Over the next few months, I am planning to re-watch all the Tarzan movies and TV series I own (and hopefully get hold of a few I don't have).
Last week I watched all of the Johnny Weismuller Tarzans. JW made 12 Tarzan movies between 1932 and 1948....six for the MGM studios and six for RKO studios.
When MGM hired Johnny, he wasn't an actor (he had appeared in bit parts in two productions of no importance) but he was very famous for his multiple gold medal wins at the last two Olympics. He was well known to the general public as the Michael Phelps of his day.
The MGM Movies -
TARZAN THE APEMAN ('32)
TARZAN AND HIS MATE ('34)
TARZAN ESCAPES ('36)
TARZAN FINDS A SON ('39)
TARZAN'S SECRET ADVENTURE ('41)
TARZAN'S NEW YORK ADVENTURE ('42)
Many consider these the best versions of the character produced so far. I personally love the Weismuller films (they were the first I saw) and like the MGM productions more than the RKO ones. But I am also a fan of the novels, and they don't follow the books other than being about a white man raised by apes in the jungle. If you want to see some of the most awesome non CGI/animated tree swinging in any Tarzan movie, you must watch the MGM films. Most of the tree stuff was shot from a little distance to hide things...but they had to have hired circus performers to do the stunt work. Tarzan swings through the treetops at breathtaking speed, flies through the open air grabbing vines, and does flips and dives off of the vines into the trees.
In the six MGM movies, Maureen O'Sullivan plays the British Jane Parker (in the novels, Jane PORTER is American) who falls in love with the ape man when he saves her and her father during a safari to his area of the jungle. In another change from the novels, Tarzan's area of the jungle exists at the top of the Mutia Escarpment....a sheer cliff mountain rising thousands of feet straight up out of the jungle. The base of the mountain is the territory of a tribe of natives that kill and torture anyone who wanders in.
The censorship board of the times (the Hays Commission) jumped all over the early movies for it's sex and violence (some family groups actively complained about Jane living with Tarzan without being properly married). The second in the series, TARZAN AND HIS MATE, was particularily hit by the Commission. There was a three minute segment of a totally nude Jane swimming with Tarzan that was shot....and the studio forced to remove from the picture. This footage was presumed lost forever until it was found in the late '90s and restored to prints. This was the one and only appearance of the skimpy Jane jungle outfit. It was considered too revealing, and a more modest suit was used in the later movies.
In the fourth movie, Johnny Sheffield came on as "Boy"....a child they find in a crashed airplane and then raised as their own. They had to "find" a son, because without Tarzan and Jane being married, they were allowed to have children of their own. Sheffield appeared in nine of the Weismuller Tarzan movies, and then went on to appear as "Bomba" the Jungle boy in another twelve movies.
The MGM movies were hits both critically and financially.....but after the sixth one in 1942....with WWII under way causing the loss of the overseas boxoffice and O'Sullivan wanting out of the role of Jane....the studio dropped the series.
The RKO studios then picked up Weismuller and Sheffield for another series of movies.
The RKO films -
TARZAN TRIUMPHS ('43)
TARZAN'S DESERT MYSTERY ('43)
TARZAN AND THE AMAZONS ('45)
TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD WOMAN ('46)
TARZAN AND THE HUNTRESS ('47)
TARZAN AND THE MERMAIDS ('48)
RKO was a smaller studio...so the budgets for the next six movies were reduced. They had lesser known guest stars, and many scenes and effects from the MGM movies were not allowed to be used. With the departure of O'Sullivan as Jane from the series...her character was written as being back in England helping her family during the war for the next two movies. Then actress Brenda Joyce was brought in to play Jane in the next four Weismuller films and in the first of the Lex Barker series Tarzan's Magic Fountain (1949).
Some other major changes you will notice from the studio move is.....Tarzan seems to have moved to a different part of Africa. There is no more mention of the Mutia Escarpment, all black Africans disappear, and he is now surrounded by lost cities of white/lighter skinned people. The Burroughs novels had plenty of lost cities in them....but Tarzan had to pass through areas with black Africans to get there. In the RKO pics, they are not seen.
In the last six movies....Tarzan fights Nazis, Arabs, giant spiders, octopus, leopard men, and what looks like Polynisian natives. Boy, who started as a seven year old in Tarzan Finds a Son grows up to a strapping 15 year old in his last of the series Tarzan and the Huntress. He was written out of the last of the series as being away to school in England.
All in all.....the Weismuller films are fun to watch. They run from great to so-so. They don't really represent the novels, but they are some of the best known and loved filmed versions of the characters.
