More From PROJECT: WEISSMULLER!

TARZAN FINDS A SON! (1939)

Yes, the exclamation mark is part of the title.  

Hi folks.  Back again to continue my project of watching and commenting upon all of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan pictures, in order.  Next up is the fourth entry in the series which finds Tarzan becoming more domesticated by the day.  Notably milder than the Pre-code installments discussed last time, this one still packs a bit of a punch when we get to the captured-by-cannibals sequence.

The film begins with a plane in trouble over the jungle.  Its passengers are the doomed Lansings, from England, and their infant son.  In a nod to the Tarzan book series, it is noted that the Mr. Lansing and his son are heirs to the house of Greystoke.  For the uninitiated, the literary Tarzan was actually the son of Lord Greystoke. This may be the only time that the name is mentioned in the film series, but I'll let you know.  After the inevitable plane crash, a pretty nice looking miniature effect, the baby is rescued by some passing chimps shortly before villainous natives discover the wreck.  The boy ends up in the hands of Tarzan and Jane who take him to raise, naming him "Boy."

Tarzan's lavishly appointed tree house with its elephant-powered elevator and other Flintstone-esque amenities actually had made its debut in Tarzan Escapes (1936) but is given even more attention here as the series begins its slow turn into a more family-friendly fantasy.  The comic relief antics of Cheetah aren't given quite as much time here as they will be in later pictures, but you can see it coming.  There had actually been a three year gap between this and the previous film as MGM's interest in the series had waned and the studio's option on the Tarzan character had been allowed to lapse.  In the interim, the decidedly B-level independent feature TARZAN'S REVENGE (1938) had been produced by Sol Lesser, from whom we will hear again later.  That film featured Olympic Decathlon champ Glen Morris as Tarzan.  Morris is known to have had exactly three total acting credits in his lifetime, including this one, which should tell you something about his success filling Weissmuller's....uh...loincloth.  But, hey, he was an Olympic champion and was later seriously wounded in action during the war, so maybe we should cut him some slack on his acting chops. Eventually, MGM decided to have another go at the franchise and the result was this very respectable entry in the saga.

After a five year jump in the story, the Tarzan Family's peace is disturbed by a safari led by Boy's cousins who stand to inherit a million pounds if they can prove that everyone in the plane died.  Tarzan and Jane do not disabuse them of this notion, claiming Boy as their own child. Eventually, of course, the greedy Brits figure out who Boy is and instead of leaving him with Tarzan and Jane, who would be happy to support their subterfuge, and returning to England to collect their cash, they decide to take Boy back to civilization and become corrupt executors of his trust fund, or something.  Anyway, they manage to convince the ever innocent Jane that this will be in the child's best interests.  Tarzan is violently against the idea, however, so Jane gets him out of the way by trapping him in a deep ravine before heading out to guide the party back to civilization.  In trying to avoid the terrifying Gabonis who have plagued the previous three pictures, the safari runs afoul of the not-much-better Zambilis and in short order find themselves prisoners awaiting sacrifice.

Like the Gambonis, the Zambilis have a pretty dark fate in store for their guests.  The victims are taken one by one to a ceremonial hut filled with chanting natives where they are trussed to an alter; unspecified organs are removed with big curved knives and held aloft while the victim squirms and gasps and then a big stone hammer-like thing swings down and bashes out their brains.  Pretty dark stuff for a picture from 1939. The film manages to depict this in just enough detail that the viewer understands what is happening without seeing the actual gore.  Bravo.  As you might suppose, Tarzan gets out of his predicament and storms to the rescue with a herd of elephants and a few chimps, some of whom are clearly Little People in costumes.  Here the film tries to shake off the horrors of the last few minutes with some comic relief involving chimps battering Zambilis and even an old Three Stooges-style gag where Boy bops the natives on the head with coconuts as they run past one-by-one.  

In the melee, Jane has taken a spear to the back and as she fades away in Tarzan's arms, he forgives her betrayal and begs her not to die.  And she doesn't.  As a matter of fact, Maureen O'Sullivan had not been at all keen on continuing the role of Jane and the script called for the character's graceful demise at this point.  Apparently, however, MGM and/or test audiences found this ending to be such a bummer that Jane got better with a quick reshoot.  O'Sullivan would ultimately be convinced to play Jane two more times before she, and MGM, left Tarzan behind forever.

Here's a nice shot from the sacrificial hut.

Boy is played by the cute and charismatic Johnny Sheffield, who would return seven more times in the series.  Sheffield had appeared in a few small parts prior to this and explained later that he would never have gotten this plum role if Weissmuller hadn't taken the boy under his wing and coached him in the swimming skills the part called for.   The film does include a good deal of swimming and one pretty impressive scene in which the 7 year old keeps pace with the Olympic champ (and a baby elephant) during an underwater swim. Boy does a lot of running, leaping, swimming and swinging in this picture and I never detected a stunt double, though I'd be surprised if their weren't one in there somewhere.  Sheffield's athletic prowess stuck with him pretty far into adulthood and he enjoyed a post-Tarzan career fairly similar to Weissmuller's, playing Bomba the Jungle Boy in a string of twelve kiddie matinee pictures, another series I need to catch up with.  Sheffield did just fine as Boy and while a lot of purists prefer the earlier, darker Tarzan films, before he acquired a  family and a tricked out tree-house, the emotional dynamics between the three are quite effective, at least in this picture.  The boisterous father/son affection between Tarzan and Boy comes across as quite genuine, perhaps because, as Sheffield later claimed, Weissmuller was an important father figure and mentor to the child in real life.  And I challenge any parent to watch the scene in which Jane encourages Boy to squeeze through a small gap in the stockade fence and "never look back," while she remains behind to face the sacrificial altar, without getting just the tiniest bit choked up.

 

That's it for now.  Up next--TARZAN'S SECRET TREASURE

Project: Weissmuller!

One of my viewing projects of late--one among many--is an attempt to watch the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan series from the 30s and 40s.  My goal is to watch the entire series from start to finish and present my impressions here.  That's a tall order as Weissmuller did 12 of these pictures over 16 years, 6 fairly lavish studio productions at MGM followed by 6 mostly B-level features for RKO.  As an aside, once he no longer looked good in loin cloth, Weissmuller donned a safari outfit and pith helmet and starred as Jungle Jim in a series of 16(!) kiddie matinee level programmers in the late 40s and early 50s.  Jungle Jim was a popular comic strip of the day which depicted the adventures of a safari guide with a lot of animal friends.  That series had its moments and perhaps I'll try to get through it once I've finished the Tarzans, but it's an extra-low budget affair.  The budget was so low in fact that when the producers' license to use the Jungle Jim character ran out, they made a few more pictures with Weissmuller in the same costume, doing the same stuff, but now just called "Johnny Weissmuller." Nobody noticed.

But I digress.

Weissmuller was a former Olympic swimmer who was tapped for the part primarily for his physique and  athletic ability.  Fortunately, he turned out to be something of a natural actor in this particular role,  conveying pathos, anger and affection for his mate quite effectively through facial expression and body language when the script called for it.  20-year old Maureen O'Sullivan would take the role of Jane Parker and continue in the part for the remaining 5 MGM pictures.  Venerable British character actor C. Aubrey Smith would play Jane's father in the first film.  Finally, the cast was rounded out by Neil Hamilton as Jane's conflicted-but-decent suitor, Harry Holt.  Hamilton would become most well-known for the role he played 34 years later as Commissioner Gordon on the BATMAN television series.

TARZAN THE APE MAN was released in April, 1932 and performed splendidly at the box office.  As an exciting adventure picture, it holds up pretty well today with a number of exciting sequences and a sometimes grim tone that still packs a punch.  The film, like much of the series, is definitely politically-incorrect in both its depiction of the African population and the callous attitude toward African wildlife shown by the white safari members.  If you can get past these artifacts of the times, the films in the series, particularly the early ones, carry a persistent theme of conflict between frequently corrupt and hypocritical "civilized" Brits and Americans and the purer, natural lifestyle of Tarzan and his mate. Jane and the couple's son, Boy, are repeatedly tempted by the technology and amenities brought to the jungle by Western expeditions, to the point of lying to Tarzan or betraying him "for his own good" on several occasions.  These situations always end up with the safari and Tarzan's family in the clutches of the local cannibals, in need of dramatic rescue.

In the first film, the climactic rescue comes about because Jane, her father and Harry have been captured by a tribe of vicious dwarves (NOT pygmies, Harry points out) who are preparing to sacrifice them to a hideous ape-god thing kept in a pit.  Of course, Tarzan shows up to do battle with the thing and the fight is one of the gorier episodes you'll find in a 30s studio picture.  In fact, the first two Weissmuller films were produced during the "Pre-code" era--the period from the inception of the talkies to about 1934 when Hollywood studios grew very lax in the enforcement of their rules concerning violent and sexual content.  As a result, films from this period frequently feature surprising amounts of sexual frankness, even nudity, as well as a level of violence and moral nihilism that wouldn't be seen in Hollywood pictures again until the late 60s.  TARZAN THE APE MAN contains several violent episodes, culminating in the gory battle with the ape-god which includes eye-gouging and throat-slitting with plenty of blood and grue.  The gorilla suit used in this sequence is not one of the more realistic I've ever seen, but it adds to the impression of the creature as some kind of crude, corrupted monster, rather than just a regular ol' gorilla.

If TARZAN THE APE MAN took advantage of Hollywood trends to up the ante on violence and general grimness, the next film took sex and violence to a whole new level.  Produced two years later, as the Pre-code period was winding down, TARZAN AND HIS MATE pushed the content boundaries in every way possible, particularly in terms of nudity and frightening, explicit violence.  TARZAN AND HIS MATE may be the pre-codiest Pre-code ever produced by a major Hollywood studio.  (Cecil B. DeMille's THE SIGN OF THE CROSS is another strong contender for this title.)  MATE contains so many instances of nudity that I lost count.  The most famous of these is Jane's four minute nude underwater swimming sequence (performed by a body-double).  The film also contains a lot of National Geographic-reminiscent instances of topless native women--except this isn't stock footage of actual Africans, these are California actresses carefully placed around the studio sets topless to add spice to the village scenes.   Even actor Paul Cavanagh, who plays the white villain of the piece, has a carefully composed nude scene climbing into a bathtub.  Lest you think it's all about nudity, you'll also see plenty of explicit violence with knives, spears and arrows piercing flesh Friday the 13th-style, right on camera.




TARZAN AND HIS MATE has a lot more going for it than just explicitness.  It's one of the most exciting jungle adventure films ever produced.  Once the action gets rolling, it seldom lets up.  The film also introduces the Gabonis--a cannibal tribe with white face paint who would menace Tarzan and his associates in several more pictures.  The depiction of the Gabonis is quite frightening and effective--heralded by distant rhythmic ceremonial chanting, they emerge from the jungle in a remorseless swarm, slaughtering safari members quickly and ruthlessly.  The Gabonis have no apparent motivation other than a desire to kill and nearly push the film into the horror genre whenever they appear.  TARZAN AND HIS MATE culminates with Jane and Harry trapped, pinned down by a contingent of spear-hurling natives and a pack of lions in a loud, roaring, frenzied set-piece.  The film is almost universally acknowledged as the best of the series.

The next installment, TARZAN ESCAPES (1936), works quite well as a standalone film but pales in comparison to its predecessors in nearly every way. Actually produced in 1935, the film was then re-edited and partially re-shot, in part to tone down a number of violent and frightening scenes that were no longer felt to be acceptable under the new Hollywood production code that had gone into effect shortly after the release of the previous film.  A comedy relief cockney fraidy-cat character was added and the film was generally made more family-friendly.  When watching the films in sequence, it becomes painfully obvious that a number of animal attack and Gaboni sequences have been lifted whole from MATE and dropped into this film.  The plot of ESCAPES is also rather familiar; again Tarzan comes to the rescue of a safari group, this time led by a two-faced villain who has been trying to capture the ape man and put him in a freak-show.  A number of borderline Pre-code elements remain in the picture--the Gabonis are still frightening and violent and their method of executing prisoners--a contraption which basically rips people in two--is depicted in a way that really pushed the newly-installed boundaries. This is the first of the series with borderline fantasy elements--if you don't count Tarzan's ability to communicate with animals--as the safari encounters the threat of giant lizards while crossing a primordial swamp.  Reportedly this is one of the sequences which was toned down, as the original lizard attacks were apparently quite gory.  Unfortunately, another sequence in the swamp was jettisoned from the film entirely--an attack by a swarm of giant vampiric bats!!  The excised footage from TARZAN ESCAPES is most likely gone forever but a restored "Director's Cut" of the picture remains a cherished film buff fantasy, keeping company with the lost KING KONG "Spider-Pit" sequence.

One more bit of business about TARZAN ESCAPES:  One of the added comic relief scenes involves cockney character actor Herbert Mundin doing a double-take at an odd jungle creature he spies.  The sequence is pretty short, but sharp-eyed classic horror film buffs may recognize legless performer Johnny Eck from MGM's notorious Pre-code FREAKS (1932) wearing a modified version of that film's "duck woman" costume that someone must have dug out of the wardrobe storage bins.  It's a welcome little Easter Egg for classic genre fans.  TARZAN ESCAPES was my favorite of the Weissmuller films for years, but probably only because I'd seen it several times before I ever saw TARZAN AND HIS MATE.  Now I recognize it as fine but flawed. 

Here is a Mexican lobby card with an interesting looking scene from the swamp sequence which did not make it into the final cut.

How I wish they hadn't messed with it.


That's it for now.  I'll be back with a look at the next three MGM pictures.