they cut it, so it was all a waste.” Even though the documentary contains a lot of interesting informa- tion, it shows signs of being rushed. A scripted nar- rator could have condensed the material and formed effective bridges; instead, Behlmer is called upon to provide off-the-cuff segues during his interview— some of which are awkwardly phrased—and, after a while, his enthusiasm starts to wane. A smattering of short subjects begins with
“Schnarzan the Conqueror,” an excised chunk from MGM’s larger HOLLYWOOD PARTY of 1934, featuring Jimmy Durante as a hirsute, wisecrack- ing ape-man chasing Lupe Velez in cavewoman attire, In a very surprising shot, a furry lei flips up to reveal her tasseled breasts. An “MGM on Loca- tion” promotional short documents a day’s film- ing of TARZAN FINDS A SON! at Silver Springs, Florida, including footage of cameraman Glenn Smith and director Richard Thorpe at work (the camera magazines are labeled with the working title TARZAN IN EXILE), as well as Weissmuller and Sheffield swimming in front of the park’s much-publicized photo submarines. The Voice- of-God narrator cautions Weissmuller, who hurts his elbow at one point, not to rub all his orange tanning makeup off and fabricates a rumor that “Johnny wants to come out of the treetops and play drawing room parts in-between Tarzan pic- tures.” We also get a peak at two of the rubber alligators we’re told cost $2,000 each, as they’re being unloaded from crates and carried by crew- men down to the water’s edge. A third short, RO- DEO DOUGH, uses a comic set-up to showcase documentary footage of a celebrity gathering. Laboriously comical hitchhikers Sally Payne and Mary Treen are picked up by Johnny Weissmuller and wind up riding his prize bull at the star-studded Palm Springs rodeo where DETOUR’s Tom Neal announces. It’s interesting to note that Weissmuller, who was always so at ease in nothing but a loin- cloth, looks like he’s about to asphyxiate in cowboy attire, and fails to say his one line—“Uh-huh”— convincingly, even though he gets to repeat it about four times during the 10m film. So much for that drawing-room picture career, Johnny! Finally, trailers for all six films have been
rounded up, most of which plug Weissmuller as “The One... The Only... The Real Tarzan.” Aping the “Monster Talks” gimmick from BRIDE OF FRAN- KENSTEIN, the TARZAN ESCAPES preview adver- tises “A Tarzan that talks!” while TARZAN AND HIS MATE’s trailer opens unusually with a montage of
O’Sullivan and Weissmuller in a charming promotional pose, circa 1939.
people reading about Burroughs’ ape-man in vari- ous media (children pouring over the Sunday strip, an old gentleman perusing a novel, a young couple studying a magazine spread). It then crazily juxta- poses scenes from the film with cheerful, inappro- priate classical music and makes the sensational claim “Never will it be surpassed”—which, in this rare case, turned out to be absolutely true! When TARZAN’S NEW YORK ADVENTURE
failed to bring home the ivory, a financially strapped MGM passed on renewing Johnny Weissmuller’s contract... however, it—as well as Sheffield’s—was readily snatched up by RKO’s Sol Lesser, who kept the series afloat for another six features.5 Already enjoying a great career at MGM, Maureen O’Sullivan was not enticed to swing over to RKO, forcing Lesser to write Jane out of his storylines for two consecutive pictures until PIL- LOW OF DEATH’s Brenda Joyce (a blonde, as Burroughs described) took over the role. Mirror- ing the direction of Universal’s SHERLOCK HOLMES series, budgets decreased while plots became in- creasingly outrageous, with Tarzan and Boy called upon to battle Nazis, dinosaurs and mermaids. Here’s the heartiest “Ungawa!” this reviewer
can muster for Warner to release a second TARZAN COLLECTION, this one devoted to the cheaper but stranger RKO run.
NOTES
1. Hollywood liked to strip brutish literary characters of their dialogue: for example, the Monster of FRANKENSTEIN (1931), who was articulate in Mary Shelley’s novel, is rendered mute in the Universal film.
2. Cheeta was not a character from the novels, wherein Tarzan’s companion was a monkey named Nkima. It has been estimated that four different chimps—some male, some female—portrayed Cheeta during the MGM run; and some of these chimps continued acting the part in subsequent Tarzan productions. The name is alternately spelled “Cheetah.”
3. The MGM P.R. machine created the myth that the Tarzan yell was the work of their sound department—an elec- tronically enhanced mixture of human and animal sounds—but years later Maureen O’Sullivan confirmed that it was nothing but Weissmuller’s own voice. Later in life, Weissmuller would often sound the cry in public, to the joy of fans and the chagrin of the unenlightened!
4. Of course, there are no tigers in Africa, a mistake that Burroughs himself once made in his books.
5. The RKO Tarzan films starring Weissmuller are: TARZAN TRIUMPHS (1943), TARZAN’S DESERT MYSTERY (1943), TARZAN AND THE AMAZONS (1945), TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD WOMAN (1946), TARZAN AND THE HUNTRESS (1947), TARZAN AND THE MERMAIDS (1948). After Weissmuller departed, Lesser continued making Tarzan films for RKO, first with Lex Barker, then with Gordon Scott in the title role.
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