When Tarzan Hit Big
“I wrote it long-hand on the backs of old letterheads and odd pieces of paper. I did not think it was a very good story, and I doubted if it would sell,” Burroughs explained of his first Tarzan story. For that story, he was paid $700. This was in 1912, so that was a lot of money. In today’s dollars, it would be the equivalent to about $19,060!
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But despite the story’s magazine appearance, every major book publisher refused to release Tarzan in book form. It took more than two years before the king of the jungle finally landed on bookshelves. And when ‘Tarzan of the Apes’ debuted in theaters in 1918, it was the first-ever film ever to earn $1 million.