The Dark Secret of Chillicothe

[beamjockey]

These days we have been making many trips back and forth to repair the house of my late mother-in-law. It's in the vicinity of Henry, about two hours from where we live. We go on to stay with family in Peoria, about 45 minutes beyond that.

As a consequence, we find ourselves driving, as we often have, through Chillicothe, Illinois, population 6000.

A few weeks ago, a new sign appeared.

HISTORICAL SOCIETY
1 -4 SUN WED SAT
MCCULLEY ZORRO EXHIBIT

The sign whizzed by. Synapses fired in the next few hundred milliseconds. Zorro? Why would a historical society have a Zorro exhibit? Wait, wasn't the author who created Zorro a guy with a name something like McCulley?

By the time we got where we were going, I was bursting with curiosity, but also out of range of my cellphone network. I had to wait for hours before I could google.

Sure enough, Zorro, the masked swordsman of old California, sprang from the pen of Johnston McCulley. The Chillicothe Historical Society recently became aware that McCulley grew up in their town, graduating from Chillicothe High in 1901. They've decided they ought to celebrate him. An exhibit opened earlier this summer.

I didn't know much about Zorro. His name came up in my studies of pulp fiction and comics. I had seen a few Zorro movies and a few episodes of a TV show. But I loved the idea that an ordinary-looking town could secretly be connected to a legendary swashbuckling hero.

Last week, a new sign appeared.




A life-size figure of Zorro himself now adorns Chillicothe's Fourth Street (which I think of as Route 29).






Zorro, Johnston McCulley's masked hero, greets the world outside the Chillicothe Historical Society on Illinois Route 29.


The magnificent Zorro sign. He may be a two-dimensional character, but his popularity has endured for nearly a century.


The signature of artist and Zorro maven Peter Poplaski may be seen along Z's boot.


The sign was designed by Peter Poplaski, a comics artist and scholar who is a thoroughly devoted Zorro enthusiast. He provided the museum with some of its memorabilia, and with an impressive portrait of McCulley which now hangs there.

Here's a video clip of Mr. Poplaski discussing how Zorro was distinct from other adventure heroes of the time (after a commercial rolls).

Read The Curse of Capistrano, the 1919 story in which McCulley introduced Zorro. Or download the book version, retitled The Mark of Zorro.

Almost immediately, Hollywood embraced the mysterious black-clad crusader. You can watch the 1920 silent film The Mark of Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks and directed by Fred Niblo.

Here's a 1958 Life spread on the TV incarnation, including plenty of masked children with swords and mustaches.

Further talkies, radio shows, movie serials, extremely corny clips of Walt Disney plugging Zorro to the Mouseketeers, comics, audiobooks, and cartoons I will leave as an exercise for the googler.

So far, I have not found myself in Chillicothe on a Wednesday, a Saturday, or a Sunday between 1 and 4. Therefore I have not yet seen the McCulley exhibit.

But I will one day. I feel it is my destiny.

Comments

[almeda.livejournal.com]

That's awesome.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

I have never read any of the books (or seen the silents) but one of the few advantages of the time and place I spent my first twelve years was that one of the few TV stations we got showed old serials on Saturday and Sunday. I think I saw all of the Zorro serials, including the Disney version. I still remember Don del Oro.

[acmespaceship.livejournal.com]

Great sign. But... but... he didn't sign it with the Mark of Zorro?
Not sure about the knee sword as a practical weapon design. Might be painful.
Z

ETA: Since I've been loading my Kindle with books that are All Bill's Fault, perhaps others will find this resource useful: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/ebooks.php?atitle=McCulley&order=ASC&sort=ebook&pp=30&genreid=<r=
ZZ

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I was going to observe that Bill is never around when Zorro shows up.

[erik]

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

That guy needs to be an animated GIF!

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

My favorite Zorro is Chilean novelist Isabel Allende's Zorro, posed as a biography of Diego de la Vega. The early chapters in which he's in Spain for his education are particularly splendid -- historical fiction as opposed to 'pulp' fiction, if one is disposed to categorize things that way -- and particularly if you love Spain and are familiar with Spanish history and Spain's colonial history.

I love watching the Spanish television series down in the Spanish Caribbean or in South America, which feature legendary masked heroes out of Spain's historical memory -- their equivalents of William Tell, and so on. They are all great swordsmen and almost all from the 17th century, it seems (see: Alatriste!).

In the meantime Wiki leaves out Chillicothe all together in its Zorro entry: "Zorro is a fictional character created in 1919 by New York–based pulp writer Johnston McCulley."

Love, C

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

This casual bookstore-browser has sometimes wondered why a celebrated serious novelist like Allende would descend to writing about such pulpish material, but the curiosity has not risen to the level of opening the book. Thumbs-up noted from al_zorra, who, after all, must be considered something of an expert on Hispanophone foxes.

As for Wikipedia, maybe I can patch up the McCulley and Zorro articles some lunch hour soon, if someone else does not do it first.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

The imprint of Imperial Spain upon the Americas is one of Allende's subjects.

Like most of us, she too falls easily under the spell of mysterious figures who swirl capes, precisely wield swords and ride fine horses :) judging by recollections of interviews she conducted around the publication of this novel. Also, it was a break in some ways from the grief from the long death of a close member of her family -- if I am recollecting correctly.

As mentioned before, such figures are common in Spanish popular - folk culture, i.e. imperial Spain allied with the Church wasn't always a happy thing for the people, so you have these figures -- like England had Robin Hood. Being Spanish, they use swords, not bows.

Love, C.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

hah! I award myself a cookie. I saw the name Poplaski on the sign and said, "Hmm, I have some comix by Peter Poplaski . . . " but I hadn't known of his thing for Zorro.
You also raise the interesting question of what makes a character attract such professional fan fic. (My understanding of "fic" was radically embiggened when someone pointed out that one of the first great targets was Sherlock Holmes.) But that's another question.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I do not know Mr. Poplaski, but he is most likely two handshakes away from you and me in various directions. Because of his long involvement with Kitchen Sink Press, for example, I am virtually certain that dreamhaven knows him.

You also raise the interesting question of what makes a character attract such professional fan fic. (My understanding of "fic" was radically embiggened when someone pointed out that one of the first great targets was Sherlock Holmes.) But that's another question.

Same as any other fanfic. You close the book, or turn off the TV, or leave the movie theater, and Zorro still has hold of your imagination. You are restless until you can tell a new story about him. If you are lucky, you find others similarly posessed.

One of my college friends spent many years in a community of ardent Zorro fanfic readers and writers. Must tell her about this exhibit.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

(Never met Poplaski, but the few comix artists I am personally acquainted with are connectors, so two handshakes is a reasonable estimate.)
Still . . . I'm curious what makes a character catch on for fan fic. There were plenty of romantic swashbucklers; why Zorro? There is a pretty massive Edgar Rice Burroughs fandom, but I've never heard of Tarzan fan fic, although the movies might count. And "modern" fan fic, afaik, stems from Star Trek. I was already a pretty long-time science fiction reader when Star Trek came on, so it was a whole lot less novel to me than to many, but what was the unique way it inspired its fans?

Not that I expect you to resolve my puzzlement, but this is one of the directions I'm coming form.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

It looks to me like the Zorro on the sign is modeled on a still from the Douglas Fairbanks incarnation.

I watched the 1950's Zorro with great enjoyment as a teenybopper, and I recall seeing one episode of a serial titled "Zorro's Black Whip" at the Saturday Morning Kiddie Show [I didn't go often enough to see whole serials], which ISTR featured a female in the Zorro costume.

Gotta try to find the Allende book.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

Foundit! This one of Allende's is not available in Nook format, but I found a used paperback on their BN Marketplace.