boyajian@akov68.DEC (Jerry Boyajian) (07/27/84)
The original posting was only in net.games.trivia, but I thought that answer may be of interest to those readers of net.movies, net.tv, and net.books who may not otherwise see it. My apologies to those who are seeing it more than once. From: ihuxf!jpb > Does anyone know the title and author of the book or magazine article which > was the basis for the movie The Mark of Zorro? Heh, you're talking to a Zorro fanatic, here! The various movies, and the Disney tv show, were based on the Zorro stories written by Johnston McCully, which were written in the 'teens and 'twenties for the pulp magazines of the time (unfor- tunately, I can't give you a full bibliography, though I wish I could). The first story was a serial entitled "The Curse of Capistrano", and it was this novel that told the story adapted for the various movies. I believe that there were two more novels and a handful of short stories. THE CURSE OF CAPISTRANO has seen book publication under that title, as well as under THE MARK OF ZORRO. I've an old hardcover "photoplay" edition which includes photos from the Fairbanks film of 1920. The book later saw paperback publication from Dell books in the early 50's. A second edition was issued in 1958 to tie into the Disney show. It's been out of print since then. I haven't come across anything to indicate that the other Zorro stories were ever published in book form. However, I have recently found out that Bantam Books plans to issue four Zorro books sometime Real Soon Now. Though I haven't seen any reasons for it, I suspect that it's due to the rumors that Disney is going to produce a new series for the Disney Channel, riding on the popularity of the re-runs of the original series last year. And I haven't even mentioned the various children's books, etc. that were published as a result of the Disney show. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Maynard, MA) UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA