<
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jul/29/big-sharks-coded-love-letters-a-movie-fiasco-the-strange-australian-chapter-of-celebrity-cowboy-writer-zane-grey>
"The story begins with a shadow beneath the waves. A great white, pitiless and
silent. Dorsal fin like a mean knife. Eyes dark and empty. The setting: a
tight-knit coastal town where the locals are being picked off, one by one. They
need a hero – a man with the audacity to challenge a legend. There’s blood in
the water. The cameras are rolling. Movie history is being made.
Behind the scenes, it’s chaos. There’s a mechanical shark that barely resembles
a living creature and is far more trouble than it’s worth. The production is
beset by so many delays and accidents, it begins to feel cursed. But the crew
push on. There’s a lot riding on this big fish film: fortunes, careers,
legacies.
You know this story. Or you think you do. But rewind the reel: this isn’t
Jaws and Spielberg is nowhere in sight. We’re in Australia, four decades
earlier – drifting in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef. The film is
White
Death (1936), and the man calling the shots is a celebrity novelist turned
monster catcher: Zane Grey.
Today, his name barely registers: a footnote in fishing lore, a ghost in
vintage paperbacks. But in his heyday, Grey was stratospherically famous. A
reluctant dentist turned adventure novelist, Grey’s pulp westerns sold in the
millions. His travels made front-page news. He was Hemingway before Hemingway
(some even say
The Old Man and the Sea was cribbed from one of Grey’s tall
tales). Even death couldn’t slow him down: Grey’s publisher sat on a stockpile
of manuscripts and kept rolling out new titles for decades. On the page, Grey
built a mythic vision of the American West. Hollywood made it global, with
dozens of adaptations, including
Riders of the Purple Sage,
The Lone Star
Ranger and
The Rainbow Trail. You may not know his name, but you know his
frontier."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
