Tarzan The Ape Man Film Series
Kimbery Challacombe
Tarzan, a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first appeared in the 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes, and then in twenty-four sequels by Burroughs and numerous more by other authors. The character proved immensely popular and quickly made the jump to other media, first and most notably to comics and film.
The earlier Tarzan films were silent pictures adapted from the original Tarzan novels which appeared within a few years of the character's creation. With the advent of talking pictures, a popular Tarzan movie franchise was developed, which was anchored by actor Johnny Weissmller in the title role, which lasted from 1932 to 1948. Tarzan films under Weissmller often featured the character's chimpanzee companion, Cheeta. Later Tarzan films after Weissmller have been occasional and somewhat idiosyncratic.
The most popular series of Tarzan films began with Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), starring Johnny Weissmller and Maureen O'Sullivan. Weissmller, the son of ethnic-German immigrants from the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary, was already well known as a five-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming. He became the most famous and longest-lasting screen Tarzan, starring as the Ape Man in a total of twelve films, through 1948, the first six produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the final six from RKO. The beauteous and scantily clad O'Sullivan was a major factor in the early popularity of the series. The role of Jane in the films was reduced after O'Sullivan departed in 1942 following the sixth film in the series (and the last for MGM), Tarzan's New York Adventure. Two Jane-less films followed before Brenda Joyce took over the role for the last four Weissmller Tarzan films.
Starting afresh with an extremely free adaptation of Tarzan of the Apes which threw out everything that had gone before, the Weissmller series was a boon to the franchise if not to the character. In contrast to the articulate nobleman of Burroughs's novels, Weissmuller's Tarzan was a natural hero with a limited vocabulary. The ersatz pidgin of his dialogue has often been mocked as "Me Tarzan, you Jane," although that particular line was never spoken in any of the films (see insert).
Tarzan and Jane were clearly married in the novels, but their legal status was left ambiguous in the Weissmuller films, even though they shared a jungle treehouse and (particularly in the second film of the series, Tarzan and His Mate) a strong sexual chemistry. In keeping with Motion Picture Production Code requirements, their son "Boy" was found and adopted rather than born to Jane. The "Boy" character, played by Johnny Sheffield, appeared in eight consecutive films in the series, starting with Tarzan Finds a Son (1939). Weissmller's yodel-like "Tarzan yell" became so associated with the character that it was sometimes dubbed into later films featuring different actors. Cheeta the chimpanzee provided comic relief through the series.
Due to complex licensing issues relating to Tarzan, a number of competing films starring other actors were made during the Weissmller period. The first of these was Tarzan the Fearless (1933), released as both a 12-chapter serial and as an edited feature film under the same title. It starred another Olympic swimmer, 1932 gold medalist Buster Crabbe, and was the first Tarzan film produced by Sol Lesser, later to become producer of the franchise when it moved to RKO. Crabbe went on to a career in B-films and television, including portrayals of space opera heroes Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.
The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935), hearkening back to the original concept of the character as an intelligent Englishman, was a serial featuring Herman Brix that was reedited into two feature films, the first released in the same year and with the same title as the serial, and the second, Tarzan and the Green Goddess released in 1938. Edgar Rice Burroughs had a financial interest in the production. Brix, another Olympian (shotput) changed his name in 1939 and, as Bruce Bennett, enjoyed a long career in film and television.
Tarzan's Revenge, released in 1938, starred Glenn Morris, gold medal winner in the Olympic decathlon in 1936, a feat documented in part two of Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia. Morris was thus the fourth Olympian to play Tarzan. His co-star was Olympic swimmer Eleanor Holm who won a gold medal in 1932 and was expelled from the 1936 Olympics under controversial circumstances. She played a Jane-like character named Eleanor. This film was also produced by Sol Lesser. It was poorly reviewed, causing Morris to abandon any thoughts of a further film career.
With the exception of The New Adventures of Tarzan, which was partially filmed in Guatemala, the Tarzan movies of this period were mostly filmed on Hollywood sound stages and backlots, with stock jungle and wildlife footage edited into the final product.
After Tarzan and the Mermaids in 1948, Weissmuller retired from the series, believing that he was now too old to play the loincloth-clad character. He went on, however, to appear in a long series of similar adventures wearing a safari suit as Jungle Jim.
The Weintraub productions, including the Ron Ely television series (see below), dropped the character of Jane and portrayed Tarzan as an intelligent but apparently rootless adventurer. The Mike Henry entries, starting with Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966), were produced at the height of the James Bond craze, and had a well-tailored Tarzan jetting around the world to take on dangerous missions. In contrast to most earlier Tarzan films, the Weintraub productions were in color and were shot in exotic locations such as Kenya, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, and Brazil.
After 1970, the movie Tarzan went on hiatus until 1981, when MGM released its third version of Tarzan, the Ape Man with Miles O'Keeffe in the title role and Bo Derek as Jane. The film was financially successful, but critically panned.
The next live-action Tarzan movie was Tarzan and the Lost City (1998) which starred Casper Van Dien. Essentially a follow-on to Greystoke, this film was set in the 1920s and attempted to capture the flavor of some of the later novels in the Tarzan series, in which the ape-man encountered increasingly fantastic civilizations hidden in the deep jungles.
The latest live-action Tarzan film The Legend of Tarzan (2016), produced by Warner Brothers and Jerry Weintraub & directed by David Yates, was released on July 1, 2016. It stars Alexander Skarsgrd and Margot Robbie as Tarzan and Jane, along with Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz and Djimon Hounsou. The new approach blended the characters and the setting from the Burroughs novels with the events of the Belgian Congo in the late 1880s and historical figures with a significant role at the time, such as Leon Rom as portrayed by Waltz.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]
Disney's animated Tarzan (1999) marked a new beginning for the ape man, taking its inspiration equally from Burroughs and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Its major innovations were recasting the original fictitious ape species that adopted Tarzan as gorillas and turning William Cecil Clayton, his paternal cousin and rival for the affections of Jane in the early novels, into a brawny out-and-out villain known only as "Clayton." Tarzan was voiced by actor Tony Goldwyn with a Tarzan yell vocalized by Brian Blessed and Jane by Minnie Driver.
In 2013, Germany's Constantin Film released a Tarzan 3D animated feature in CGI with motion capture. Reinhard Klooss directed.[15][16][17] Kellan Lutz and Spencer Locke voiced Tarzan and Jane Porter, respectively.[18] The film opened in a number of countries in late 2013 and early 2014, but received mostly negative reviews and as a result no theatrical release was planned for the U.S. Instead, the film was released directly to DVD and Blu-ray in the U.S. in August 2014.
The film Tarzan corpus also includes a number of documentaries, most of them either made for television or to accompany video sets of Tarzan movies, a number of derivative foreign-language productions from China, India, and Turkey, and various spoofs and parodies. Among the latter is Starzan, a Philippine Cinema comedy film loosely based on the original Tarzan franchise satirizing western entertainment. It stars Filipino comedic actor Joey De Leon as Starzan, Rene Requiestas as "Chitae", and Zsa Zsa Padilla as Jane.
Steve Sipek also known as Steve Hawkes[19] played Tarzan in two films produced by a Spanish company and intended for world markets. The first was variously titled Tarzn en la gruta del oro/King of the Jungle/Tarzan in the Golden Grotto (1969) and portions were filmed in Suriname, Florida, Africa, Spain and Italy, with interruptions when the producers ran out of money. Sipek claimed the film company could not pay the huge licensing fees from Edgar Rice Burroughs' estate and settled for the name "Zan" or "Karzan"[20] for the character.[21]
Tarzan, a musical stage adaptation of the 1999 animated feature, opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway on May 10, 2006. The show, a Disney Theatrical production, was directed and designed by Bob Crowley. The show played its final performance July 8, 2007. Tarzan was played by Josh Strickland. Jane was played by Jenn Gambatese. Terk, Tarzan's best friend, was played by Chester Gregory. Kerchak, Tarzan's ape father was played by Shuler Hensley and Robert Evan. Kala, Tarzan's ape mother was played by Merle Dandridge. Professor Porter (Jane's father) was played by Tim Jerome. Mr. Clayton (Jane's "love interest") was played by Donnie Keshawarz. And Young Tarzan was played by Daniel Manche, Dylan Riley Snyder, J. Bradley Bowers, and Alex Rutherford.
Tarzan also appeared in the Tarzan Rocks! show at the Theatre in the Wild at Walt Disney World Resort's Disney's Animal Kingdom. The show closed in 2006. The Tarzan Encounter currently plays in Disneyland Park (Paris), similar to the show at Disney's Animal Kingdom.
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