, the recipient of this letter; they were married until Joan's death in 1972. Joanne and Mike, children of JOAN BURROUGHS PIERCE (1908-1972) and JAMES H. PIERCE (1900-1983), are each mentioned in this letter. In 1932, Burroughs organized and narrated a Tarzan radio show, casting James as Tarzan and Joan as Jane. The 15-minute serial, broadcast three times weekly, lasted for 364 episodes. Faint pinhead impressions at right margin. Faint pencil erasure below signature. Fine condition.