Zane Grey

Inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1977.

According to the 1974 book "Holly-Would!" all of Grey's novels were filmed at least once.

Formed Zane Grey Pictures Inc., a film production company, in 1920.

In 1912 he published what is probably his best-known western novel, "Riders of the Purple Sage", which was also a big seller. Aiming to get his books made into films, he formed his own motion-picture production company, which he later sold to Paramount Pictures executive Jesse Lasky. Paramount would produce a large number of westerns based on Grey's novels. Unlike many successful authors, Grey didn't content himself with simply churning out more novels. He traveled all over the world and involved himself in a variety of endeavors, from working a mining claim on Oregon's Rogue River to fishing for sharks in New Zealand, and writing books--both fiction and non-fiction--about his adventures. He had a special affinity for New Zealand and wrote many best-selling books about his fishing experiences there, which helped to make the country a mecca for deep-sea sport fishermen. Grey himself held many world records for catching big-game fish.

He published his first western novel, "Spirit of the Border", in 1906, and it quickly became a best-seller.

In 1902 he became a published author by selling a story about fishing. Three years later he and Lisa married and moved to a farm in LackawaxenGrey began to take an interest in the West after accompanying a friend to Arizona on a trapping expedition to capture mountain lions.

He attended the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship, graduating with a degree in dentistry in 1896. He played minor-league baseball for a short period for a team in West Virginia. He started a dentistry practice in New York city, where he met the woman who would become his wife, Lina Roth, who got him to focus more on his writing. He would, however, periodically take fishing trips to the upper Delaware River in Lackawaxen in Pike County, Pennsylvania.

Born Pearl Zane Gray on January 31, 1872, in Zanesville, Ohio--a town founded by his mother's family--famed western novelist Zane Grey was an athlete and outdoorsman from an early age, with his main interests being fishing and baseball.