The Library

While preparing the biography of Johnston McCulley for the reprinting of The Curse of Capistrano, we discovered that there is an aura of mystery about McCulley's life. Where he lived, how he worked, his family; all of the bits of business that make up one's life are only sparsely referenced, or are non-existent. Whether this lack of information is simply an oversight, or whether McCulley was an intensely private person who did not want his personal details to be in the public eye is unknown, but we found the threads of McCulley's life to be very thin and, at times, tangled. In addition, we also came across many bits of information that were discovered too late to make our deadline, or were contradictory or could not be confirmed as either fact or fiction.

All of this information, however, was too interesting to be left undocumented, and so we are presenting here a collection of facts and speculations about the life of Johnston McCulley. We have attempted to clearly designate in this article which material is factual (as near as can be determined) and which is speculative on our part. We hope that this information will not only expand and clarify much of McCulley's life, but that it will also serve as a starting point for additional research by others.

His Life

• Arthur Johnston McCulley was born on February 2, 1883 in Ottawa, IL , the only child of Rolla Andrew McCulley and Bella Raley.
• Some sources refer to him as William Johnston, but that has yet to be substantiated.
• To further confuse the issue, McCulley's first name isn't used in any of the documents we have uncovered and his books, film credits and copyrights are all under the name of Johnston McCulley.
• Who's Who in America Vol. 3 (A.N. Marquis Co.) lists his education as coming from the public schools and private tutor(s).
• First story published in either 1908 or 1909, thus negating the tale that he sold his first story right out of high school.
• Numerous sources suggest he worked as a newspaperman early in his career, but exactly when he worked at this profession, and where, is a mystery.
• Draft registration for McCulley places him in Colorado Springs, Colorado between 1917-1918.
• Various sources suggest that McCulley served in the military and World War I (1914-1918) seems to be the most logical time for his service (he would have been 31 at the start of the war). However, he is also credited with being a public affairs officer (which would imply military service) or a foreign correspondent (which would not necessarily involve military service).
• The Census of 1920 and the Colorado Springs Polk Directory places McCulley in Colorado Springs, Colorado at 1718 N. Tejon with his wife Ruth (see Wives below). His occupation is listed as author.
• The same address is listed in an earlier directory as the residence of Emily McCulley (widow of John McCulley), Johnston's grandmother. Emily passed away in August of 1918.
• How early McCulley arrived in Colorado Springs is not known, but he is listed at the Tejon address until 1922.
• McCulley can next be placed in New York in 1925 when there is record of his marriage to Louris (see Wives below), but, again, when he arrived and how long he stayed is not known.
• Multiple sources list him as working for The National Police Gazette, but there is no firm record of what he did, although the term "police reporter" is used. Since The National Police Gazette was published in New York, this could have been most anytime in his life.
• From 1925 to the late 40s, there is no real information as to what McCulley did or where he lived, although it may be safe to speculate that he relocated to the Los Angeles area sometime during this period.
• He is given story credit for numerous films from 1918-1946. Some may have been adaptions of previously published stories, but some sources credit McCulley with writing for the screen: something that could not really be done from New York.
• The obituary from the New York Times credits McCulley as working as a reporter for the Los Angeles Herald and Express, but gives no dates.
• The obituary from the Los Angeles Times contains the cryptic sentence "Prior to his Hollywood career he was a member of the LA Times drama department" and also credits him as "author and producer for McCulley Players radio dramatic company" (no record seems to exist of this enterprise).
• The biography of McCulley featured on the cover of his book The Caballero states "After nearly 40 years of writing..." which would suggest that the biography is from the second edition printed in 1947.
• This biography places him with daughter Maurine (see Daughter below) in "Strawberry Flats, a government reserve high in the Lake Arrowhead resort district of the San Bernardino mountains." There is an area along State Route 189 in the San Bernardino mountains of California known as "Strawberry Flats". The town of Twin Peaks, listed as a secondary address for McCulley in the Marquis volume, is, apparently, in the middle of Strawberry Flats. Both are near Lake Arrowhead and are a couple of hours east of Los Angeles.

6533 Hollywood Blvd. Hollywood

• Los Angeles Times obituary gives an address in Los Angeles of 6533 Hollywood Blvd. at the time of his death, an address which is confirmed in the Marquis volume and places McCulley in the Hillview Hollywood Apartments. There is no record of when he moved there, although the Marquis article may have been originally prepared in the late 1940s/early 1950s, with additional material appended on in the late 1950s.
• New York Times obituary mentions that he died "after a series of operations" a phrase echoed in other newspaper obits from other parts of the country (most likely this tidbit was taken from a New York Times feed).
• Johnston McCulley died on November 23, 1958 in Los Angeles, CA.

Speculations

One of the advantages of being an established author is that you can live most anywhere. For someone breaking into the business, however, it is a different story. Since New York was the center of publishing in the early 1900s, it is probably safe to assume the McCulley lived in New York in the years prior to his appearance in Colorado Springs in 1917. Many authors started out as newspaper reporters, and this might also have been the start of his writing career, or he may have worked for The National Police Gazette during this period.

His move to Colorado Springs may have been to care for his grandmother, as she was in ill health, or possibly he moved there on his return from the military.

McCulley's move from Colorado to New York may have been to get in better touch with the publishing industry. From information submitted by Ed Hulse, it is known that the sale of McCulley's stories to Hollywood were carried out through his publishers (mainly Munsey) and that McCulley received half of the money realized from the sale for the Munsey-published tales, so the market would have been doubly lucrative.

McCulley's move to California was most likely to get in touch with Hollywood, especially considering that he gained the rights to Zorro when the Munsey organization folded in 1942. He moved in with Maurine (see Daughter), but also bought a place in Los Angeles and lived in both places (the Lake Arrowhead area has a long history of people connected with the entertainment industry living there).

In order for everything to line up correctly, however, the dates given in The Caballero bio may be a stretch and he may have moved out to California, or at least a lot of time there much earlier than 1947 (see Odds and Ends).

Wives

1718 N. Tejon Colorado Springs

There are two wives for McCulley that can be (sort of) verified, with suspicions that there might have been a third, or, at the very least, an early romantic fling (see Daughter, below).

• 1920 Census lists McCulley as living in Colorado Springs and having a wife named Ruth.
• The Census lists her birthplace as Washington and she is listed as being 30 years old at the time of the census.
• No information seems to be available as to when they married, how long they were married, or how, or when, they separated.
• There is record of McCulley marrying Louris Munsey in New York in 1925.
• Louris was born in Illinois in November of 1889.
• Some add Powers to her name, suggesting that she may have been previously married.
• The only other connection of Louris to McCulley is found in The Caballero, which is dedicated to "Louris and Maurine" (see Daughter below).
• Records indicate that Louris died in Los Angeles in 1956.

Speculations

The discovery of Ruth McCulley was probably the most interesting bit of information that we found in preparing this article. With no actual record of her birth, death or her marriage to Johnston, it is quite difficult to determine when they got together and how she ended up in Colorado Springs; especially considering that it has always been assumed that McCulley spent most of his life in New York and California.

The speculations made above about McCulley's move to Colorado seem to both be quite logical and it would not be a stretch to assume that Ruth moved to Colorado Springs to live with Johnston's grandmother Emily while he was in the service. The history of Colorado Springs, however, offers yet another scenario.

According to Kelly Murphy, Colorado, and Colorado Springs in particular, were considered healthful climates for people with Tuberculosis. Many moved there to ease their symptoms starting in the late 1890s and this type of treatment continued into the 1940s, when a vaccine was developed. Could Ruth have suffered from Tuberculosis? This would explain the move to Colorado Springs and if she died from the disease, this could be one explanation for McCulley's departure in 1922 and his freedom to marry Louris in 1925. Unfortunately, there are no records for TB patients for these years and there is no record of Ruth's death or subsequent burial.

Not much more is known of Louris, although her maiden name of Munsey did lead to some interesting speculation. Much of McCulley's work was published by the Munsey Company, a publishing empire that was founded and run by Frank Munsey. Although the possibility exists that Louris and Frank were related, a connection between the two has yet to be discovered. At first, we had thought that Louris might be a child of Frank, especially since McCulley and Louris married in 1925--the same year that Frank Munsey died and, by all records, left his fortune to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. This, however, turned out to be a dead end, as Munsey never married and had no children.

Daughter

A view of the Strawberry Flats area

• Records indicate that Johnston McCulley had only one child: Beatrix Maurine (listed in some sources as Beatrice and Maureen) McCulley.
• Maurine was born in New York in 1899 with her mother's name listed on birth records as Munsey.
• We discovered Maurine in the dedication of The Caballero and the biography of Johnston mentions that Maurine is "a well known portrait painter".
• Exactly where Maurine lived during her early years and where she practiced her craft is unknown.
• At some point in the 1940s, Maurine was living in the Strawberry Flats/Twin Peaks area of California.
• The only reference discovered regarding Maurine McCulley's work as a painter was found on 6/13/07 on Artfact.com (apparently a listing from 1998):

• The Los Angeles Times obituary for Johnston lists Maurine as living at the same address as her father.
• Court documents unearthed by Mike Barrier show that Maurine was listed as the executrix to Johnston McCulley's estate.
• Copyright records show renewals on Johnston's work by Maurine through at least 1976.
• Death records are conflicting and show that she died either in Palm Desert, California or in Riverside, California in September of 1983 (this conflict may be caused by the fact that Palm Desert is in Riverside County).

Speculations

Maurine is probably the most perplexing piece of the McCulley mystery. According to available records, she was born in 1899 when Johnston was just 16 years old, and her mother's name is the same as that of Louris: Munsey. Louris, however would have been 10 years old at the time of Maurine's birth, so it is unlikely that she was the birth mother. McCulley's first wife, Ruth, can also be eliminated, since she would have been 9 years old in 1899, if the census records of 1920 were correct. One can only speculate, then, as to the actual identity of Maurine's mother. If she was indeed a Munsey, there is always the possibility that she may have been an older sister of Louris and that Louris was both Maurine's aunt and step-mother.

The Busby Berkeley painting mentioned above is undated, but may have been from late in Berkeley's life (unfortunately, Butterfield no longer exists as it was purchased by eBay in 1999). Berkeley was born in 1895 and died in Palm Springs in 1976. Palm Springs is very close to Palm Desert; one of the possible locations where Maurine lived at the time of her death. How the two may have been introduced is unknown, but it is quite possible that Maurine left the Los Angeles residence and moved to Palm Desert, where she would have had easy access to the entertainment community that lived in Palm Springs. Besides, the connection between Palm Desert and Palm Springs was too good to ignore.

Odds and Ends

• The 1920 Census also lists two other members of the McCulley household: an aunt and uncle named Howard and Mary McKinnie (spelling is a guess as it is taken from the actual census pages). Did they move to Colorado Springs to help care for Ruth? And exactly how the McKinnies were related to the McCulleys is not clear, since there is no record of Ruth's maiden name. All that is known is that Howard's profession is listed as "wholesale merchant", but he does not appear in the Polk Directory.
• The text of the biography that appeared on the cover of The Caballero(Note the incorrect birthplace):

• There are some interesting dates that crop up when discussing McCulley's move to California:
  1. McCulley's last movie credit is given on the IMDB as 1946.
  2. According to court documents unearthed by Mike Barrier, that is the same year that McCulley licensed the rights to Zorro to the Mitchell Gertz Agency: an agreement that lasted until 1951.
• These dates taken by themselves don't really mean much, but if you put them together, it would suggest that McCulley was most likely in the area of Hollywood on a regular basis prior to 1946 (earlier than suggested in The Caballero biography), if for no other reason than to make connections with Gertz.
• Also, McCulley stopped writing original material for the screen at the same time he licensed the rights to Zorro. Considering that he was 63 at the time, there is a good possibility he may have been looking towards semi-retirement and that the income from the Gertz agency, combined with the Zorro stories in West Magazine (which he started writing in 1944) and other book residuals, may have been enough to keep McCulley and Louris comfortable.
• Information varies on exactly how much McCulley had to do with the Disney television series. He was at least peripherally involved in its inception, since a few publicity photos show him posing with an in-costume Guy Williams, the star of the series. Some sources suggest that he was brought in as a consultant on the scripts, others that he wrote many of the first season episodes. Ed Hulse has stated that many episodes are direct adaptions of the Zorro stories that appeared in West.
• The 1961 court case that Mike Barrier uncovered concerns a lawsuit brought by Maurine, as executrix of the McCulley estate, against Mitchell Gertz and Disney over the rights to Zorro and the treatment that Johnston McCulley received during the time Gertz handled the Zorro property. Maurine won the case and, apparently, won back the print rights to the Zorro stories, if not all rights to the character, from both Gertz and Disney.
• Byron Erickson, editor of Gladstone's Disney comics back in the 1980s, once responded to a fan's request for Zorro comic stories by explaining that Disney no longer had ancillary rights to the character.
• Today, the rights to Zorro are held by Zorro Production, Inc. and the company is run by John Gertz, the son of Mitchell Gertz.
• A selection of Johnston McCulley book and magazine covers can be found in the gallery Featuring Johnston McCulley.
• An example of another McCulley character, Thubway Tham, is available in the story, Thubway Tham Tunes In.

Special Thanks to:

• Karen Cavanaugh and the staff at the Clifton M. Brakensiek Library in Bellflower, CA.
• The staff at the Norwalk Regional Library in Norwalk, CA.
• Genealogist Jim McCully of New Zealand.
• Ed Hulse, editor and publisher of Blood N Thunder.
• Kelly Murphy, Research Coordinator for the The Starsmore Center for Local History at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, Colorado
• Michael Barrier, Disney and animation authority
• Willie Fong for the pictures of the Tejon property in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
• Steve Sprague for his information about Strawberry Flats and the surrounding area.