Similar to all modern eras, the early Twentieth Century had many noted and influential surfers. Three stand out: George Freeth (b. 1883), Duke Paoa Kahanamoku (b. 1890) and Tom Blake (b. 1902). After Blake, there’s Doc Ball (b. 1907) and Gene “Tarzan” Smith (b. 1911).
Thanks to friends like Gary Lynch and members of the Smith family, I was able to get what I think is as close to a full picture of who legendary paddler Gene "Tarzan" Smith was, as we’ll ever get. This includes the accuracy of the legends that surround him and a full inventory of his accomplishments. Much of this I had published in two articles for The Surfer's Journal:
“Last Chapter: 'Tarzan' Smith"”, The Surfer's Journal, Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 1998.
“TARZAN DEDUX: Chapter Fill-Ins From The Life of Gene Smith,” The Surfer's Journal, Volume 13, Number 2, Spring/Summer 2004. Photographs from the Smith Family photo album.
I combined the research from both printed articles into one chapter for the LEGENDARY SURFERS collection. This chapter contains all the information from the two articles, plus material that was left out due to space considerations with the magazine versions. Total length is approximately 14,200 words, comprising 38 pages, including footnotes and vintage photos from the Smith family collection (6.48 MB). The photos are only available in the pdf version which, unfortunately was lost during website transitions. I have a backup copy around here somewhere and will include a link to it when I run across it again.
Photographer unknown
Photo courtesy of The Surfer's Journal
Eugene Cloyde Smith was born on May 14, 1911. While still in grade school, his mother passed away. Life for the Gene and his sister Phyllis went from bad to worse. Not only was their father abusive, but their step mother didn’t want anything to do with them. It may have been worse than that. As Phyllis’s stepson wrote of Gene, “a big part of his being is still to be recounted, and that is the incredibly tough and alienating upbringing that he endured at the hands of his cruel father and rejecting stepmother.” What’s more, the family was often on the move and, consequently, the Smith kids were never able to get settled and make friends.
Along with transience and a lack of roots, young Gene early learned about violence – at the hands of his father and in protecting his sister. Phyllis was often picked on because of her shyness and Gene would get into fights trying to protecting her. A cycle of violence would seemingly never stop for the rest of Gene’s life.
In high school, Gene was caught siphoning gas. The Depression was well underway, so this act was a lot bigger than it would seem to us, now. Even so, his father then sending him to reform school was extreme. “Gene, you’re never going to amount to anything,” his father would often say. After Gene got out of reform school, he returned home for only a short time before running away. Leaving his senior year of high school behind, he went to Oregon where he worked in various lumber camps. He was not heard from for a couple of years during his later adolescence and very early manhood.
Despite the odds, the man who would be called “Tarzan” was a survivor. Not only that, he came back stronger. No doubt due to the physical exercise of logging, Gene returned to Southern California at the beginning of the 1930s a superb physical specimen at 6-feet, 2-inches tall. “Lean, muscular and powerful,” was how Dorian Paskowitz later described him. He had the kind of build you would see on a statue of an ancient Greek mythological warrior. Hanging out at Southern California beaches, he soon got into surfing and paddling and quickly became a recognized name in the surf world of the time.
In 1932, in one demonstration of the strength and endurance of the 21 year-old, Gene paddled a dory 33 miles from Catalina Island to Balboa single handedly for 9 hours. By 1934, Gene had already gained his nickname of “Tarzan” and was included in the list of rising surf stars by Tom Blake in the first book ever written about surfing, Hawaiian Surfboard, published in 1935. “Among the new crop of boys from California,” Blake wrote, “the best surfriders are: [Whitey] Harrison, [Gene] Tarzan Smith, [Bob] Sides, [Chauncy] Granstrom and [Wally] Burton.” Gene and Tom got to know each other in those days and became lifelong friends.
In the early 1930s, Gene’s beaches of operations were Balboa and Corona del Mar at a time when Corona del Mar was still the main surfing area of the region. Around 1934, he got a job as a lifeguard at Corona Del Mar. Back then, in order to save money, you could sleep on the beach – and that’s what he did, only with a slight modification. Taking an existing depression in the cliffs, he hollowed out more of an area he could use to get out of the elements and a place to sleep at night. This “cave” was remembered by many a surfer of the period and may have been inhabited by Gene and others more than once during the 1930s and possibly in the 1940s.
In going over pictures of that era during an interview in 1988, with noted 1930s surfer Chauncy Granstrom and surf historian Gary Lynch, Tommy Zahn – one of the surfing and paddling greats of the 1940s and early 1950s – identified Tarzan: “That’s Gene Smith. He’s a big guy; about 6-foot, 4-inches. He was big. He won a lot of races… He’d win one race, then paddle back out to the starting line of another race and win that one. The guy was incredible; awesome.”
At one point, in the 1930s, Zahn remembered top Southern California surfer Preston “Pete” Peterson telling him, “Gene Smith was living in a cave down there at Corona del Mar, with his dog. He became a Newport lifeguard later.
“… Pete’s favorite story about Gene was – he was living in this cave, and he had one suit of clothes and one pair of shoes. And, on Saturday night, his big kick was to go down to the Rendezvous Ballroom – the Balboa Ballroom. And, to get across the channel at Corona del Mar, he’d get on his paddleboard, with his suit on, tie his shoes around his neck, roll up his pant legs and sleeves and just paddle across the channel and go down to the ballroom.
“Smith was a really aggressive guy and he was never happy unless he got into a big fight down there. He’d usually take on 2 or 3 guys. Like Blake says, he’s broken the jaws of 6 guys he knows in the Islands. And, so, he’d be this totally thrashed-out, worked guy –”
“Only when he was, probably, likkered up,” Chauncy Granstrom corrected.
“Yeah,” agreed Zahn. “Loved to drink. And then he [Pete Peterson] said he’d come back down to the channel and then he’d just jump on the board and lie down and paddle across, suit and all. Monday morning, the suit would go back to the cleaner’s and then hang in the cave until the next Saturday night!”
Rendezvous Ballroom
It was no ordinary bar or dance hall that drew Tarzan in. Well before guitarist and surfer Dick Dale and his Fender guitar dominated “Surf Music” in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and made the Rendezvous Ballroom famous for the generation of its time, Balboa beach’s Rendezvous Ballroom was the scene of a previous generation’s dancing and partying that was even more intense. From the late 1920s on up until World War II, The Rendezvous became a gathering place of the young and a showcase for the swing music of the day.
The block-long Rendezvous Ballroom – better known as the “Bal” to most of its patrons – opened on March 24, 1928 on the Balboa peninsula beach, between Washington and Palm Avenues, along what is now Ocean Front Boulevard. Bordered by a huge paved parking lot on the ocean front beach, The Rendezvous – also called the Balboa Ballroom – was a huge, two-story building with a mezzanine and balcony. It had over 160 feet of beach frontage and was nearly 100 feet deep. The dance floor was big enough to accommodate about 1,500 couples and sported a 64 foot soda fountain on the ground floor, dozens of couches and a smaller soda fountain above on the mezzanine and balcony surrounding the dance floor, along with 50 more couches.
When the $200,000 ballroom went up in flames on January 27, 1935, another even bigger and better Rendezvous was built on the site in less than 3 months. Because of the Depression, the new ballroom was built at a fraction of the cost of the first.
The apex of the year for The Rendezvous was what came to be called “Bal Week.” From the early 1930s on to World War II, thousands of teenagers flocked to Balboa from all over Southern California. Easter vacation marked a week of beach parties by day and dancing until 1:00 a.m. to the Big Bands at night. This was followed by partying until dawn at hundreds of overcrowded rental apartments and rooms throughout the Balboa and Newport Beach area.
By the late 1930s, the Rendezvous Ballroom had become a major West Coast stop for touring Big Bands and swing musicians like Harry James, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Guy Lombardo, Gene Krupa, Woody Herman, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnete, Les Brown and more – accompanied by the famous vocalists of the era. The performances were such a big deal that they were regularly broadcast by radio nation wide. Not surprisingly, by 1938, the ballroom was dubbed the “Queen of Swing” by the nationally popular Look magazine.
This night time playground of music and dance drew Gene in as soon as he was situated at Corona del Mar, just on the other side of the channel. Access was problematic, though, as there were no causeways or bridges between the beaches, separated by the channel. Noted photo journalist Craig Lockwood got into detail about how Gene got around the obstacle of the Balboa Channel:
“Here’s the story I got from [legendary paddler Danny] Shull... Smith wrapped his shoes and garment bag up in a large piece of oilskin – the waterproof material they used before sheet plastic was widely available. He tied the roll over his shoulder with line – like a GI blanket roll – and then paddled across, changed under the Pavilion’s pier where there was a little boathouse, and then wandered across the street to the Rendezvous Ballroom.
“He went ‘cruising for a bruising’ as the vernacular of the time put it. And since it’s tough to keep your clothes clean while dancing, drinking or in a street fight, they were soon soiled from sweat and the occasional lipstick, or more commonly, bloodstain.
“Afterwards it was back under the Pavilion, change, roll them back up and paddle back across to the Corona side.”
Lockwood maintains that he visited the cave at Corona del Mar after the war and Gene Smith was there, so it’s probable that Tarzan called the cave at Corona “home” more than once. “My recollection dates from right after WWII when I was a kid of about 8 or 9,” Lockwood wrote. “Unless I’ve inserted my mentor’s story into my memory banks, Smith was living in the Corona Caves at that time… [It] may have been a kind of stop-gap temporary residence due to the incredible housing shortage after the war when all our GI’s came home and everybody wanted to live in California.
“At any rate there were two other guys living either in, or nearby, whom my mentor, Danny Shull a Laguna Lifeguard, gymnast/bodybuilder/waterman called the ‘Nature Boys’ after a song that was popular at the time.
“The Nature Boys were proto-hippies who wore long hair and beards, lived off nature’s bounty and worked out with big boulders. The boulders were all painted white, and labeled with their weights. Shull, who was tight with these guys, had taken them up to South Coast Provisions, according to Shull, who had weighed the rocks for them on the big meat scales. He also used to bring them bones that they made soup of, and cracked for the marrow.
“They had placed the rocks out in front of the caves and Smith worked out regularly with them. And believe me, these guys were huge – even by today’s standards.”
“I visited the caves several times with Shull, who knew Smith well, and brought the nature boys and Smith abs when he had extra from a dive, or occasional odds and ends for their survival. My recollection is that on my first visit Smith wasn’t there but his suit, in a long zippered garment bag was hanging on a nail driven into the sandstone. That’s how I got the story. Remember, in those days dry cleaners sent garments out in long paper bags – not plastic.”
Mary Ann Hawkins, 1934
Mary Ann Hawkins was one of the few women surfers of the time and one who got along with Gene Smith quite well. “She was one of the first surfers down there at Palos Verdes Cove,” Doc Ball – Tom Blake’s successor in surf photography – attested. “She was a friend of E. J. Oshier at the time [Doc knew her at the Cove], and he got her into the water there. She got excited.”
“I was born in Pasadena, California, on March 7, 1919. I lived there until I was fifteen, and then because of my love for ocean swimming – ocean races more than pool races – my mother bought a little house down in Costa Mesa, near Newport Beach and Corona Del Mar, so that I could build up my endurance for the ocean swims that I loved. That was in 1934. Somehow, we found Corona Del Mar right off the bat. Although I’ve been in a few long distance ocean swims I’d never seen anyone surfing until I went down to Corona Del Mar one sunny day.”
“Some of the boys that were surfing that day,” continued Mary Ann Hawkins, “were Gene ‘Tarzan’ Smith and Lorrin Harrison. They both became very good friends of mine. There was also Nat and Dave Theile, Gardner Lippincott, Nellie Bly Brignell, Barney Wilkes, Frenchy Jahan, Johnny McMahn, Doakes, and a man named Bill Hollingsworth. And later down there in Corona Del Mar, Whitey Lorrin Harrison brought Joe Kukea over from Hawaii, and he was the first Hawaiian I ever got to know very well.”
“My mother’s idea to move from Pasadena… to Costa Mesa, so I’d be near the ocean to swim, actually backfired. Because right away, I started learning to body surf and then started going tandem; as I met the surfing boys. And I fell so much in love with surfing and body surfing that I really never did my best in swimming from that time on.
“The lifeguard down there at Corona Del Mar was Gene ‘Tarzan’ Smith. In my training in the ocean there and body surfing, of course he got to know me and started taking me tandem.
“The most thrilling and exhilarating thing that ever happened to me was riding tandem with Gene Smith. And to this day, I’m sorry it was so early in the morning that there was no-one there really to record it, or say what a great wave, or anything like that. There were a few people on the beach, but nobody we knew. And, as I told you before, Gene was a lifeguard there. My mother had taken me down there early, and dropped me off, so I could surf and be on the beach all day.
“We were far out past the jetty, riding tandem, when this wave came along, and we rode tandem across the end of the jetty. And, as far as I know, we’re the only two that ever did ride tandem across the end of the jetty.
“There weren’t too many surfers that ever had a chance to accomplish that, or probably could accomplish it. It was quite a feat, in fact, in those days that somebody slid across the jetty. In front of the jetty. I guess you’d say behind the jetty. But I’ll never forget when we caught that wave, I know that wave had to be 30 feet high, because I’ve been on 30 foot high platforms, diving platforms, and knew what 30 feet looked like.
“I would not have fallen off that board for the world. I was sticking out there in front of Gene, and looking straight down. It was just like looking straight down off a diving platform. And [as] we rode, he made me get up. Then we rode across that jetty and he pulled out. We had no problem. And that was that. But you only have my word for it, unless Gene’s around somewhere to tell you.”
“I was a strong swimmer,” continued Mary Ann Hawkins, “because the year before, when I was fourteen, I had won the junior nationals in the 880 yard freestyle. I’d say being the swimmer that I was, actually saved my life in [at least] one frightening episode there at Corona Del Mar… [when I helped] Gene Smith rescue someone. There was the huge surf again, and a young man – older than I was, because I was 15 or 16 – was calling for help, out past the jetty facing out towards the ocean. He was on the left of the jetty, and these big sets were coming in. But they weren’t breaking out that far, they were just humping up. I guess they still call it that. I don’t know. And he was screaming for help.
“I went out, and I was giving him the tired swimmers carry – the Red Cross method – and kept talking to him... He was perfectly calm. I stayed out there a long time with him, and he just really seemed fine. And eventually Gene Smith got there. I don’t know where he’d been earlier. And he took over.
“I went on in. And it was breaking too hard, I guess, on the left hand side where we usually body surfed; the left side of the jetty. I’m talking about facing out now, toward the ocean. So, he took him around the end of the jetty to the surfing side, where there was a chain link ladder hanging over the side, and tried to get him up there. Well, I didn’t see what happened, because the jetty was in no condition for anyone to be standing on it that day; with all this white water coming over it. But when Gene brought this man in onto the beach, they were both bloody.
“What I heard from surfers is that the man got absolutely panic-stricken. And Gene was more-or-less fighting for his life with this man, and either did knock him unconscious, or had to do something to quiet him, and somehow get him up on the jetty, and into safety. In other words, he saved his life, but he certainly got hurt in doing it, Gene did.”
To The Islands
Not long after becoming a fixture at Corona del Mar, Tarzan took the Blake mold and joined guys like Whitey and Pete to frequently visit the Hawaiian Islands, living there for a while each time. Traveling back to the Islands on what certainly must not have been his first, Gene wrote Mary Ann Hawkins, in April 1937, while aboard the Canadian Australasian Line Ltd. R.M.M.S. Aorangi. The following letter is a small vignette from the personal life of a man who was a mystery even to his friends:
“Dear Mary Ann – Just have time for a few lines before ‘tea’ as the English [Canadians] call dinner on this boat. By the time you get this excuse for a letter I shall perhaps be back in Hawaii.
“So far I have had a wonderful trip. Have seen many wonderful things – yes sir. I sure have!
“My clothes are getting a wee bit ragged as I only had a certain amount along. I have native clothes, of course, but white people are so odd and apt to criticize if I run around in a few strips of woven bark or a – I shall call it wrap around of tapa cloth. I can’t write or spell correctly any more so please excuse me.
“I shall be glad to get to Honolulu soon as the big ‘blue birds‘ in ‘Castles’ and ‘Popular’ should start breaking about now. I hope the ‘bugs’ [termites] haven’t eaten my board or the fires of a native luau haven’t cleaned them up. There is a swimming tank on the boat. It isn’t very large but fills the bill. One of the men drank kava on a native island… and he couldn’t walk, talk or move an eye lash. The drink paralyzes all the muscles. The skin of natives turn green and scale off like a lizard – ho hum – guess I’ll stick to tea! Are you making progress with your swimming? I hope so. Drop me a line… Aloha mu loa, Gene”
Between 1932 and his trip aboard the Aorangi in April 1937, Tarzan visited the Hawaiian Islands a number of times. It is likely that he took his inspiration from Tom Blake and then emulated the approach of Whitey Harrison and Pete Peterson, who went a step further by making their treks as steamship stowaways. There is a story that Tarzan traveled that way at least once – perhaps on the first time out. He was befriended by members of the crew who took a liking to him and kept him hid in the ship’s lifeboats.
After his trip out aboard the Aorangi in April 1937, Tarzan set-up at Waikiki on a more permanent basis. Amazingly for a haole (non-Hawaiian) fresh off the boat, he scored a job as lifeguard and all around beach boy at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. One newspaperman claimed Tarzan even worked with the Waikiki Beach Patrol in the 1930s. Now in the late 1930s, he became famous for one particular workout where he would paddle his hollow board out from Waikiki, into the Steamer Lane of Mamala Bay, and disappear from sight.
“Gene Smith was with us early on,” remembered Hot Curl surfer Wally Froiseth, whose good friend Oscar Teller was tight with Tarzan. “Gene Smith, in order to make money [worked down at the Royal Hawaiian]. He joined that group there – Sally Hale and all those guys. They took tourists out in canoes; more the tourist deal…”
About this time, Gene’s sister Phyllis came out from the U.S. Mainland and also got a job at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. While she performed duties as hostess and event planner, Gene fell back into the familiar role of sister protector. On more than one occasion he literally fought would-be suitors who made undue advances. Of course, he fought at other times, too, and became known for not only his brawn, but his brawl. The pattern had been established at an early age and he just continued with it.
As his reputation as a fighter grew, there would be instances when he was even goaded into fighting just for the spectacle of it. One of the more notable fights occurred when one group put up a local wrestler against Tarzan. The fight took place in the vacant lot next to the Ala Moana Hotel, with heavy betting going on between two sides choosing their favorites. By the end of the fight, Gene had given the wrestler a severe beating.
North Shore Discovered, 1938
In a significant surfari around 1937-38, Gene and a visiting Whitey Harrison “went out to Hale’iwa one day,” on the North Shore, recalled Wally Froiseth. “It was a big day and they both almost drowned.” But, their reports of the sizeable surf got Wally’s friends going and that’s when knowledge of and interest in big surf on O’ahu’s North Shore really began in the modern era.
Tarzan was living on and off in Waikiki when the Hot Curl boards were developed by John Kelly, Fran Heath and Wally Froiseth in the late 1930s. These boards were the predecessors to today’s big wave boards and first used in the occasional big surf of the South Shore. It did not take the Hot Curl riders long before they were branching out to other parts of O’ahu in search of bigger waves and more consistently big spots. First the East Side, followed by Makaha and after a while, Hot Curl surfer Fran Heath told me, “we were then in a position to meet the challenge of the stronger, steeper, and most unforgiving North Shore waves.”
Wally Froiseth remembers the North Shore first being ridden by non-locals in the modern era, in “... maybe ‘38; basically the same time [as the first Hot Curl boards]. I was still in high school.
“This is the way it happened with us: A guy named Whitey Harrison – he and Gene Smith went out to Hale’iwa one day. This was, like, around ‘37 or ‘38, whatever it was. They went out to Hale’iwa. It was a big day. And they both almost drowned.
“So, Gene Smith was telling us about this. ‘Oh, Christ! You ought to see these waves!’
“Me and my gang, we hear that – ‘Hey, let’s go!’ So, the next weekend we go out there, you know, but Hale’iwa wasn’t that good. But Sunset Beach was good, so we just went Sunset.
“At that time, there wasn’t a name or anything. We just saw a good surf and went out. It was just when we started to have our Hot Curl boards.”
The first non-locals to hit the North Shore were “Whitey Harrison, Gene Smith… My brother and I, Dougie Forbes... Fran, of course, Kelly – there were really only a couple of guys who went North Shore after Whitey and Gene. It was just too much for the other guys...”
Inter Island Paddling Records
Around 1936, Gene had the idea to paddle between two of the Hawaiian Islands. Probably, he started off by thinking of doing one paddle, not multiple. Maybe he was inspired by his paddles out into Steamer Lane, the Catalina Crossing of 1932 or his dory row to Catalina that same year. Who knows? Maybe he did his first one on a dare. Legend has it that his first inter-island paddle was from Maui to Moloka’i, unescorted and unpublicized. Some of his old buddies claim he paddled between all the Hawaiian Islands and that the shorter distance paddles just were not covered in the press or even announced by Gene. The ones we know of and have records for are:
Ilio Point, Moloka’i to Makapu’u, O’ahu – 32 miles in 8 hours, 47 minutes – night paddle on a 13-foot hollow paddleboard made in Balboa, California – Ka’iwi Channel, November 1938
Kaena Point, O’ahu to Koloa, Kaua’i – 90 miles in 30 hours – Kawa’i Channel, October 14, 1940
Kauhola, Hawai’i to Kaupo, Maui – 40 miles in 12 hours, unescorted – Alenuihaha Channel, Summer 1945
“Of all the transplanted California surfers,” wrote Otto Patterson in his 1960 publication Surf-Riding, Its Thrills And Techniques, “‘Tarzan’ has accomplished the most fantastic feats of performance.” Writing approximately 20 years after Tarzan‘s paddleboard trailblazing, under a chapter heading of “World Surfing Greats,” Patterson went on to relate that after Tarzan came to Waikiki in the middle ‘30s, “he regularly paddled his board out of Waikiki Bay into Steamer Lane and disappeared from sight, just for the pleasure it gave him. During these years... he paddled to the island of Molokai in November 1938 and later to the island of Kauai, almost 100 miles away. Although others have paddled to Molokai, none have attempted to match his crossing to the island of Kauai.”
Well, that is no longer the case, as Tarzan’s records continue to be challenged by later generations of paddlers who have marked up impressive times on superior equipment. But, back in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Gene Smith was the first to ocean paddle between the Hawaiian Islands and his records still stand today as impressive accomplishments.
Ilio Point, Moloka’i to Makapu’u, O’ahu
The 32 miles between the north shore of Moloka’i and the south shore of O’ahu are part of the Ka’iwi Channel – best known amongst surfers today as the channel that claimed the life of Eddie Aikau in 1978. These days, the channel attracts the world’s finest paddlers – watermen and women from around the world – for an annual competitive paddle between the two islands. Gene was the one who started it all.
We are fortunate in that the Moloka’i to O’ahu night paddle was documented in several publications. The first one was by local journalist Spencer Davis, entitled: “Surfboarder Paddles Over Channel, Molokai to Oahu. Negotiates Distance in Eight Hours. Gene Smith, 26, Propels Surfboard from Molokai to Oahu During Night.” The article read:
“Husky Eugene C. Smith, 26 year old beach boy, in a remarkable display of endurance, skill and fortitude, yesterday became the first person to cross the perilous Molokai channel alone on a surfboard when he successfully paddled himself from Molokai to Oahu in eight hours and 47 minutes. Smith dove off the yacht Charlu at Pt. Ilio, Molokai, at 10:40 p.m. Saturday. Flat on his stomach on a 13-foot board, and with arms rhythmically stroking the water, Smith reached Oahu near Makapuu point at 7:27 Sunday morning.
“Aboard the Charlu, observers kept careful watch over Smith. The cruiser’s searchlight, for the greater part was ineffective due to the bobbing sea. A hand searchlight was directed upon the shadowy figure slipping through the water, as best it could. Once a shark was seen about two hours from Molokai. One of the observers detected the grayish white form of a shark between the yacht and Smith. There were excited shouts for a .22 rifle that had been brought along for such purposes. The Charlu veered toward Smith. But the vicious creature of the sea disappeared.”
In getting into the details of the paddle, the reporter confused Gene Smith’s nickname with that of elder Waikiki beachboy Steamboat Makuaha: “His only comfort, on that frail sliver of wood, was a pillow which was jammed between his chest and the board… Periodically, ‘Steamboat‘ came alongside to take on nourishment. At 1:30 a.m. after two hours in the water, he had a chocolate bar and dates. At 2:30 he ate raw eggs. An hour later he sipped a half a bottle of Coca Cola. Then at 5 a.m. he called for oranges.
“Upon reaching the shore, after the arduous feat, Smith picked up his 75 pound hollowed out board, and beached it at a run high on the sands. He appeared cheerful and far from exhaustion after negotiating almost 30 miles of rough seas by the strength of his powerful arms.
“‘Steamboat‘ was modest about his exploit, after it was all over. He stretched his tall frame, over six feet two, and grinned, ‘If it wasn’t for my neck, I could paddle all the way back.’ He told fellow members of the Waikiki Beach Patrol before leaving that he would be back for lunch with them the next day. They told him the trip couldn’t be done as a solo.”
Tarzan, himself, vividly recalled this ocean paddle: “During the paddle, the waves were breaking on my right side. Every once and a while a big one would break on me and, due to the angle I was paddling, it would spin me around so that I would be pointing back at Molokai. This was a big strain as well as using up extra energy in getting the board turned back in the correct direction. At times the waves would turn the board upside down, but I always managed to hang on.”
“There were quite a number of big flying fish sailing in every direction. Sometimes they would come out of the water next to me and sail across the front of my board. At first this startled me but I gradually became used to it. I hoped that none would hit me in the face as they are quite finny and could damage me considerably in a superficial but painful way. I knew, because once when training offshore from Waikiki a flying fish left three spines from one of its fins sticking in my chest.”
“As dawn came,” Gene continued, “I could see Makapuu and Koko Head very clearly. I guessed that I was five or six miles from shore. I slowed down speed in order to reserve strength that would be needed to surf in through some huge waves near the beach. During the last few miles of paddling, I ran into large patches of big Portuguese Men-of-War. They wrapped themselves around my arms and hands. Their stings did not hurt me as much as I expected.
“About halfway in to shore a huge wave broke behind me. I caught it in the foam and rode it broadside, dodging the rocks and steering the best I could.
“On shore, my legs felt like I was walking on stilts. I had lost quite a bit of skin from my chest and arms and I thought I looked thinner than before the paddle.”
Tarzan’s paddle was only one hour and 12 minutes longer than a crossing made by an outrigger canoe two years previously. Equipped with an outboard motor and handled by four fellow members of the Waikiki Beach Patrol, the outrigger had made the journey from O’ahu to Moloka’i on October 13, 1938. Tarzan’s route was reversed.
In a newspaper article printed soon afterward, entitled “Channel Surfer Lauds His 8 Year Old Board,” Gene said of his craft: “It was the first hollow board to appear on the Pacific coast, but it is just as sturdy as any you can buy today. I took another board along with me – just in case – but it wasn’t necessary.”
“The board, 13 feet long and five inches deep,” the article detailed, “was bought in Balboa Beach, Calif., when Mr. Smith decided to take up surfing in 1930. Its shape is that of a long, sharp dagger; pointed at the tail, rounded at the bow.” It was capable of carrying a compass, but Gene used the escort vessel’s, instead. The board had a small spray shield affixed towards the front of the board and the only other addition was a pillow placed between chest and board.
“Going to Molokai on the Charlu (the cabin cruiser that escorted him across the channel) I had my doubts whether I would be able to stay on the board,” Gene admitted. “The water was rough and came over the cruiser several times. Several suggested I’d have to strap myself to the board to stay on.”
“I had some difficulty starting from Molokai,” Gene continued. “The waves were coming around a point and in the darkness I couldn’t see them coming. I made several attempts before I was able to reach the Charlu, anchored about a half mile from shore.
“The first hour or two out wasn’t bad, but when I reached the middle [of the channel] it was really tough. On one occasion, the water nearly knocked me off my board. I was only able to stay on by grabbing the board on the sides and holding on. When I looked up the board had turned completely around.
“A short time later I saw a large fin glide in front of me. I stopped paddling immediately. When no shadows appeared after several seconds, I dug my hands in the water again. That was the only shark I saw. The men on the cruiser told me later, however, that they saw one about two hours out. They were going to shoot it if it got too close. They didn’t tell me about it until later because they didn’t want to scare me.
“One time I put my hand in something warm and soft. I really pulled it out in a hurry. I don’t know what it was. It might have been a jellyfish. Near the end of the trip I began getting tired. I don’t know how far out I was because the ledge is deceiving. I might have been eight miles or three miles, but it seemed as if I couldn’t get any closer to shore.
“As I neared Koko Head, birds started circling two feet above my head. They would remain still above my head and peer down at me. I thought they were going to alight on my head, but none did. I was stung about eight times by Portuguese men of war” and had the bumps on his hands and arms to prove it. “Off Makapuu point I caught a wave and rode in. The rocks were very bad. I scratched my knee and the bottom of my board going in. It was nothing serious, however.”
Gene had trained three hours a day for a month leading up to the record-setting paddle, arm paddling his board 12 to 15 miles at a stretch. He had kept himself to a special diet and ate only two foods during it – dates and chocolate. Both act “as a quick-burning fuel,” he said, adding that “Flat on your stomach that way for a long, long time, it isn’t so easy to digest food. Dates and chocolate bars are easy enough to digest. Avocadoes are all right too.”
Tarzan said he had first contemplated such a paddle two years previously. Afterwards, he studied currents and talked a lot with weather bureau officials. “I still believe the trip can be made alone,” he maintained, adding he had no immediate plans for another such paddle and that he might like to try something else “if I get the bug.” At that point, he doubted that a longer paddle could be sustained. “The tax on the system is too great. A longer trip would be a terrific strain.”
Kaena Point, O’ahu to Koloa, Kaua’i
After two years had passed, the lure of performing another – and longer – marathon paddle was too attractive to Tarzan to resist. On October 14, 1940, at 3:45 p.m., he left the beach at Kaena Point, O’ahu, and pointed the nose of his 14 foot-long, 19 inch-wide paddleboard toward the island of Kaua’i, 90 miles across the Kawa’i Channel. Thirty hours later, he landed at Koloa, Kaua’i. He had averaged about 2.75 miles per hour.
This 14 foot board was an improvement on its predecessor in that it was compass and rudder equipped, as well as featured a better splash shield slightly forward of middle. The board weighed in at 90 pounds.
The paddle featured some of the elements of his first one – especially the stinging part with the Portuguese Men-of-War. A twist on the shark threat was the presence of a large manta ray, 12 feet across, which was shot by the escort vessel before Gene went on.
A typed article in Tom Blake’s scrapbook collection, entitled “30 Hours – 100 Miles – On A Surfboard,” told the story of Tarzan’s O’ahu to Kaua’i paddle: “On October 14, 1940, at 3:45 p.m. Gene (Tarzan) Smith left the beach at Kaena Point, Oahu, territory of Hawaii, paddled thru the rough surf and pointed the nose of his 14-foot surfboard toward the island of Kauai, his destination, 90 miles away.
“The channel is considered one of the roughest and most treacherous in the Hawaiian waters. The board used was one Gene has been riding in the surf at Waikiki beach for the past five summers. It measures 14 feet overall and is 1-foot 7-inches wide. The tail of the board tapers off to a point.”
“Two weeks prior to the scheduled date to take off on the 90 mile grind,” the article continued, “the board was laid on two saw horses and the job to put it in shape was started. All the seams were calked to prevent leaking, because a water-filled surfboard is hard for even an expert to control. A special weather shield made of two pieces of plywood three inches high was put on the deck. Two inches astern the shield, a waterproof box three inches by three inches was built to carry the one dollar watch compass purchased from a local sporting goods house.
“A flashlight holder to carry a waterproof flashlight, was set up between the compass and the shield. These were the only special items on the standard board. The total weight was ninety pounds. [There was also] A pneumatic pillow of rubber to keep ‘Tarzan’s’ head up during the tedious hours, and a hunting knife – as a precaution against tropical sea mammals – was fastened to his waist. A pair of colored goggles topped off the list of necessities.
“Bob Topping, Honolulu sportsman, donated the use of his new cruiser, The Wanderer to act as a convoy during the paddle. From the boat, two members of the Hawaii Surfing Association kept watch and fed Smith at intervals. Soups, cocoa, fruit and chocolate were the only nourishment received during the trip.”
“It was not an uneventful paddle. [Until] about 1 a.m. (of the first nite), dark clouds hid the moon and the convoy could not be sighted. Many thoughts ran through Smith’s mind: ‘Am I far enough along to continue without food?’ ‘Is my course set right?’ During the dark period, slashes could be heard like the sound of a shark splashing on the surface of the water.
“Portuguese Man-of-War were the most irritating of anything encountered on the trip. A Portuguese Man-of-War, as defined by Webster, is any of several large siphonophores (genus Physalia) having a large, crested bladder-like pnemataphore, by means of which they float on the surface of the water. Every time one of the long stringy tentacles hits the body it leaves a welt and a terrific sting that is remembered for a few hours. Smith was covered from head to toe with these stings. With every wave a few more welts were added to his brown muscular body.”
“The second day, about 19 hours after his takeoff, ‘Tarzan’ was leading the boat about 100 yards. Directly ahead could be seen what appeared to be a pool of oil. The first thought was that this might have been where an army plane might have gone down. When a fin rose from what appeared to be a pool of oil, a different attitude came over Smith as well as those in the convoy.
“At the sign of the fin, ‘Tarzan’ relates that he really thought his time had come, and had his hunting knife in hand, ready to go down, but not without letting this sea monster know that he had met up with a pretty good man. The boat being a little out of shooting range, had to circle around before a safe shot could be taken. After putting about four shots in the sea monster it was found to be [a] ray that measured about 12 feet in diameter. The ray is better known to overturn boats and… grows as much as 20 feet in diameter.”
“The following two hours proved to be when most of the better time was made. As the second night came on with land in sight, Smith tells that he thought he was paddling down a street lined with telephone poles.” He hallucinated that he was paddling down Hollywood Boulevard. “The last few hours were by far the toughest, the seas were rough, waves were splashing over the board, and with every wave a few more man of war stings. The windward side of Kauai is hard to beat for rough seas.
“The Wanderer was [one] minute down in the trough of the seas and the next minute riding high on the crest. The continual smashing of the stern and the swish of the waves kept Gene awake and, at the same time, on edge. Having been blown off his course by the heavy seas and not being able to make Nawiliwili harbor, he was forced west to Koloa, about five miles beyond the scheduled landing place. The landing was made on Kauai at 9:45 p.m. on the 15th of October, 30 hours after the takeoff from Oahu, registering an event in the annals of surfboard paddling that never before has been accomplished by man.
“To Gene ‘Tarzan’ Smith goes the undisputed record for being the outstanding paddler of a surfboard today.”
About the O’ahu-to-Kaua’i feat specifically, Father of Modern Surfing Duke Kahanamoku added that Tarzan had set a record that would stand a long time. Over two decades after the feat, Duke asked rhetorically, “Where is there someone to match that today?”
Kauhola, Hawai’i to Kaupo, Maui
Tarzan’s series of inter-island paddles was interrupted by World War II. He resumed his record making in the Summer of 1945, when he paddled across the forty mile Alenuihaha Channel between the Big Island of Hawai’i and the island of Maui. He went unheralded and unescorted and his arrival was noted by only one man, Abel Kawaiaea. Linda Domen of the Kaupo General Store told this story, in 1999, about Tarzan’s landing nearly 55 years before:
“For over 20 years, I have looked at a little booklet with copyrighted photos of a man we thought looked like Tarzan, who had paddled across the Alenuihaha Channel from Upolu Point on the Big Island to Kaupo in October 1945. The idea of a person accomplishing such a feat, alone, just blew our minds. We tripped out on this photo book for years, and then one day, an old grey haired Hawaiian man came into my store, and in listening to a conversation he was having with a friend, heard his name, Abel. It just clicked inside of me, that this old man was the young Hawaiian in the photo standing beside Gene Smith with his huge paddleboard on the shore of Mokulau Point, here in Kaupo. So now, finally, after all those years of looking at the photos, and wondering what the story was, I had a first hand witness to tell me all about it.
“Abel Kawaiaea told me that he was about 18 at the time, and he had rode his horse down to a place just below the store with his net one day after work (on the Kaupo Ranch) to check for fish, and he saw something bobbing out in the ocean. At first, he thought that maybe it was a big floater ball that had broke loose from some fishing vessels way out there in the ocean somewhere. But as he watched it carefully, he saw that it wasn’t following the currents like a floater would, and realized that it was a person on a paddleboard. When the guy (Gene Smith) came ashore, he said to Abel, ‘Are there any motels around here?’ That really cracked me up, because, even to this day, Kaupo is probably the most remote place in all of Hawaii that is inhabited. Well, Abel said to him, ‘No, but there is Nick Soon at the Kaupo Store.’ So, Abel brought Gene up to the store, introduced him to Nick Soon, and the next day, they went down to Mokulau where Gene paddled his board around so that Nick could get the photos of him.
“This whole meeting and story telling was thrilling to both Abel and I because, he finally had photos to prove to his family his Gene Smith really did exist, and I had the rest of the story. Abel said that he had kept in touch with Gene for some time, but now he didn’t know where he was or what had become of him…
“Sometimes in life, we run across something that interests us, and we pick it up, look at it, take it in, and always just wonder, if the thing could talk, what it would tell us. Well, this time, it did talk, sort of. And now I know.”
The 1940s
Sometime before the United States entered World War II, Gene came to know a son of the Ford family who owned a yacht named the Altair. While he was on a long distance sailing trip on the Altair, a devastating storm struck. One of the crew members was lost, along with all belongings, and the yacht disabled. Fortunately, the remaining crew members, including Tarzan, were rescued by another ship and towed to Pago Pago. In New Zealand, without passports or money, Gene was taken in by the mother of noted actor and swimmer Jon Hall. He then resorted to boxing as a way to earn money and eventually get him to Australia and then back to Hawai’i.
Gene was married twice while at Waikiki – briefly both times, not surprisingly. It started off this way: Because his brawny good looks and water skills enabled him to land small movie parts as a swimmer, he met – amongst others – his first wife Evelyn Thorn, whom he married in 1937. Evelyn was a movie starlet of the time and notable for having taken the place of Faye Raye in the movie Tarzan. It’s possible that this may have been a contributory factor to Gene’s nickname, but that is just conjecture on my part. At any rate, Gene’s marriage to Evelyn lasted only a short time. Later, he met Katharyn Agness Billhardt when she was vacationing in Honolulu. They met and got to know each other for a short time before she had to go back to the U.S. Mainland. Not long afterwards, Katharyn returned aboard the steamship Lurline and Gene even paddled out to greet her. When her affluent father heard that his daughter planned to marry the infamous Gene “Tarzan” Smith, he threatened to disown her. Undaunted, she married Gene in 1941. She probably should have listened to her father, however, as they divorced after only two years together.
Gene had just turned 30 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Switching from the beach to the pavement in an amazing twist of fate for a brawler, Gene got a job as a policeman in the Honolulu Police Department. While there, he became close friends with the sheriff. No doubt for other reasons as well, Gene ran afoul of his own fellow policeman by not only being the one haole on the force, but also the one closest to the sheriff.
One fateful night, Gene took a date to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and later dropped her off at home. While the night was still young in his mind, Tarzan went to a downtown bar for a few drinks with the sheriff. After the sheriff went home, Gene continued to drink until drunk. Four of his fellow H.P.D. officers caught him in an alley outside the bar and beat him brutally, breaking his jaw, one of his legs and causing a severe concussion to the head. It took four of them to do all this to a wasted Tarzan. Gene ended up in the hospital for a number of months and, according to his family, never fully recovered. His sister Phyllis said that this episode caused him to become deeply paranoid and schizophrenic from that point on.
A local restaurant owner named Spence Weaver cared for Gene during his recovery and let him live on his boat moored at Ala Wai harbor. Gene had taught Weaver’s two sons how to surf. A local attorney took up Gene’s case and sued the Territory of Hawaii successfully. Gene was awarded lifetime care, including medical, dental and lodging.
Dorian Paskowitz wrote of his recollections of the characters and scene at Waikiki during World War II. In his own style, Dorian mixes his personal memories with legends that circulated then and now. In this story, he focused on the brawler that Tarzan most definitely was:
“I had been in the Islands about three and a half months, when one day I was talking to Captain Sally Hale at his small station alongside the beach entrance into the Outrigger’s locker room… [suddenly] Sally looked up over my head like he was looking at a street lamp.
“‘Hiya, Tarzan, Aloha,’ Sally said, forgetting about me.
“‘Where ya been, we haven’t seen you at Waikiki for quite awhile.’
“‘Around,’ Tarzan replied.
“If Ox were big as an ox, then Tarzan was equally as big as Tarzan.
“Here was this giant of a man, more than six-five or six-six in height, a rangy build, and a sharp face with a set jaw, which reminded one of a steel trap that had already been sprung. He reminded you of Abe Lincoln, the rail splitter, but more powerful.
“I moved off to one side out of earshot so the two of them could talk, personal. This Tarzan never smiled once.
“Tarzan turned abruptly and left. Sally watched him carefully.
“‘Who’s that guy?’ I asked Sally. ‘He’s taller than Ox.’
“‘That’s Tarzan Smith,’ Sally said.
“‘Gene Smith?’ I asked.
“‘Yeah, Gene Smith, everybody calls him Tarzan. I don’t know if he likes the name, but it stuck.’
“... It didn’t take... Tarzan long to get back into the swing of things at Waikiki. I’d see him paddling a canoe – not steersman – or surfing at Canoe’s or just stalking up and down the beach like a man possessed. He hardly would talk to anyone, and he always had an unfriendly look on his face...
“One day after he passed by, I asked the surfer I was sitting on the beach with, ‘Keone, what about this guy, Tarzan Smith?’
“‘What about him?’ he replied.
“‘Well, do you know anything about him?’
“‘I know he paddled a surfboard all the way from the Big Island to Oahu, over 250 miles. Imagine being out in that channel between Maui and the Kahala side of Hawaii, all alone at night? The swells are 20 to 30 feet, and the wind’s always blowing 25 knots.’
“‘He really did that?’ I asked.
“‘Not only that,’ Keone went on, ‘he had a plan to paddle from Oahu to Kauai – 90 miles, with no islands in between. But he couldn’t get a sponsor or whatever.’
“Another time out in the water I asked another surfer if he’d heard of Tarzan Smith.
“‘Hell, yes,’ he said, ‘everyone on the beach knows him. He used to be a cop on the Honolulu City and County Police Force. But they say he got pissed at another cop and flung him right through a plate glass window. Almost killed the guy. So they canned Tarzan.’
“There was a lot of talk about his getting thrown into jail, often, for brawling. And each story played on the number of big Hawaiians it took to subdue him and get him in the paddy wagon.
“Several weeks later I was talking to one of the kids who belonged to the Outrigger Club, Jimmy, and I brought up the subject of Tarzan Smith. In his words was finally the explanation to me as to why Gene was so mad all the time – and why they called him Tarzan.
“‘Evidently it all happened right after he got to Hawaii. Gene thought he’d just go down to Waikiki, get a job on the beach, rent some of his surfboards and maybe give a few surfing lessons,’ Jimmy explained.
“‘It didn’t work like that at all. Guys got killed for less at Waikiki. You just didn’t muscle in on the one all-Hawaiian profession – the Beach Boys‘ “Kahuna” monopoly.
“‘Well, Gene didn’t see it that way. He kept boring in. Then one night walking home from the Kalakaua Bar, a bunch of Hawaiian guys jumped him.
“‘They beat the B’Jesus out of him – put him in the hospital for weeks – broke his ribs, kicked him in the face, almost fractured his skull.
“‘Who these guys were – nobody ever named names. It just stopped there. Everyone went back to his daily chores knowing one more “coast haole“ had been taught a lesson. Nobody – but, no body – was in on the Beach Boys’ concession, but them’s that have come up the ladder the hard way, rung by rung, running errands as little beach rats, to get stew and rice from the Oasis Inn, then “raking beach” in front of the hotel for a few years, finally helping paddle canoe loads. After that, and only after that, you got cut in on the relatively meager take which the Beach Boys got from catering to and at times even risking their necks for visitors to the Islands.
“‘Finally – when you started at 14 and you’re now past 25, you can take a formal exam for Canoe Captain. And if you pass, as only few did – then you can say you’re a full-fledged beach boy with all the privileges that went along with the title.
“‘But to just walk up the beach and hustle surfing lessons or board rentals – no way. That’s what Gene Smith found out the hard way.
“‘When Gene got out of Queen’s Hospital, everybody thought he’d pack his bags and go back to the mainland. But for a man who paddled a surfboard in the black of night across a wide expanse of violent ocean – alone – running away wasn’t easy, or likely.
“‘Gene didn’t run away back to California. He nursed himself back to health – surfing a lot, paddling his big, heavy board for miles on end, and walking, walking, walking – Gene loved to walk. He got back into better shape than he was before he got beat up.’
“Jimmy finished his yarn, he seemed like he really admired Gene. Oscar Teller, the old veteran of the Tavern Side of Waikiki, told me the rest of the story. Oscar loved to ride Big Castles on his beat-up old paddleboard. He was a real great guy.
“‘Gene came back down to the beach, as if nothing had ever happened, even though you could still see some of the scars on his face. He didn’t accuse anybody of anything, made no complaints, and even said hello and passed the time of day with some of the very guys who’d done him in.
“‘No hard feelings showed, no boards were rented, no surfing lessons “cockaroached.” Gene was a tamed giant, or so everyone believed.
“‘Then slowly and systematically, Gene Smith one by one beat the shit out of every one of the bunch that had ganged up on him. A few of the guys were hospitalized and one almost died. The fella still has scars all over his face.
“‘When that was done, the situation calmed down. People began calling Gene “Tarzan.” He rented his boards, took visitors out for surfing lessons and helped paddle canoe on loads booked for the Beach Boys from the Outrigger Club. Nobody hassled him.
“‘Tarzan became the only haole or white Beach Boy.’”
California pioneering surfer Dorian Paskowitz continued: “From time to time... I’d pass him on the sand on Waikiki Beach. I’d say, ‘Hi, Gene.’ He’d nod, never smile and off he’d go. Never said a word to me.
“And then one Saturday, maybe after three or four weeks had gone by, I was surfing at Queens with the Kekai brothers, and after a long session, I came in and looked for a place to get out of the wind and warm up. I found it behind the wall at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. The waist-high pink wall that separates the grass from the exclusive beach site. Course, I wasn’t allowed in there, not being a guest at the Royal, but Chuck Daniels and Panama that watched over that area of beach didn’t care. I wasn’t doing any harm. I always looked presentable, even in just board shorts, and I was mannerly and kept to myself.
“While I was there, Tarzan went by, taking long, fast strides as if he were on his way to get someone. He looked madder than usual. When I said, ‘Hi, Gene,’ he didn’t even turn his head. He seemed hell-bent for election as my dad used to say.
“This time I didn’t have to ask someone for explanations. I knew exactly what was troubling him. The scuttlebutt was all over the beach: ‘Tarzan’s really pissed.’
“Two weeks previously the City and County of Honolulu had put on a big Hawaiian watersports festival at Honolulu Harbor – canoe races, swimming races and a big paddleboard race. In addition to the cups and medals, the winner was to get a free trip to California to compete in a national paddleboard championship in Santa Monica. The festival was a great success except for one black spot... evidently Tarzan had paddled his heart out – he wanted that chance to get back to the mainland – and had won, with Jack May getting second, and I believe Turkey Love was third and one of the Kahanamoku brothers was fourth.
“Gene got the big trophy, but somehow Jack May, even though he came in second, was chosen to go to the mainland and represent Hawaii.
“Just why that switch was made, no one knew, but a lot of people felt that the city fathers weren’t about to let someone as ‘antipatico’ and as belligerent as Tarzan Smith represent Hawaii. Their logic was, I assumed, ‘we’re choosing somebody to personify the Islands, not just to be in the race, so we’ll choose a friendly, part-Hawaiian like May to typify our water sportsmen.’
“Gene was fit to be tied. He was furious, as only he could get furious.
“As I sat there in the bright, warm sun, the aquamarine and blue water of Waikiki Bay glistening with diamonds in front of my eyes and feeling like a million dollars from over two solid hours of surfing, I could not possibly imagine that wheels had already been set to turning which would make me a mate to Tarzan’s fury and plans of mayhem.
“Here he came back along the same beach path, more determined than ever.
“What I didn’t know is that he had called a meeting in his room at the Waikiki Tavern and Inn to once and for all have this mainland trip business straightened out. In fact, at that very moment, May was in his room waiting for him to return. But whoever he was looking for he hadn’t found.
“The giant strode almost abreast of me, stopped, turned to face me, and bellowed, ‘Paskowitz, come with me.’ I didn’t even know he had remembered who I was, much less to call me by name.
“I jumped up and fell in behind him, having to walk-jog to keep up with him as he headed down the beach, past the Moana Hotel, past Judge Sturier‘s house with its big concrete pillars right in the water, and onward toward his room at the Waikiki Tavern.
“At the Diamond Head end of Waikiki Beach, just before you got to Kuhio Beach and the Big Banyan Tree where Robert Louis Stevenson would sit in the cool shade and read to the beautiful and frail Princess Pauhi, there leaned and creaked a very old building of faded, chipping green paint – half tavern, half inn. In its day it was something special, and, as a matter of fact, unbeknown to all, in the years to come, once again it would ring out with prosperity and customers before finally being swept away by the demands of tourism. But on this day it was a haven for beachcombers, those down on their luck, and the heavy drinkers that were warp and woof of the beach crowd.
“It was so close to the water, high tide waves would splash into some of the first floor rooms. I myself, before it was razed, occupied one of those rooms and often had crabs from the sea and ‘limo,’ seaweed, on my floor when I awakened in the morning at dawn to check the surf.
“This day its most important feature was that Gene ‘Tarzan‘ Smith lived there, as did Ox and Turkey Love.
“Tarzan bounded up the stairs, with me just behind him. He turned in the dimly lit corridor to his room, kicked – not pushed – the half open door, and, feet wide apart, made this explosive and to me horrifying statement:
“‘OK, you bastards, we’re going to get some answers right now or we’re going to kick the shit out of someone.’
“I was struck dumb by this blatant use of the word ‘we’re,’ but at that instant he nudged me aside, slammed the door shut, and locked it with the key that was in the door. Thanks to a beneficent almighty, he left the key there where it was.
“It took me just one terrifying instant to realize what I was into here. Almost 1,000 pounds of some of the most raucous and warlike men in the Territory of Hawaii – one or two well ‘oked up‘ on booze they had brought – were sitting around. Chuck Daniels was on the bed, listening to a threat against their lives. A threat backed up by the fact that Tarzan Smith had me to help him clean up on them – them being Ox, Steamboat Mokuahi, Chuck Daniels, Turkey Love and Jack May... I was a copartner to an aggressive, hostile lunatic who was demanding a showdown. Now.
“Well, I can tell you that the next several seconds were critical for me. Here I was being asked to help put away five men – any one of whom could have torn me limb from limb – three of whom I had spent months making friends with. Steamboat was capable of destroying the room and all of us in it. Ox could have just stood up and started swinging and kicking with an ultimatum like that.
“I looked over at Chuck Daniels, he was a hot-tempered man and his beer-reddened eyes were glowing at Tarzan with rage.
“Chuck stood up.
“Christ. This is it, I thought. But before Chuck got fully off the swayback bed without sheets, Jack May grabbed both of Tarzan’s arms about where his biceps were.
“‘Tarzan,’ he said rather calmly, at least not shouting, ‘OK, we’ll talk this out with you but just calm down...’
“‘Calm down!’ Gene shouted at the top of his lungs – you could feel the floor give a bit – ‘Calm down...’
“‘When you sons-a-bitches...’
“‘Oh, oh,’ I winced. That’s a poor choice of words.
“‘Not me – the committee – not me – I got nothing to say about any of this...’
“For an instant Tarzan was speechless. Chuck had gotten up. Turkey Love was on his feet. Gene was like a pole-axed sheep – because he was ready to start brawling, and now somebody had slapped him in the face with a glove of logic, of reason.
“I knew exactly now what I must do. Get the hell out of there at once.
“Ox now stood up. His great presence seemed to put everything on hold.
“‘You got us guys ovah heah to talk – OK – so talk – no need to beef right away.’
“Again Tarzan’s mind seemed staggered – like a clean blow to the mid-section. This wasn’t going exactly like he had thought it would. Fighting he could understand; talk, no. He had come back here with me to clean up on these bastards and then talk – now that straightforward plan was off track.
“One second I took a smile at ‘Boat‘ – he just looked right through me. As the half-seconds and seconds ticked off, I was backing toward the door and that blessed key.
“Now Turkey Love, under the influence of no small amount of Primo Beer, half lunged for Tarzan, stumbled, and actually fell into his arms. Gene had to catch him. Now everyone was on his feet, posturing, getting ready for the action. It was all I needed.
“Quick as a mongoose, I twisted the key, pulled open the door, slid through it, re-shut it and was on my way to the stairs. A quick, clean maneuver, just like at times when I’d sneak into the Tremont Movie Theatre when I lived on Galveston Island.
“As I was going down the stairs three at a time, I heard the first window break and some wood splintering. You could hear the shouts down to the street. Up the stairs I’d leaped off of roared two of the thugs who helped out with the trouble at the Tavern Bar.
“I stepped into the beautiful sunlight at the back of the Tavern, at water’s edge, feeling how great to be alive, free and not up there in that melee...
“For weeks after that I didn’t speak to any of those Beach Boys. When I did, I still was treated friendly – like it wasn’t really me that had been up in Tarzan’s room. No one ever mentioned a thing about it.
“I didn’t see Gene for a couple of months. Then I saw him on Diamond Head walking toward Waikiki. I said, ‘Hi, Gene,’ but he didn’t even look at me...
“Over the years I saw Gene a few times more.
“I’d always say, ‘Hi, Gene,’ and he’d just pass me by. I thought it was because of what happened at the Waikiki Tavern that afternoon. But when I told this to Wally Froiseth, who had been a friend to Tarzan, Wally said Gene didn’t acknowledge anybody who said hello to him.
“In 1974 I saw Gene Tarzan Smith for the last time. He was walking on the Pacific Coast Highway by Malibu... He was still lean, muscular and powerful...”
A Loner
With lifetime care awarded him but a life nevertheless severely beaten, Tarzan’s trail grew faint after World War II. It was not a short trail, but one of a good thirty years more – most of which we know very little about. It was a time when the man who was a mystery even to his friends perhaps became a mystery to himself. Throughout the three decades spanning the early 1950s into the early 1980s, he remained a legend to those who knew of him and a loner to those who actually knew him.
It would appear that the first part of his remaining three decades was spent around Honolulu, the later part back in Southern California, where his life at the beach had begun.
In 1957-58, Gene was seen by his sister Phyllis for the last time before she lost track of him altogether. He was living as a recluse on a boat docked in the Ala Wai yacht harbor, much like Tom Blake had done. According to her assessment, Gene’s physical and mental conditions were poor and deteriorating.
Gene’s longtime friend Tom Blake saw him in 1968, in Waikiki, and wrote: “Saw Gene Smith. He is well physically, but psyched [out].” Three years later, after Gene had moved back to the U.S. Mainland, Tom wrote his protégé Tommy Zahn about Tarzan: “Of course he is bewildered by the changes in So. Cal in the last 37 years, but all he really needs is your moral support. He will go his own way after sizing up the rat race, and end up back in the Islands, if he is wise… Anyone who, like Gene, beat the game in Hawaii for so long can take care of Gene.”
In early 1972, Blake traded more correspondence with Zahn about trouble Gene was having. Blake assured Zahn: “Gene can still take care of himself, via the welfare system. He is a pitifully lonely soul. However, so am I.” Throughout that year, Blake tried to put together a work arrangement for Gene, caretaking 40 acres in the lower Salton Sea area. He had it squared away with the owner, but after repeated invitations, Tarzan never showed. Blake wrote Zahn in December 1973: “Have seen neither hide nor hair of Gene. I presume he is walking this way. That’s life. We must each find our way, alone.” In a subsequent letter, Blake wrote: “Please tell Gene the desert will always be here, but each year finds it more difficult to locate. People are discovering it…”
As his whole life had been, Gene’s last ten years was marked by physical aggression and dramatic events. Two particular fights in the later 1970s took him down for the count; the first one occurring somewhere around 1976-78, when Gene was in his mid-60’s. He was mistakenly taken as a shoplifter and, resisting, was then jumped by 2 or 3 Santa Monica Safeway store guards and badly beaten. He later sued Safeway, won in court, and thus bank rolled for awhile.
Tommy Zahn told the tale about the Santa Monica “shoplifting” episode: “Well, what happened was – he was living at Pete’s [Peterson] shop at the end of the pier,” Pete’s shop being a kind of common post office for many surfers and period watermen, “and he used to shop up at the Safeway in Santa Monica. And he was in there, one day, getting some – he used to like to roll his own cigarettes; he’d smoke about one a day – he bought that at a separate little tobacco shop, there. It wasn’t part of the regular checkout set-up. And, so, he just paid for it and put it in his pocket. And he was walking out of the market and some hotshot security guy thought he was shoplifting and they tried to detain him, outside.
“He said, ‘I haven’t done anything’ and planned to keep going. He was still awesome. He was in his 70’s, then. Before they got through, they had about 2 or 3 of those guys [who] jumped his bones out there and had him down and broke one of his legs. They handcuffed him, took him in the back, and threw him on top of a bunch of cardboard boxes and called the Santa Monica police.
“Santa Monica police came over and said, ‘What’s happening?’ and they said, ‘This guy’s a shoplifter. We used what force was necessary to make the arrest.’ And so, they said, ‘OK.’ They [then] start searching him and found the tobacco and stuff. They found the receipt from the tobacconist, there, too. They all looked at each other. They knew they’d been had. They knew they’d been had.
“So, we went to see Gene and we told him to go to the legal aid society and sue the shit out of these people and he did. We never found out, exactly, how much he got. We know it was probably less than $20,000. In those days, that was pretty good. I’m talking about… [1976].
“And, all of a sudden he disappears and [then reappears with] all new clothes and [had] made a good recovery. And he said, ‘Well, I’m taking off for Europe.’ And he took off for Europe and he went to Paris. Can you believe that?”
After Gene recuperated from the Santa Monica Safeway beating and court case, he went to Paris, France, much to the amazement of those friends who were still in contact with him. While in Paris, he was jumped there, too. He partially recuperated in a Paris hospital and then later in Letterman Hospital, in San Francisco.
At this point in telling the story of Tarzan’s later days, Tommy Zahn turned to another legendary Southern California surfing pioneer Chauncy Granstrom, who was also in the room, and asked him:
“Can you see Gene Smith in Paris?!”
“No!” Chauncy was quick to reply. There were laughs all around and then Chauncy added, “Well, yes, you could, because it wouldn’t change him.”
“Well, he got jumped in Paris,” Tom continued. “And they put him in a hospital there. And, so he got on a plane with whatever money he had left and flew back to Letterman Hospital, in San Francisco, to recover. And the Paris hospital sent a bill to the pier – that was his last forwarding address – saying something you wouldn’t understand and ‘Please send the money.’
“Then, Gene totally disappeared for about a year. Then, Dutch Horton – the guy who works for Pete, down at the shop – got a postcard and it said, ‘It was just a year ago, Dutch, that you helped me get all my suitcases up to the airport. I wanted to thank you very much for that.’ And that was the end of it. The postcard was from Indio [in the desert].” Gene’s last known address was 70 miles south of Indio, not far from where Blake used to spend part of the year. Brawley is on the other side of the Salton Sea from Indio, just south of Niland, 25 miles from the Mexican border and 120 miles east of the beaches of San Diego. He had finally taken Tom Blake up on his earlier advice to him, according to Tommy Zahn, who helped Gene out numerous times after their Hawaiian days.
Even before Blake invited him out to work in the Niland area back in the early 1970s, he had once counseled Tarzan that if he ever needed a sanctuary, “get out in the desert. You’ll be OK.” This may have been somewhat of a romantic notion on Tom’s part, as he himself did not end up settling in the desert and the desert was the place that mysteriously swallowed Tarzan.
“And that,” concluded Tommy, speaking of the postcard and very slowly, “is the last we heard of Gene Smith.”
It was the early 1980s when the man who was a loner even to the point of sometimes being termed a “hermit” left behind him his life and friends as a waterman. He also left behind a paddling record of achievement that remains unbeaten today. Where his time records may have been broken afterwards by others, they have been done by using technically advanced equipment unavailable in the 1930s and 1940s. In the end, Gene had proven his father wrong – attaining an aggregate paddling record that no one else has been able to duplicate, let alone surpass, even today. Gene Smith did amount to something, becoming one of the legendary surfers and paddlers of all time. Testimony to this was Tom Blake’s deep felt and well known admiration of Gene Smith’s accomplishments. He called Tarzan “The greatest paddler of all time,” meaning of the modern period.
Eugene Cloyde Smith – “Tarzan” to us – finally quit fighting for all time in April 1986. He died living in the desert, not far from Tom Blake’s old desert stomping grounds.
