Malcolm Gault-Williams' feature on Gene "Tarzan" Smith ran in the Spring 2004 issue of the Surfer's Journal. This version has been slightly edited.

He was one of the great ocean paddlers of all time—some say the greatest. An early California surfer, he was also a lifeguard, Waikiki haole beachboy, fighter, and—later—a Honolulu cop. He’s credited with helping rediscover the North Shore of Oahu as prime surf territory and his inter–island paddles are the stuff of legend. One day in the early 1980s, he walked out into the California desert, leaving the beach and all who knew him behind. His name was Gene Smith, although he is best remembered by the nickname “Tarzan.” Despite all that we know about Smith—especially his paddling records—he was such a loner, so different, and left surfing so strangely, that mystery surrounds his memory even today.

Eugene Cloyde Smith was born on May 14, 1911, in Oakland, California. Cloyde Hogan Smith, Gene's father, had graduated from college as an ordained minister but later became a staunch atheist. He went to work for Hearst newspapers in San Francisco, and in 1906 reported on the terrible earthquake that ruined much of the city. Later, Cloyde Smith became foreman of the composing room and learned to be a linotype setter.

Goldie Violet Rose, Gene's mother, was one of 13 children of the Stuart family from Scotland and later the Prince Edward Islands. She played piano and was an equestrian. When Gene was seven, Goldie visited her sister in San Jose, south of San Francisco, to ride a horse she had just bought. Not knowing the horse’s bridle had a Spanish bit, when she drew the horse up for a quick stop, the animal reared over backwards, falling on Goldie and crushing her head. Gene and his sister, Phyllis Pearl Smith, age five, were left motherless. 

According to Phyllis, his only really good years of Gene's life were when his mother was alive. He was her pet and they were very close. Her death closed a crucial door on happiness and also a door to acceptance. Immediately after Goldie’s death, the children were sent to foster homes in the San Jose area. Cloyde later took them out and put them under the care of his mother, Pearl, who lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was in Cheyenne that Cloyde met his second wife, Emma. 

Life for the Smith children went from bad to worse. Not only was their father abusive but their stepmother, Emma, wanted nothing to do with them. It may have been worse than that. As Phyllis’s stepson later wrote, "A big part [of Gene's life] was the incredibly tough and alienating upbringing he endured at the hands of his cruel father and rejecting stepmother.”

While Goldie was still alive, Kidder Press had hired Cloyde to travel and demonstrate their brand of linotype presses throughout the United States. After Cloyde and his children were again living together, they continued to move frequently. During Gene’s and Phyllis’s early grade-school years, they lived in Connecticut, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Montana, Wyoming, and several cities or towns in New York and California. Because of this, the Smith kids were never able to get settled and make friends.

Gene’s first exposure to physical violence must have been at the hands of his father. His second was in Cheyenne, Wyoming, when Gene’s father ordered him to walk his sister home from school. Phyllis was often picked on because of her shyness, and Gene would get into fights trying to protect her. 

Later, when the Smith family was living in Huntington, West Virginia, they stayed at a hotel for six months in a nice area on the banks of the Ohio River. Unfortunately, Gene and Phyllis’s daily trip to school took them three miles through a bad section of town. On more than one occasion, local black kids would hassle them and even physically bar their way. Phyllis recalled that Gene would sometimes have to fight in order to get them to school.

When the Smiths moved back to California—this time to the south—Gene, now of high school age, began to get in serious trouble. At one point, after getting caught siphoning gas while living in Santa Ana, Cloyde repeated his often-heard refrain—“Gene, you’re never going to amount to anything”—and sent the boy to reform school. It wasn't long after that when Gene dropped out of school and ran away from home, heading up the coast to Oregon where he worked in various lumber camps. The family didn't hear from him for two years.  

As difficult as his childhood had been, the man who would be called “Tarzan” was a survivor. Not only that, but he came back stronger. No doubt due to the physical demands of logging, Gene, now 6'2", returned to Southern California at the beginning of the 1930s a superb physical specimen. Hanging at the beach, he got into surfing and paddling and very soon thereafter was a recognized name in the close-knit surf world of the time. In 1932, in one demonstration of strength and endurance, the 2l-year-old Gene single-handedly paddled a dory from Catalina Island to Balboa—a 33-mile journey that took nine hours. 

By 1934, Gene had gained the nickname “Tarzan” and a year later he was cited as a a rising star in Tom Blake's groundbreaking 

 book. Gene and Tom Blake would become lifelong friends. 

Gene mostly surfed and hung out at Balboa and Corona Del Mar. During the 1920s and early ’30s, before the breakwater was put in. Corona Del Mar was thought of as the best surf break on the coast. Doc Ball, the original surf photographer, later eulogized the Corona Del Mar scene in his 

We who knew it will never forget buzzing the end of that slippery, slimy jetty, just barely missing the crushing impact as the sea smashed into the concrete. Nor will we forget the squeeze act when 18 to 20 guys all tried to take off on the same fringing hook. And do you remember the days when you waited near that clanging bell buoy for the next set to arrive? Corona Del Mar’s zero surf was hell on the yachtsmen but—holy cow—what stuff for the kamaainas. Yes! Those were the days.

At some point in the 1930s, Gene Smith got a job as a lifeguard at Corona Del Mar. Back then, you could sleep on the beach, and that’s what he did—only with a slight modification. Finding an existing depression in the cliffs, he hollowed out a larger area he could use to get out of the elements and to sleep at night. This cave was remembered by many a surfer of the period and may have been inhabited by Gene more than once during the 1930s and possibly in the 1940s.

Just to the north, across Newport Harbor, on Balboa Peninsula, stood the mighty Rendezvous Ballroom. Well before Dick Dale and his Fender-guitar-dominated surf music of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Balboa’s Rendezvous Ballroom was already a lively scene for dancing and partying. From the late 1920s on up until World War II, it was a gathering place of the young and a showcase for the swing music of the day.

The Rendezvous opened on March 24, 1928, between Washington and Palm Avenues, along what is now Oceanfront Boulevard. Bordered by a massive beachfront parking lot, 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 1,500 couples and had a 64-foot-long soda fountain.

This music and dancing must have drawn 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 was no bridge between Corona Del Mar and Balboa, just the channel.

Photojournalist Craig Lockwood later explained how Gene got around that obstacle:

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— then paddled across the channel, changed under the Pavilion’s pier where there was a little boat house, and then wandered across the street to the Rendezvous.

He'd go "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 smudge or, more commonly, blood. Afterward, it was back under the Pavilion, change, roll everything back up, and paddle back across to the Corona side.

Tarzan visited the Hawaiian Islands for the first time at some point in the mid-'30s. He likely emulated the approach of Whitey Harrison and Pete Peterson, who made the trek as steamship stowaways. He was befriended by members of the crew, who kept him hidden in the ship’s lifeboats.

Following his second trip to Hawaii, aboard the 

 in April 1937, Tarzan set up at Waikiki. Amazingly for a haole fresh off the boat, he scored a job as lifeguard and beachboy at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. By the end of the decade, he'd become famous for a particular workout where he'd paddle his hollow board out from Waikiki, into the shipping lanes off 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. “He worked down at the Royal Hawaiian, [with] that group there—Sally Hale and all those guys. They took tourists out in canoes."

In the winter of 1937-’38, Gene and a visiting Whitey Harrison “went out to Haleiwa one afternoon,” recalled Wally. “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 the renewed appreciation for North Shore surf was rediscovered.

About this time, Gene’s sister Phyllis came out from the Mainland and also got a job at the Royal Hawaiian. 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 fought suitors who made undue advances.

Of course, he fought at other times, and became known for not only his brawn, but his willingness to brawl. A pattern had been established at an early age and he just continued with it.

As Smith's reputation as a fighter grew, there were instances when he was 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 a vacant lot next to the Ala Moana Hotel, and there was heavy betting going on. Gene gave the wrestler a severe beating.

Around 1936, Gene got the idea to paddle between two of the Hawaiian Islands. Maybe he was inspired by his paddles out into the shipping lanes off Honolulu. Who knows, maybe he did his first one on a dare. It may be that his first interisland paddle was from Maui to Molokai, unescorted. Some of his old buddies claim Gene paddled between all the Hawaiian Islands and that the shorter-distance paddles were not publicized or even announced by Gene. The three we know of and have records for are:

1. Ilio Point, Molokai, to Makapuu, Oahu. Thirty-two miles in eight hours and 47 minutes; November, 1938.

2. Kaena Point, Oahu, to Koloa, Kauai. Nintey miles in 30 hours; October 14, 1940.

3. Upolu Point, Hawaii, to Kaupo, Maui. Forty miles in 12 hours; summer, 1945.

The 32 miles between the north shore of Molokai and the south shore of Oahu are part of the Kaiwi Channel—best known among surfers today as the channel that claimed the life of Eddie Aikau in 1978. These days, the channel attracts the world’s finest paddlers from around the world, for an annual race between the two islands. Gene was the first to paddle it. 

In a newspaper article printed soon afterward, entitled “Channel Surfer Lauds His Eight-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 article continued: "The board, 13-feet long and five inches deep, 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. A small spray shield was affixed toward the front of the board, and the only other addition was a pillow placed between chest and board.

the cabin cruiser that escorted him across the channel—"I had my doubts whether I would be able to stay on the board,” Gene told the paper. “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. The waves were coming around a point and in the darkness I couldn’t see them. I made several attempts before I was able to reach the 

, 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 man-of-war. Off Makapuu Point, I caught a wave and rode it 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 into this event, paddling 12 to 15 miles at a stretch. He kept himself to a special diet and ate only two foods during the paddle: dates and chocolate. Both, he said, work as "a quick-burning fuel. Laying flat on your stomach that way for a long, long time, it isn't so easy to digest food. Dates and chocolate are easy to digest. Avocados  are all right, too.”

Smith, at that point, did not think a longer paddle was possible. “The tax on the system is too great. A longer trip would be a terrific strain.”


But the lure of another marathon paddle drew Tarzan in a second time. On October 14, 1940, at 3:45 p.m., he left the beach at Kaena Point, Oahu, and pointed the nose of his 14-foot-long, 19-inch-wide surfboard toward the island of Kauai, 90 miles across the Kaiwi Channel. Thirty hours later, he landed at Koloa, Kauai. He had averaged about 2.75 miles per hour.

This 14-foot board was an improvement on its predecessor in that it was equipped with a compass and rudder, as well as a better splash shield. It weighed 90 pounds.

The paddle featured some of the elements of his first one—especially the stinging part with the Portuguese man-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.


Smith completed his series of interisland paddles in the summer of 1945, paddling the 40-mile Alenuihaha Channel between Hawaii and Maui.

He went unheralded and unescorted and his arrival was noted by only one man, Abel Kawaiaea. Recently, Linda Domen of the Kaupo General Store came forward to tell this story:

For over 20 years, I have looked at a little booklet with 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 gray-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 firsthand witness to tell me all about it.

Abel Kawaiaea told me that he was about 18 at the time, and he had ridden 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 broken loose from some fishing vessels way out there in the ocean somewhere. But as he watched 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 came ashore, he said to Abel, "Are there any motels around here?" That 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, and the next day they went down to Mokulau where Gene paddled his board around so that Nick could get the photos of him.

Some time before the US entered World War II, Gene came to know a son of the Ford family who owned a yacht named the 

. He was aboard during a long-distance sailing trip on the 

, when a devastating storm struck. One of the crew members was lost, along with all belongings, and the yacht was disabled. All remaining crew members were rescued by another ship and towed to Pago Pago. In New Zealand, without passport or money, Gene was taken in by the mother of noted actor Jon Hall. Gene then resorted to boxing as a way to earn money and eventually get him to Australia and then back to Hawaii.

Gene was married twice while at Waikiki. Both marraiges were brief. His brawny good looks and water skills enabled him to land small movie parts, and that’s how he met his first wife, Evelyn Thorn, a minor movie starlet of the time. They married in 1937 but the union did not last long. In 1940 or '41, Gene met Katharyn Agness Billhardt. She had to go back to the Mainland, but afterward returned on the 

—Gene paddling out to meet her. When her affluent father found out that Katharyn planned to marry Gene, he threatened to disown her. Undaunted, the two married in 1941. They divorced after two years.

Gene had just turned 30 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. At around the same time, Gene got a job as a policeman with the Honolulu Police Department, and became close friends with the sheriff. As the only haole on the force, Smith ran afoul of his own fellow policemen. One fateful night, he took a date to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, dropped her off at home after, then went to a downtown bar to have a drink with the sheriff. After the sheriff went home, Gene stayed at the bar, alone. Four of his fellow HPD officers caught him in an alley outside the bar and beat him brutally. Smith suffered a broken jaw, a broken leg, and a concussion. He was in the hospital for months and never fully recovered. According to his sister Phyllis, this episode caused Smith to become deeply paranoid and schizophrenic.

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. A local attorney, meanwhile, took up Gene’s case and successfully sued the Territory of Hawaii. Gene was awarded lifetime care, including medical, dental, and lodging. 

Tarzan’s trail then grew faint. We know little about the rest of his life. For more than three decades, from the early '50s to the early '80s, he was a loner, a mystery to his friends perhaps a mystery to himself.

He remained in Honolulu for a time, but eventually returned to Southern California, where his beach life had begun. Phyllis saw him for the last time in 1957 or '58. He was living as a recluse on a boat docked in the Ala Wai yacht harbor, much like Tom Blake. Phyllis said Gene’s physical and mental conditions were poor and deteriorating.

Tom Blake saw Gene 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 California, Tom wrote Santa Monica lifeguard lieutenant Tommy Zahn about him: “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."

In early 1972, Blake traded more correspondence with Zahn about the 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 arrange work for Gene, caretaking 40 acres in the lower Salton Sea area. He had it squared away with the owner, but after repeated invitations, Smith 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. Please tell Gene the desert will always be here.” 

In keeping with the rest of his life, Gene’s final decade was marked by physical aggression. Two particular fights in the late 1970s took him down for the count. The first occurred around 1977, when Gene was in his mid-60s. At a Safeway store in Santa Monica, he was mistaken as a shoplifter and was badly beaten by two or three store guards. He sued Safeway, again won in court, and was again bankrolled for a while.

After recuperating from that fight and court case, Gene, to the amazement of anybody still in contact with him, flew alone to Paris, France. There was another severe altercation, which landed him in a Paris hospital. 

In the early 1980s, and again in a move that broke his known pattern, Gene left the coast for the California desert, finally taking Tom Blake up on his earlier offer. He left behind his life as a waterman. He also left behind a paddleboarding record of achievement that remains unbeaten. Where his time records were eventually broken by others, they were done using technically-advanced equipment unavailable in the 1930s and ’40s. 

In the end, Gene Smith proved his father wrong: He did amount to something.

Dutch Horton was the last of Tarzan's beach friends to hear anything from him after he retreated to the desert. It was a postcard thanking him for kindness he had shown Gene during his last convalescence. The postcard was postmarked from Indio, but Gene’s last known address was 70 miles south of Indio, in Brawley, 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.

Eugene Cloyde Smith—“Tarzan” to us—finally quit fighting in April 1986. He died in the desert, not far from Tom Blake’s old stomping grounds.

"TARZAN REDUX: CHAPTER FILL-INS FROM THE LIFE OF GENE SMITH," by MALCOLM GAULT-WILLIAMS (2004)

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