Tag: Tarzan

This post has been corrected, as detailed below. Ron Ely followed in the loincloth of famed Tarzan actors as Johnny Weissmuller, Elmo Lincoln, Lex Barker, Gordon Scott and Mike Henry when he took on the role of Edgar Rice Burrough’s jungle hero in the 1966-68 NBC series “Tarzan.” The first season of the series has recently been released on DVD by Warner Archive. At 6’4,” with chiseled features and muscles to spare, Ely’s Tarzan was much closer to Burrough’s original creation, “Tarzan of the Apes,” which first appeared 100 years ago in All-Story magazine before being published as a novel in 1914. Ely’s Tarzan had been raised by the giant apes in the African jungle only to return to the Dark Continent after receiving his education. Though Tarzan still wore a loincloth, there was no Jane in the series. Comic ...

    As the “voice” of R2-D2 and Wall-E, Oscar-winning sound designer Ben Burtt might be the world’s foremost expert on movie robots, but when it comes to his own cinematic passions, his heart lies in the jungle. His favorite film of all time? “Tarzan and His Mate,” the 1934 film starring Johnny Weissmuller as Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ singular vine swinger. “I realized about 25 or 30 years ago that this film always gets to me right in the heart,” Burtt said. “I love adventure movies and it combines, of course, action and adventure with a really romantic story between Tarzan and Jane and at the end of the movie it all comes together as they give their calls to each other and they ride off on an elephant together. There’s something basic about it.” A new print of “Tarzan ...

It was 97 years ago this month that the Frank Munsey-owned pulp called All-Story Magazine introduced the world to a vivid new character with an especially memorable name: Tarzan of the Apes. A book (one of its many, many editons is shown here at right) followed two years later in 1914. The jungle hero would become an icon and, like Sherlock Holmes or Dracula, he became a persistent figure of interest to film and television producers. In 1918, Elmo Lincoln was the first to portray in him in film but Olympian Johnny Weissmuller, who swung on the vine for 12 films and 16 years, inhabited the character most successfully. Many others followed: Ron Ely was a more erudite Tarzan for 57 episodes of the 1966-1969 television series; the glowering Christopher Lambert took the character back to his feral roots in “Greystoke” in 1984; and Tony Goldwyn gave us ...