Aloha and Welcome to this chapter on Doc Ball, surfing's first dedicated surf photographer and adaptor of Hawaiian Surf Culture into that of Southern California's.
This biography of Doc is largely drawn from interviews his friend Gary Lynch did with him in the late 1980's and a piece we wrote together about Doc, published in the late 1990's.
In the 2010's, I worked with another friend of Doc's, Carl Ackerman, to produce a one hour documentary on Doc that stands as the definitive treatment of the man. It is available via the Surf Network at:
Photo of Doc by Tom Blake
One of the most influential surfers of the 1930s was “Doc” Ball. Born John Heath Ball on January 25, 1907, Doc was a key guy in three very important areas: Firstly, he, along with Adie Bayer, organized and lead surfing’s first great surf club, the Palos Verdes Surfing Club (PVSC), a group whose legacy is still felt today. Secondly and as importantly, Doc became surfing’s first truly dedicated surf photographer. Although others had shot surfers and surfing before him – most notably Tom Blake who became one of his closest friends – it was not until Doc Ball that surf photography rightly came into its own. Thirdly, Doc actively incorporated elements of Hawaiian surf culture into his and his club's pursuit of a Southern California surfers’ lifestyle.
Doc grew up in Redlands, California, the son of Genevieve – a natural child psychologist – and Archibald E. Ball, DDS, a graduate of the University Of Michigan School Of Dentistry. Even as a boy, photography was part of John Heath’s life.
“Most of my lifetime, I guess,” he told me, “I’d had a camera for some reason or another… I started with a little thing about four or five inches; maybe less than that; a little tiny camera box that they made. I guess it was for kids or something. It was black and white stuff. Take it on bike hikes and everything. That was when I was about eight years old. I got started ‘photography’ that way.”
Doc’s introduction to the Pacific Ocean also came early in his life. Out at Catalina Island, “at age 4,” Doc wrote, “I was taken along with my parents on a Redlands Elks Club party. On arriving, my mom decides to take a swim in the little bay. She also carried me out there and met another club member, Jake Suess (owner of a grocery in Redlands). He says, ‘Let me take little Jack. I’ll teach him to swim.’ She handed me over to him. He wades out to hip depth and plops me down in that cold H20. I went clear under before he grabbed me up. And I start screaming ‘It’s salty!’ Anyway, that did not blot out my interest in the old salty, as our family vacationed at Hermosa Beach. I learned to bodysurf, here. Also, to make a few dimes catching and selling sand crabs to be bait for fishermen.”
Doc’s water direction was kept alive, back in the Redlands during the school year, when he later became a junior lifeguard at the Redlands Municipal Pool. Duke Kahanamoku visited the pool as a master of ceremonies for an inauguration and made an impression on Doc that was never lost.
By 1924, Doc held the Redlands High School pole vault record of 11-feet 6-inches, using a bamboo pole. He continued playing sports in school when he played left end on the University of Redlands football team (1928). “The next wild experience here,” Doc wrote about the aquatic side of high school sports, “was learning how to do a one-and-a-half flip over from the 20-foot high diving platform. It was a blast!”
Following his father’s profession, Doc enrolled at the University of Southern California Dental School in 1929. “This is where I learned to put my hands in people’s mouths,” Doc recalled, “and not get bit.” It’s also where Doc got his nickname.
“By this time,” Doc added, “I also set another record. A 20-foot exhaust pipe for my strip-down Model T Ford (rode the thing on the gas tank) – was given the thing for cleaning up a friend’s backyard of weed overgrowth. Weeds had almost swallowed the old T. It had no body or fenders or front tires. I drove it home and got it in shape to drive. When they did some repair work on the Kingsbury Grade School roofing was when I got that 20-foot pipe – put the end of it on skate wheels and attached it to my Model T Ford. Got a blast when classmates went to look at the skate wheel towing attachment. I would pop the thing [pop the clutch] with a backfire which caused them to jump sky high.”
Doc recalled that “when I went down to USC Dental College. I had a little canoe I used to ride up in the Redlands area, in the lakes and rivers and whatever – canals [even]. So, I figured, ‘why not?’ [try it in the ocean]. Oh, we had lived in Hermosa Beach, there, in the summertime, way back [beginning in] 1920-21. So, I knew the beach and I was interested in salt water and so –” he laughed, “I took that canoe, went out and paddled around; finally found out I could catch some waves with it!”
When we think of a “canoe“ nowadays, an image of a nicely constructed, mass-produced, well-marketed product comes to mind. But, back then, a canoe could mean something you bought, but most likely meant something you made. Doc’s was a custom job he called “The Bull Squid.”
“I made it with bicycle rims – wooden rims, in those days,” Doc told me. “The canoe was mostly made – what they had were some [train] car strips that they would use for packing oranges; great big orange boxes in the flat cars in the freight trains; just big long strips [of wood]. They just fit together perfect.
“So, I made the sides out of wood and put a little canvas covering over the front and back and that kept the waves from crashing over both the bow and, ah – stern.
“Anyway, it was a pretty good little surfing canoe; 6-foot, 6-inches long.”
With The Bull Squid, Doc not only spent time sliding the surf, but diving for abalone. The rest of the time was spent on classes and studying.
“Remember your first surfboard?” I asked Doc.
“Pretty much. It wasn’t mine, but it was one we could use. There was a guy who came down to the beach, there, to go surfin’. He’d been to Hawai’i and he brought this board back. A big 10-foot redwood. He didn’t know what to with it during the week, cuz he knew he’d only come down on the weekend. So, by that time I had another buddy whose mother and father owned a restaurant right on the beach – right on the cement walk, there, on the ocean front.
“We went in and made a deal with him. If the guy would let Norm [Brown] and I use his board during the week, they’d let him store it in their restaurant (‘Walt & Mize Hamburgers’). It was kind of an attraction! It helped them out and it helped us out. That was the first board.”
Encouraged by Sam Apoliana, a Hawaiian classmate, Doc went on to build a plank-style surfboard. He carved it out of a large slab of redwood, hewn with an adze.
“Then,” Doc told me of this development, “Norm and I decided we better have one of our own, so we went down and got some lumber.” Doc paused and asked me if I knew what an adze is. “You have to stand with your legs spread pretty good,” Doc cautioned about use of the adze. “Some of the guys we’d been told – in the logging industry – they’d pretty near chopped their ankle off.
“It’s a horizontal [blade, as opposed to an axe’s vertical]. Well, we hacked us out a couple of boards with that. That was really the first one [we made ourselves and were our own].”
In the late 1980s, Doc passed this same adze on to big wave legend Greg Noll, appointing him as “keeper of the flame.” As for Doc’s first surfboard when he first hacked it out, he colored it white and decorated it with copper sheeting in the shape form of a shield with the words “Na Alii,” Hawaiian for “The King.” Copper studs kept it solidly pressed to the board’s surface. “In time,” Doc said with some regret, “it was stolen out of our Hermosa Beach house backyard.”
“Then ole Norm,” Doc told me, “he decides he’s gonna make one after Blake’s type [hollow paddleboard]. He started making 14-foot paddleboards. I bought one of those from him and that was my board for a long time.”
“You liked the increased flotation?” I surmised.
“Oh, definitely,” Doc agreed. “Yeah!”
Early Heroes & Influences
Like many surfers of his time, Doc revered Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, the man who was primarily responsible for the rebirth of wave riding in the Twentieth Century. “He was one of our heroes in that time,” Doc told me. “He came here and toured around a little bit, but I didn’t get to see him too much.”
About a year or two after he got started surfing, Doc had an opportunity to surf with Duke down at Corona del Mar. One of Doc’s most vivid memories of Duke was in the early 1930s, at a surf contest at Santa Monica:
“They had a big thing at Santa Monica – a whole gathering of surfers giving out awards from the contest they’d had,” Doc recalled. “Ol’ Duke was in there. And, son-of-a-gun, when I got in there and sat down, here’s Duke. He’s sitting right in front of me.” Doc was laughing about it as he remembered the day. “And I said, ‘Duke… Duke… Duke…’ [trying to engage him in conversation]. Never even turned his head.” To get Duke’s attention, Doc resorted to the little Hawaiian lingo he knew. In Hawaiian, Doc said, loud enough for Duke to hear: ‘To the up righteousness of the State.’ “And, man, he whipped around like a shot!” Doc laughed some more, then told me they got into active conversation. “We had a blast…”
A hero more accessible and even a close friend was Tom Blake, inventor of the hollowboard, the skeg and the precursor to the sailboard. “He was my surfin’ buddy for all those years,” Doc told me of the 1930s &’40s. “We rejoiced together in the picture shootin’ [photography] and everything.”
I mentioned to Doc that I’d heard there were only about 30 surfers in Southern California at the end of the 1920s.
“That sounds a little extra, to me,” he responded. “When I started, there were probably 15 or 20 around the whole coast. But, they were mostly all in Southern California where the water was warm.” I asked Doc who the earliest surfers were that he could remember.
“Some of the local guys. Johnny Kerwin and his family, Jim Bailey [and] lifeguards. They had a big pier there [Hermosa], ya know. You go out there and that’s where you run into the lifeguards. Most of the time, some of these other guys were out there; goin’ fishin’ or just checkin’ the situation out.”
Most respected of these lifeguards was Rusty Williams. “Anytime the waves got good, why, he’d be out there. He was the one who was always telling us to watch out for the pilings on the pier.”
About Johnny Kerwin, Doc said, “He was one of the first, there, at Hermosa Beach; the Kerwin family. He had three brothers and a sister… We used to get together to go surfing, abalone diving, lobster diving and, boy, you name it. His folks had a big bakery down there at Hermosa Beach and so that’s where we went to get all our cookies, bread, cakes… it was really an ‘in’ thing.
“He was a real friend...”
First Dedicated Surf Photographer
John “Doc” Ball certainly was not the first person to photograph surfers. One has only to visit any surfing museum to see evidence of predecessors. There are shots taken of surfers going back to the late 1800s. Frenchmen Auguste and Louis Lumiere invented the motion-picture camera in 1895 and by 1898, motion pictures of surfers at Waikiki were taken by Thomas Edison, inventor of the lightbulb.
Notable during the 1910s was Alfred Gurrey, Jr. Sometime shortly after 1903, he opened Gurrey’s Ltd: Fine and Oriental Art in Honolulu, which became a hub of that city’s art scene; “the haunt of artists and patrons,” as a Honolulu Commercial Advertiser later put it.
It was while operating the gallery that Gurrey photographed surfers and had some of his surfing photographs published in magazines like Alexander Hume Ford’s Mid-Pacific Magazine. It was Gurrey’s photographs of Duke, especially, that gained a large audience not only in the Islands, but on the U.S. Mainland and in Australia. His best work can be seen in one of surfing’s most scarce collectibles: The Surf Riders of Hawaii.
Surf Riders of Hawaii was originally self-published by Gurrey as a handmade booklet photo compilation of surfing photographs in 1914. It was later reprinted in St. Nicholas Magazine, Volume XLII, Number 10, August 1915. The booklet combined artistically-rendered prints with romantic poetry from Lord Byron and also prose by Gurrey himself.
Unfortunately, A. R. Gurrey, Jr. apparently ceased photography shortly after publication of Surf Riders of Hawaii. His art gallery struggled financially through the second half of the 1910s and on into the 1920s, finally shutting its doors in 1923. After a year of unemployment, Alfred, Jr. joined his father in the insurance business. He died a few years later at the relatively young age of 53.
Photographs of surfers continued to be taken through the first two decades of the century – the beginning two decades of the rebirth of surfing. Surfer, inventor and philosopher Tom Blake took many photographs, some of which can be seen in his first book Hawaiian Surfboard. And, in a notable milestone, Blake had the first surf layout printed in a 1935 edition of National Geographic. Don James, who also began surf photography in the 1930s – like Doc Ball – shot many a photo between the ‘30s and 1960s.
The significant role Doc Ball plays in surf photography, however, is that he was the first truly dedicated “surf photog.” His surfing experience was framed by the camera’s lens from many angles. Sure, he surfed and spearheaded the Palos Verdes Surfing Club, but more than that, he took photographs of surfers, surfing and surf culture. He was the first to take this approach as his primary focus. It began like this:
In 1926, Doc was given a Kodak Autographic camera by his father’s dental assistant. “My dad was a dentist,” he reminded me, “and his office gal brought in a folding Autographic. She didn’t want it anymore, so she gave it to my dad and he gave it to me. I took that down to the beach, there, and when I went to school.”
“I started [taking pictures of surfers surfing] after we started going down to the beach. I said, ‘Oh, man, I gotta take a picture of some of these guys.’ That’s when I started using that folding Autographic.”
One of Doc’s earliest surf-related photographs was taken the same time he started riding waves with a canoe then a surfboard. Around 1929, Doc took some pictures of his mother on a board at Palos Verdes Cove. “My mother was a beautiful chicken,” is how he put it to Gary Lynch, “you have to admit it, a natural child psychologist. She raised us right,” he added in appreciation.
The year 1931 was when Doc really hit a turning point in his life; a turn that would unite his recreational time with both surfing and photography. At the start of the year, the Los Angeles Times printed a sepia-toned, full spread rotogravure photograph of four surfers at Waikiki. Taken by Tom Blake with his new waterproof camera housing, “Riders of Sunset Seas“ grabbed hold of Doc’s imagination at the same time it provided viewers with a unique perspective of waves and surfers at an angle never seen until then.
From that point on, “Doc became dedicated,” surf historian Gary Lynch wrote, “to the pursuit of artistically recording the California surfing scene.”
About the Kodak folding Autographic, Doc told me: “You could sign the thing and it registered right on the film; had a little place down at the bottom of the camera case. I used to carry that out to the Palos Verdes Cove… I finally got to the point where I carried it in my teeth with a towel around my neck, getting’ drowned an’ everything.”
“Doc started,” Gary wrote, “producing photographs of surfers surfing, their boards, cars, girlfriends, parties, surf board construction, living quarters, club houses and just about all activities related to this new breed of Californian. Comedy often played a part in the composition of Doc’’ photographs.”
Palos Verdes Surfing Club (PVSC)
Doc graduated from the USC Dental College in 1933. Shortly afterward, on Monday, March 19, 1934, he opened an office at 4010 1/2 South Vermont Avenue, in Los Angeles. “He rented a second story, five room suite above a movie theatre that then stood at that address,” wrote Gary Lynch. “On a surviving photograph of the office and theatre beneath, the marquee clearly informs us that the movie ‘Algiers‘ was showing, starring Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr. One room was dedicated to working on his patients and one room served as his bedroom, office, darkroom, and laboratory.” A third room constituted the Palos Verdes Surfing Club, after it was formed in 1935. The landlord gave Doc the first two months rent free, due to the Depression, and charged forty dollars a month thereafter.
“In those days,” Doc told Gary, “I didn’t have enough money to rent another building to sleep in. We made our own boards and swimming trunks, camera tripods, and copy stands. We bought very little. It was good for you. After all that, you really knew how to get there from here. It was a do-it-yourself age.”
I asked him about the depression; how did it effect them as surfers?
“Well, as far as surf was concerned: not really. Of course, we had a little trouble getting’ gasoline, but then it was 7-cents a gallon in those days. Imagine that? … Well, that’s the way it was. It [the Depression] kept us kinda limited in certain ways, but we had surfin’ to take care of everything. Long as there’s waves, why, you didn’t have to pay for those. All we had to do was buy the gas to get there.”
A year after he got going in his dentist practice, Doc got together with Adie Bayer to found the Palos Verdes Surfing Club. “He was one of the big ones,” Doc told me, referring to Adie Bayer as one of the top surfers of the era. Bayer was a champion platform diver, swimmer, tennis player, as well as surfer.
“He was real energetic and everything,” Doc affirmed. “He helped do organizings, too.”
Because it organized the first annual Pacific Coast Surfing Championship, the Corona del Mar Surf Board Club was probably the first surf club to organize on the Mainland, “the largest club of this kind in America,” according to The Santa Ana Daily Register, July 31, 1928. Chuck A Luck” Ehlers claimed the honor for the Hermosa Beach Surfing Club, saying that it was the first, in 1934, when “the Hermosa Beach Surfing Club was formed. They had about 18 members. The old ones plus Don Grannis, Ted Davies, and others.”
The following year was “A banner year,” Chuck A Luck recalled of 1935, when, to the south, “the Palos Verdes Surfing Club was formed – a with Tulie Clark, ‘Doc’ Ball, Hoppy Swarts, LeRoy Grannis, along with transferred surfers Matt Davies, Jim Bailey, Johnny Gates, Tom Blake, Gard Chapin and others.”
I tried to pin Doc down on this one. How he remembered it was that Johnny Kerwin got the Hermosa Beach Surfing Club going “a little after we formed. Palos Verdes was one of the first ones that organized. After that was Hermosa and then Manhattan and then Santa Monica. From there on it went up the coast and kept going after that.”
I asked Doc if there were any significant differences between the surf clubs that sprang up in this period. “Not especially, as far as I know,” he responded. “They all had their little banquets here and there and times of celebration; same things we did, too, in our Palos Verdes [club].”
Doc was being typically modest in his comparison of the PVSC to other surf clubs. The fact was that the Palos Verdes Surfing Club was more sophisticated and organized than any of the other clubs early on. It’s organization would be impressive even compared to today’s standards. Importantly, Doc’s photography played a large part in establishing the PVSC as the dominant surf club of the 1930s.
“We also had, among the clubs,” Doc added, “the Catalina Island-to-Santa Monica Paddle Race. It was on those [hollow Blake-style] 14-foot paddleboards. Whew! That was a long paddle, but [at least] it was a relay.”
Soon after forming, the Palos Verdes Surfing Club moved its headquarters into one of the rooms Doc rented. A small room that separated the clubhouse from the dental office was Doc’s storeroom, bedroom and darkroom.
“The interior of the club room,” reconstructed Gary from Doc’s personal photographs, “was elaborately decorated with photographs of all members with their boards, trophies won by club members, surfing paintings, a president’s desk with gavel, and a set of shark’s jaws that housed the club creed.”
Image courtesy of the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center
Doc Ball photo
The Palos Verdes Surfing Club creed went like this:
“I as a member of the Palos Verdes Surfing Club, Do solemnly swear:
“To be ever steadfast in my allegiance to the club and to its members,
“To respect and adhere to the aims and ideals set forth in its constitution,
“To cheerfully meet and accept my responsibilities hereby incurred,
“And at all times strive to conduct myself as a club member and a gentleman,
“So help me God.”
For non-members, entrance into the PVSC club room was by invitation only. The club had a sergeant-at-arms and no smoking was allowed in the club room. “We forbid any cigarette smoking in the club,” Doc explained for me. “There were some that did, though. One was [Gene] Hornbeck and another was Jean [Depue]. They never did have any cigarettes when they came to the club, but once in a while, outside, you’d catch ‘em. Finally, Jean – he tried to go out Hermosa Beach in the big surf and he couldn’t make it out; couldn’t punch through like the rest of us. He ran out of breath. That slew the cigarettes on his behalf; never touched ‘em again.”
The PVSC went on to organize paddling races, paddleboard water polo matches, and surfing contests. The club’s influence went far beyond Palos Verdes. “When the surf was flat there in Southern Cal,” Doc said of the surf safaris club members would take and the PVSC influence on the rebirth of surfing in Santa Cruz, “we’d make these trips out around, up the coast and down. One of them went up to Santa Cruz. They’d not seen that activity (surfing) up there [before]! Our guys were the ones who initiated it in Santa Cruz.”
E.J. Oshier was the main PVSC guy to help get surfing going again in Santa Cruz.
“The sport quickly took hold at Long Beach, Corona del Mar, San Onofre, Dana Point, and many Santa Monica Bay areas,” confirmed Duke Kahanamoku, “like Redondo, Hermosa, Manhattan and Palos Verdes Cove. To thousands and thousands it has become a way of life.”
Mid-1930s
In his limited-edition photo collection – later to be reprinted without consulting Doc or arrangement for residual royalties to its original author – Doc documented “How All This Started.” Below the title, the photo shows Doc “snapping one in the good old days when the camera was carried out by holding it between his teeth. Towel was there just in case.” The photo below it, entitled “Straight Off,” featured “Paddleboards, hats and paddles, constituted the cove surfing gear back in 1934.”
“Life was grand around the California beaches even though the Great Depression had drained the savings and expectations of many,” Gary Lynch wrote. “for as little as $15-$25 one could build a hollow board or plank style surf board, sew a pair of swim trunks out of canvas and feel like a king at the beach. When the swell was small, Palos Verdes Cove provided food as well as recreation for the surfers. A number of interesting photographs taken by Doc demonstrate that a paddle board could be used as an abalone diving platform. Green abalones were abundant and the limit was twenty a day. Diving for abalone in combination with fishing made for a pleasant existence. Driftwood still existed on the Southern California beaches and a warm fire often was the centerpiece for the daily gatherings.”
One particular time stands out in Doc’s memory and it was less than pleasant. “I was diving for abalones and every time I get down there – oh, about 8-feet of water – I had an abalone beneath a rock. The thing was anchored there pretty solid. Each time I’d get my iron in there to loosen him up, he’d get re-anchored. I stayed down and stayed down – I plumb ran out of air! Man, I began to black out and so I just dropped everything and came up and started to inhale a little water before I hit to where my surfboard was anchored up there. I kinda flopped over onto the board and here comes this guy around the corner, at the Palos Verdes Cove.
“‘Hey, Doc – What’re you tryin’ ta do? Drown yourself?!’
“Holy mackeral! Then it hit me; what was happening. That was a wild experience.
“I had another one, too, down diving like that when a big shadow come over the top. I look up and there’s this great big – 6-7-foot, white belly – leopard shark came swimming across. Holy cow! I got outta there!”
Up until Tom Blake began drilling holes in redwood boards in 1926, surfboard size and weight had remained the same since early on in the 1800s. Further innovations in surfboard design and components continued during Doc’s time. By the time the PVSC was underway, Blake had already gone to chambered hollow boards which reduced the weight even further.
Blake’s “Hawaiian Hollow Board“ – the board that had begun this period of innovation – became known more commonly as “Blake’s Cigar.” Even though it was nearly laughed off the beach, at first, almost every surfer in California and the budding East Coast began turning in their old spruce pine and redwood planks for the lighter, “Blake-style” boards once he went to a chambered hollow design. “The trend [in surfing] soon changed,” noted a surfside analyst of the late 1930s, “due to its [the hollow board’s] extreme lightness, strength, durability and the greater ease in gaining speed, with much less effort.” Older kids and women could now surf much easier, too.
Delbert “Bud” Higgins, a Huntington Beach lifeguard of those times, described the solid boards during this period. “The “redwoods were really too heavy, about 125 pounds, plus another 10 pounds or so when they got wet.” Yet, Higgins, who was the first man to ride through the pilings of the Huntington Beach Pier while standing on his head, swore by the old boards, saying they were, “so big and stable [that] you could do almost anything.”
By 1932, Blake’s hollowed chambered production boards helped reduce the average weight of a board from between 100 to 125 pounds to a lighter 40 to 70 pounds. Steering and stability were a problem, though, as the boards tended to “slide tail“ or “slide ass,” in large part because the rails were not rounded and caught water rather than released. Except for simple angle turns – accomplished either by dragging one’s foot “Hawaiian style” off a board’s inside rail, or by stepping back and tilt-dancing the board around and out of its old course and into a new one – the hollowboards were still awkward and cumbersome.
Tom Blake was the one who came up with solutions to this problem, too. By the end of the decade, rails incorporated a rounded edge. Even more importantly and although they would take a decade to be completely embraced, keels (skegs, bottom fins) on surfboards eventually were universally accepted. The first surfboard fin appeared in an edition of the Honolulu Advertiser circa 1935-36. The famous photograph of Duke Kahanamoku and Tom Blake shows the first fin on a board.
The fixed fin was invented by Blake in 1935 in an effort to solve the problem of the hollow board’s tendency to “slide ass.” The skeg allowed surfers to track and pivot more freely and gave the board more lateral stability. As a result, terms like “dead ahead,” “slide ass,” “all together now, turn,” and “straight off, Adolph,” gradually began to be heard less and less.
By 1937, Doc’s reputation as a surf photographer was well established. That year, he built his first waterproof camera housing. The watertight “shoots box” housed Doc’s replacement for the Kodak folding Autographic – a stripped down Series D Graflex. Not only could he get closer to his wave sliding buddies, but the images were clearer.
“By that time,” Doc told me, “I made a water box. I got a stripped down Graflex Series D Graflex camera – 3 ¼ x 4 ¼ – and put a water box around it. So, that way, you could open it up and make your shot and then shut it up real quick and it didn’t get all wet.” Doc laughed. “That thing really did work. I got some terrific shots with it.”
Doc’s water box had a large brass handle attached so that when he was caught inside, large sets would not wrest it from his grasp. Although the Graflex was big and bulky compared to today’s camera bodies used for surf photography, it used large format cut sheet film – 3 ¼ X 4 ¼ – which made for sharp enlargements. “I traded the chief of photography in the Los Angeles fire department arson squad for one of my Graflex cameras,” Doc told Gary. “I made him a three-unit gold inlaid bridge.”
In the late 1930s, Doc shot a small amount of 16mm movie film and, later on, some 8mm. “I finally got rigged-up with a Keystone. It was a 16mm. Take that out on the board and I got – man, I just got pack after pack. I’ve got it here in the house, all stored up… it’s got some wild stuff in there.”
Doc didn’t pursue this aspect of his photography, but what he did shoot documents the heyday of prewar Southern California surfing. The films, themselves, contain one very unique segment shot from a bi-winged airplane. “During the aerial photography shoot,” Gary wrote, having seen the footage, himself, “Doc turns the camera on the pilot. With his leather cap slapping in the wind, the pilot’s eyes grow wide from behind his goggles and a large grin appears on his startled face. Other notable footage includes Martha Chapin, sister of pioneer surfer Gard Chapin, and step-aunt to Miki Dora. Martha stands in front of an enlarged map of Los Angeles wearing an eye-catching swim suit. Looking like a Hollywood film actress, she points out the way from Hollywood to Palos Verdes Estates. This was a promotion device for the new Palos Verdes Estates subdivision. It should be mentioned that on this rare footage is recorded an astonishing look at what the surfer sees while sliding a comber. While surfing on a wave with his hollow board, named ‘The Wonder Board‘ because of its paddling and surfing qualities, Doc hand-holds his 16mm camera while filming. On the deck of the board, the Palos Verdes Surf Club logo is clearly visible along with Oscar the surfing gopher snake. With water splashing off the rails and ocean whizzing by, the club pet snake lies on the nose of the board, head and upper third of body erect, apparently enjoying the ride.”
As for surf riding vehicles, Doc had “The Wonder Board” during the 1930s and 1940s. Then, he had a Blake paddleboard that he would later regret trading for a skateboard. Doc called his paddleboard the “X-1.” It was a chopped-down foam paddleboard originally shaped by Tom and Doc. “Dog-gone-it, I did the worst thing I’ve ever done when I traded my paddleboard [the X-1] – he [Blake] gave it to me after he left the country [for Hawai’i]. I traded it to a Keith Newcomer, up here [in Northern California] for a skateboard. It was really a good skateboard!”
As for the original Wonder Board, it’s now in the hands of Doc’s old Palos Verdes Surfing Club member Tulie Clark.
Demand for Doc’s photographs by fellow surfers, surfboard manufacturers, newspapers and magazines continued to grow. “When arriving at distant surf breaks such as San Onofre,” Gary Lynch wrote, “Doc was besieged by the crowds, demanding a look at the most recent prints that he had produced in his small darkroom. Amused by the interest (which at times became a burden), Doc on one occasion handed a group of young Nofre surfers his newest spiral bound photo book titled Beach Stuff and stepped back to record the image with his new Graflex camera. The photograph that resulted still survives and clearly shows the enthusiasm of the group. Piled head over head, shoulder to shoulder, everyone eagerly scanned the pages looking for that special image that would portray them as masters of the rolling comber. ‘Obviously these boys were interested in surf photography,’ smiles Doc. A surfing book with photographic illustrations was inevitable. There was no way to satisfy demand without one.”
The Los Angeles Times published many Doc Ball photographs. “Doc became friends with many of the Times photographers and the newspaper often relied on Doc’s images when huge storm surf or surfing contests made news at the beaches. His creative eye caught the imagination of many. Eventually Doc’s photographs would find their way into Life magazine, Look magazine, Encyclopedia Britannica, news magazines and papers, art galleries, national and international photography competitions, surf board brochures, advertisements, documentaries, foreign publications, and National Geographic magazine.”
Late 1930s
Surfing continued to gain in popularity, as demonstrated by not only surfing photographs making it into newspapers, but articles about surfing, as well. One such recognition of the interest in wave sliding was a September 1936 newspaper article by Andy Hamilton entitled “Surfboards, Ahoy!”
The following year, Doc documented notable big swell conditions:
“This is Big Surf,” wrote and photographically documented Doc of March 13, 1937. Pete Peterson “of Santa Monica“ is identified riding the “wave of the day.” Also featured: LeRoy Grannis and Jean Depue.
“Pete Peterson – he was one of the big ones who could really paddle,” fondly recalled Doc. “He was expert at taking gals up on his shoulders and everything and riding. He was one of the big surfers in those days… He was a big wave rider. He used to be able to cut across a wave almost like they do, now; get in the tunnel and get out; just an extraordinary surf hound. That’s what we thought.”
As for LeRoy “Granny” Grannis, aka “Scrobble Noggin,” he continued to be a close friend of Doc’s to the day he kicked out. Most notably, Granny took up the photographic banner that Doc started and became one of surfing’s great photographers after Doc gave it up. “He’d get shook up every once in a while,” explained Doc about LeRoy’s nickname of Scrobble Noggin, “and he’d get an ornery look on his face [at those times].”
Later on in 1937, Doc documented more big surf, this time at Hermosa: “Twenty Footers Roll In” shows Doc, himself (“having deserted his Graflex”), on a big, sloping overheader on Turkey Day, 1937. Another of Doc’s bro’s, Kay Murray was also out that day. “He was a big guy; an athletic instructor; taught classes on body building and exercising.”
The following month, there was more big surf. In “Storm Surf of December 12th, 1937,“ Doc’s photo, “Taken during a drizzling mist... shows the cove in the throes of a zero break. Johnny Gates vowed ‘he’d get a ride on one of those or else.’ Credit is hereby extended him that he did reach the half way point, only to be wiped out by a monstrous cleanup and forced to swim in through devastating currents, rocks, etc., to retrieve his battered redwood plank. Purple hardly described his color when he finally got out of that freezing blast.”
“Zero Break at Hermosa,” wrote Doc of the term used for maximum surf. “Perhaps twice a year this remarkable surf will hump up a good half mile offshore and keep all ‘malihinis‘ on the beach. Strictly for the ‘kamaaina,’ this stuff comes upon one out there with a long steamy hiss, and fills him at first with the apprehensive thought of, ‘Mebe I better wait for the second one.’”
That winter swell continued to crank out good sized surf. January 7, 1938 was “The day when the newsreel boys came down to shoot the damage done by the big seas – packed up and left when we came out with our surfboards.” Surfers identified: “Tulie” Clark, Hal Pearson, Al Holland, Adie Bayer and LeRoy Grannis.
Tulie “was one of our big guys in the surfin’ club,” Doc said, laughing at the thought of his old friend Tulie Clark. “We got together a lot of times at Hermosa Beach… we’d always stack our boards all together in the back of my car or back ‘a his, or whatever, and take off for where we thought the surf was up!
“He was one of the guys… not poverty-stricken, but very down, financially, in his early days. Everybody used to get after me about him: ‘What are you doing – a doctor! – messing around with those bums; those surf bums?!’ Holy cow; about flipped my lid!
“The guy winds up being a millionaire – got a big house down at Palos Verdes Estates; lives in Palm Springs. He went from a ‘surf bum’ to a millionaire.”
Multiple Formats and Culture
“Through the years,” Gary Lynch wrote, “Doc tried many methods of surf photography. Holding the camera by hand, by teeth, strapped to body parts and surfboard, and shooting off piers and rocks, from airplanes and towers, automobiles and trees, from boats and rubber rafts and cliffs and caves, Doc tried to expand both perspective and perception in the minds of his viewers. The main objective was to keep the camera dry while making exposures close enough to provide a large clear image on the negative. Salt water, dust, sand, and bright sun light became intruders, always lurking close by and waiting for a chance to foul the shot.”
“Doc also created surf posters using his photographs,” Gary wrote. “These quality posters used the images of surfers and waves to beckon all who viewed them. The majority of these posters announced that the Palos Verdes Surfing Club was holding a Hula Luau. Hawaiian music, food and drink, female companionship, and of course, the newest surfing photographic images to leave the darkroom were the rewards if one attended the event. These posters, photographically printed, one by one, by Doc, and ranging in size from wallet size (used to gain entrance to the event) to 8” X 10” posters, have become the rarest California surf posters for collectors to obtain.”
A real rarity was a Doc Ball surf poster displayed in a place of business. Such was the case with a Los Angeles night club called the Zamboanga. “That was a place where they had one of my pictures in there,” Doc told me. “They got excited about it. I gave them a print and they had it blown up to a 5’ X 6’ or something like that and put it up on their wall.”
The picture was of Jim Bailey and his surfing cockerspaniel Rusty. “A real friendly guy,” Doc remembered of Jim Bailey. “He was one of our originals from Hermosa Beach.
“Movie gal gave him that dog,” Doc continued. “Then, I got that picture of them out there at Palos Verdes. They published that over in England and France and, son of a gun, the English guys were all over me about torturing that little dog. That dog, [actually, would] about scratch your ears off trying to get on your board to go out and ride!”
Gary Lynch continued his writing about Doc’s surf posters and even post cards:
“Fine glosssy photograhically printed post cards that the Palos Verdes Drug Store published also boasted Doc Ball surfing images. These post cards were sold inside the drug store to help promote the new subdivision being built in the area. Action shots of surfers such as Hoppy Swarts or Tom Blake caught the eye of the customers as they passed by the post card rack, demonstrating the pleasures of beach life.”
Doc had high praise for Hoppy Swarts. “He was one of our big guys in the place [PVSC]. He’s the one who had that characteristic finger tips thing riding a board. He’d have ‘em all stretched out. You could tell who it was just by lookin’ at his hands while he was ridin’.” Doc laughed. “Yeah, he helped us organize the club… also judging on contests and all that kind of thing. He was a graduate from Occidental College. That’s where he was going when he got stuck on surfin’.”
I asked Doc what was the most memorable moment he recalled of Hoppy. “When I got [shot] him comin’ right, next to the pier, there.” Doc laughed. “Oh, he was real active… I always used to try and get him to grab one of those big waves out there cuz he could handle it pretty good.
“Those days, we had to steer with our feet; stick your foot in the water, either right or left, whichever way you wanted to turn. He was an expert at that.”
Doc Ball set himself apart from many surf photographers by shooting images of surf culture, along with actual wave riding. A perfect example is a shot Doc made of the ‘Nofre crew still sleeping. The caption read: “Six A.M. of a ‘flat’ day and everybody still in the bag. Had the surf been humping they probably would have stayed up all night.” “When it was good down there,” Doc told me, “you couldn’t deny. You could go in and stay all night on the beach. Now, you gotta pay a fee and can’t [even] sleep on the beach. If it was good on the weekend, why, that was it!”
He shot night time photos, too, like the night of April 9, 1939, around a bonfire: “Super surf… kept the boys in the water til dark. Tired but surf satiated they are seen warming up here prior to carrying their waterlogged planks up the trail.” Another shot showed a “Pre-war device for warming up in a hurry what gets coldest while shooting these pictures,” showed a surfer – none other than Doc, himself -- squatting over a small burning tire on the beach.
I asked Doc about music. “What were you guys into?”
“If anything,” he replied, “they had a guitar or ukelele [for surfaris at the beach]. In our surfing club, whenever we’d have one of our [more formal] get-togethers, we’d hire a band from Hollywood. They’d come over and do the dance music.”
“What kind of roles did women have in surfing, in those days?”
“Mostly, if they had a boyfriend in it [surfing], they’d come down and eventually they’d say, ‘Hey, let’s get out in the water together.’ So, they’d have a tandem ride and finally started to get in the real deal.” Tandem riding was a common sight, particularly at San O. In “Tandem Rides Are Popular With the Boys,” Doc Ball showed a picture of “Benny Merrill and wahini slicing along neat as anything. Most of the female sex, however,” Doc noted in 1946, “prefer to sit on the beach.”
Some of the notable exceptions to the “sit on the beach” mode for women were Mary Ann Hawkins and Ethal Harrison, at Corona del Mar. Mary Ann Hawkins was an outstanding woman surfer of the 1930s. Ethal Harrison later won the Makaha Championship in 1955. Of Mary Ann Hawkins, Doc attested: “She was one of the first surfers down there at Palos Verdes Cove. She was a friend of E.J. Oshier, at the time, and he got her into the water there. She got excited. Then she was about to get a job with the movies, but she needed a portrait or photograph, so I took a picture of her down on the rocks, there, in her bathing suit at Palos Verdes and she got the job.”
Patty Godsave and Marion Cook were two other early California woman surfers. Patty Godsave, Doc recalled: “She used to ride tandem with one of the guys, either Pete Peterson or E.J. Oshier.” Marion Cook: “I don’t remember too much about her. We called her Cookie.”
WW II and After
On April 19, 1941, less than a year before the United States entered the war, Doc married Evelyn Young, an attractive registered nurse. Their first child Norman was born in 1942 and their second child John Jr. followed in 1943.
“When the United States declared war in December 1941,” wrote Gary Lynch, “it broke the back of the California surfers’ life-style. The California surf clubs disbanded and almost every able bodied man enlisted in the armed services. Many of the fascinating personalities of the 1930s would never be seen again. The war took some of the best men surfing had to offer, leaving a trail of waste and broken dreams. If not for the persistent efforts of Doc with his camera we may never have known what the life and times of the first wave of California surfers was like.”
World War II certainly “Shut it out for a while,” Doc emphasized of the effects of war on wave riding. Doc, himself, joined the Coast Guard and became ship’s dentist on the U.S.S. General Hugh Scott, AP136. “His photographic skills soon became known,” Gary wrote, “and he was given a new Speed Graphic camera. As the official ship’s photographer he photographed much of the South Pacific.”
“During September 1944,” Doc recalled a memorable moment during the war, “I got a big surprise. While I was out on the South Pacific someone said the new issue of National Geographic had my surfing photographs in it. Sure enough, there they were.”
Doc credit’s Owen Churchill for helping provide some enjoyment during those war years, through his invention of the Churchill swim fins. “He was the one that did it,” Doc told me when I asked him if it was Frank Roedecker or Churchill who invented the swim fin. “He [Churchill] came over here during World War II and I got acquainted with the guy. I got a couple of original fins from him.” He invented the swim fin “just before World War II,” Doc added, saying, “I think he was more of a diver than an surfer. He was of French origin, I believe… We’d take ‘em [swim fins] aboard ship. When I’d get out into that hot water of the South Pacific, why, I’d go diving and swimming and riding a wave or two; body surfin’. They were somethin’ else!”
After the war, “It just kinda exploded, again,” Doc said about Southern California surfing. “Guys’d get back and they’d been hungry for surf. It’d come natural that you’d want to get back… The ones who survived – we had an outlet and surf was it.”
“Thank goodness for that,” I said.
“You better believe it,” Doc concluded.
Surfer servicemen “started coming back in late ‘45 and early ‘46,” also recalled Duke Kahanamoku. With their return, “surfing once again took an upturn,” not just in Southern California. “But it was slow, for the military returnees were occupied with finding jobs or returning to their interrupted education chores.”
“… when the war ended – Boom – we were back in the environment,” confirmed 1940s surfer Dave Rochlen. “It was devotion, like seeing a girl again… like, ‘I’m never gonna leave!’ We gave ourselves over to it entirely. I think it was because we spent four or five years in the war and we had survived. And it had all been bad. Now there was no question about what had us by the throat. It was the ocean. Everything else was secondary.”
Doc and his brood was just one of many families to regroup and attempt to restart life where it had ended in 1941. Doc opened a dental office in Hermosa Beach and, rejoining his wife Evelyn, concentrated on raising their two sons, “Norman (man of the sea) and John (God has been gracious).”
It didn’t take Doc long to get back to his surf photography, either. “Demand was still so great for Doc’s surfing photographs,” Gary Lynch wrote, “that he published the book, California Surfriders 1946. The idea behind this was to satisfy the California surfers, giving many a portrait in the book as well as showing the major surfing locations.” California Surfriders 1946 was first published in a limited edition of 510. “Original cost for the first edition,” Gary noted, “was $7.25 a book. Doc kept a complete and detailed list of who bought his book. This list still survives and provides an astonishing array of Who’s Who in the world of California surfing. Names only hard core surf historians would recognize such as Bob French and Jamison Handy to other more familiar names like Preston Peterson and Peanuts Larsen fill the pages.”
“Oh, Peanuts!” Doc livened up even more than he normally did at the mention of Peanuts Larsen. “He was one of the main ones down at San Onofre [before the war]. He lived in Laguna Beach, at that time, so he went to surf down at San Onofre and any time it looked good at Laguna. That son-of-a-gun – I loaned him some stuff to publish and he never gave it back! Well, I forgave him for that. Old Peanuts – he was quite a guy.”
Eventually, the fifth and final edition of California Surfriders 1946 published by Doc went out of circulation. Ventura’s Jim Feuling copied the original and has published Early California Surfriders in 1995. The images used for this latest edition were shot from the pages of Doc’s first edition and then enhanced by computer.
“He did that without my permission,” Doc admitted to me with a laugh. “That’s a classic. It’s patented. So, I told him as much as he’d printed it, we needed to get the message out for surfers, anyway, and keep it going [knowledge of the California surf heritage]. And, so I said, ‘I won’t sue ya or anything.’ So, he sends me a royalty, now.” That kind of reaction, on Doc’s part, was typical of the man. As surf historian Gary Lynch put it, Doc was the quintessential “troubadour of good will.”
“By the mid 1940s,” Gary wrote, “Doc Ball’s photographs had been published world wide. National Geographic (September 1944), Encyclopedia Britannica (1952), photography magazines, news magazines, art galleries, and newspapers were among the places a Doc Ball photograph could be found.”
An image Doc labeled as “The Mighty Ski Jump Roars in – December 22, 1940“ shows “Al Holland, Oshier, Grannis and Bayer riding the 30-foot grinders that arrive here on an average of twice a year and rattle windows over a mile inland with their heavy concussion.” Doc, writing in 1946 in the third person, added, “This picture published in an Australian magazine, made its appearance in far away Noumea, New Caledonia. Was discovered there by a very surprised Doc Ball,” during a WWII trip to Noumea.
Northern California
“In 1950,” Gary Lynch wrote, “Doc was almost killed when he drove his new Ford Woody into a eucalyptus tree. It was during this period that Doc first received and followed Christ.” “Which caused me to start bible reading, cover to cover – my first time ever – because I had a vision, you might say, of me standing before the Judgement Seat of our Maker and He asking me, ‘Doc, did you read my book while you were down there?’ Having no sort of excuse, I just flipped and reading cover to cover began. Took one full year to midnight the last day, but I finished the job.”
“In 1953, the pressure from the Southern California population explosion resulted in the Ball family’s exodus to Garberville, Northern California, where he opened up a new dental office.” “Plus, the words of the Book [Bible], Genesis 12:1. Also, the surfing at Shelter Cove [close by] attracted me.” Although he was now in Northern California and inland, “This move,” Gary wrote, “provided him with a more peaceful environment in which to live and work.”
When he made the move, Doc had a chance to surf with his long-time surfing pal Johnny Kerwin at Shelter Cove, 35 miles south of San Francisco and 18 miles from Garberville, a spot they had first surfed during the war. “We were spoken of as being the very first ever seen doing that in the Cove,” Doc said. “They had a Shelter Cove Surf Club, there,” Doc recalled. “They had a room – a kind of shack – right on the beach where you could go in and get your clothes changed; get your swimsuit on and get out in the water.” The 1953 surf session with Johnny Kerwin remains a special memory to Doc. When asked about his surfing life, Doc always mentioned it. “Kerwin came to visit us in our new location,” Doc explained to me, “and he brought two boards along with him.”
Photographic tragedy struck in 1964 when Doc Ball’s photo collection, film archives, and historical material – most of the film stuffs belonging to the Father of Surf Photography – was swept away in the devastating flood of that year. Yet, because Doc gave copies of most of his images away – approximately 900 of them – it would be entirely possible to, with the cooperation of the Ball Family, reconstruct Doc’s archives by copying Doc Ball photos from the collections of others.
Doc’s friendships through these changes never altered. Doc and his friends would still make time to hang together. After “we moved north – Tom Blake lived on the East Coast, up there in Minnesota I think it was – he used to come out West,” Doc told me, “and just come out and have some fun with the surfers and get re-acquainted again. Every time he’d come up, why, he’d stop here at our place. We’d keep him overnight a couple of days or so.”
After Blake wrote Hawaiian Surfriders 1935 (aka Hawaiian Surfboard), “he gave me the last copy he had on that and then every time he’d come by, he’d sign it, again, with the date he’d visited with us; kind of a treasure, there.”
I asked him when Blake, who died in 1993, visited him for the last time.
“That’s a hard one,” he admitted. “It was after 1971, anyway. We moved to Eureka, here in ‘71 and we kept him over in the place here.”
I asked if Blake surfed at that time.
“I don’t think so. He might have gone in a little down at Shelter Cove. The water’s warmer down there, but he was getting pretty up in the age, then. Wow, what a guy!”
In 1971, Doc retired from dentistry and moved his family back closer to the beach, to Eureka, remaining in Northern California. “With more time to spend on hobbies,” Gary wrote, “Doc soon became infatuated with bird carving. A combination of skillful maneuvering of his hands and fingers in the dental trade, and a life long love of birds, has produced one of the West Coast’s finest bird carvers.”
I asked Doc when it was that he stopped photographing.
“I guess when I lost my camera,” Doc replied. “I went out, one day, up here, at Eureka. I was going to the North Jetty cuz the surf was huge out there that day. I took my camera – Grannis gave me a Nikon camera with a – it had a great big telephoto lens. I rushed out to my truck, there, set the thing down on my rear bumper and rushed back to the house – I’d forgotten something – went and got that, got back in the truck and took off. I got to the North Jetty and reached for the camera box and nothing was there. That thing just spilled off somewhere. I’ve never heard anything about it…”
“I got one here; one of the last ones I ever got with that telephoto. Patrick Edgar out at the North Jetty. There was this great big – must’ve been a 22 or 23-foot big ole overhang comin’ down; soup on both sides. It was obvious he was gonna get the axe. I call it ‘Neptune’s Breakfast‘.”
Doc was still surfing shortly up to the time of his passing. His real exercise in his last years was skateboarding, however. “That’s how I stay in shape,” Doc declared, proudly. “You gotta keep your reflexes sharpened up. That’s one of the best ways to find out how old you’re getting.”
For 18 years, Doc did the local surf report. More importantly, he wanted to share the Christian experience with others, serving with Gideons International. Because of that, Doc regularly visited “churches, community organizations, care homes and schools, helping to provide both young and old with a positive direction and a meaningful future.”
Doc Ball remained a dedicated beachcomber. Every morning at daybreak he could be found at water’s edge, checking the tides and swells. Beachcombing also provided him with a supply of driftwood perches and body parts for his hobby of bird carving. “Latest rage,” Doc wrote me in reviewing the draft of an article Gary Lynch and I wrote about his life, “is knife cleaning up of common driftwood. It’s amazing what images will appear when it’s cleaned and developed – knifed down to the original stuff. It is full of very fascinating images. It also makes the clock go like lightening.”
There was always an exciting ending with each visit to the Ball residence,” Gary Lynch recalled. “As you depart, you get into your car and start to pull away from his home. A glance back at the front porch reveals a smiling Doc giving you the ‘thumbs up’ and yelling, ‘Hang in there!’ Returning the gesture, you feel privileged he has given you his blessing to enjoy surfing, and most of all, to keep the tradition alive.”
On December 5th, 2001 at 1:02 am, at age 94, Doc “caught and rode his last wave into the waiting arms of his beloved Savior, Jesus Christ,” read his obituary in the Eureka Times Standard, “thus ending a legendary and inspirational life here among us and beginning a new, wonderful one in Heaven.”
Doc Ball gave his own kind of obituary when he quoted in ending his classic California Surfriders 1946 – aka Early California Surfriders:
“When Old King Neptune’s raising Hell
And the breakers roll sky high,
Let’s drink to those who can ride that stuff
And to the rest who are willing to try.”
