Tarzan #1: Elmo Lincoln, who actually slays a lion onscreen in the silent TARZAN OF THE APES.
Produced in 1918, just six
years after Burroughs penned his pulp novel of the same name, TARZAN OF THE APES (60m 18s; carelessly referred to on the disc’s menu as TARZAN AND THE APES) is the jungle lord’s first film adventure and quite faithful to its source. It remains the only adaptation to date that tells of Lord and Lady Grey- stoke’s adventures aboard a ship of mutineers, leading to their deposition on an unexplored West African beach. By the time a year transpires, both husband and wife perish, leaving behind an infant son who is plucked from the cradle by a caring she- ape named Kala and nursed as her own. Structurally confused and cinematically simplistic (much of the story unfolds like a child’s storybook, with a page of text followed by a cinemato- graphic “illustration”), the hour- long film is pretty evenly divided between Tarzan as a boy among the apes (for a study in how far makeup artistry has evolved,
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compare these rigid ape masks with the ones Rick Baker de- vised for GREYSTOKE) and as an adult (Elmo Lincoln) protect- ing a search party that includes
beloved Jane Porter (Enid Markey) and her scared-witless maid Esmeralda. It’s fun to watch the hefty Lincoln strike poses and comically beat his chest, but a bit dismaying to learn that the former D.W. Griffith contract player actually killed the poor old lion pitted against him. The end comes suddenly, with Tarzan re- turning Jane to her own kind and sadly shambling off before she calls back to him. Her final words are not treated to intertitles but are read easily enough from her lips: “I love you, Tarzan.” Lincoln and Markey returned for the rushed sequel of the same year, ROMANCE OF TARZAN, in which the tuxedo-attired ape-man fol- lowed Jane to America and res- cued her from bandits. Sadly, no prints have survived. Producer Sol Lesser cranked
out the next film on this set, TARZAN THE FEARLESS (1933, 85m 58s), to compete with MGM’s TARZAN THE APE MAN (1932), but was easily bribed by the studio to hold off releasing
The same year he played Kaspa the Lion Man in KING OF THE JUNGLE, Olympic swimmer Buster Crabbe recycled his leopard-skinned loincloth in TARZAN THE FEARLESS.
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