Lust & Loincloths/ Movie & TV Tarzans

            I remember being with my mother at the Palace Theater in Norwich, Connecticut when I was a young lad, watching musclebound Mike Henry in Tarzan and the Valley of Gold and she leaned in to me half-way through and asked “how do you like it?” I was too busy rearranging the coat over my lap to hide my boner when I croaked out, “I like it fine.” But definitely not for the reason she thought.

            Yes, I think Tarzan movies were a gateway drug for young, budding, gay men at one time. I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in the jungle with some muscly, barely-clad hunk, eat fruit, play with monkeys and swing through the trees on vines all day? And all that swimming in the raw and not having to worry about those pesky crocodiles because your man could wrestle them in the water and stab the shit out of them.

            I had read the Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan series. At least some of them. I was more partial to that writer’s Princess of Mars series, to be honest. But you couldn’t escape the movie and TV Tarzans. But there was something Intriguing about the idea of a young boy, marooned in the jungles of Africa after his parents die and raised by a kindly ape and named “Tarzan” which was “white skin” in ape language. 

            In the silent 1918 version the journey of young Tarzan is more detailed and surprisingly explicit. He loves running bare naked through the jungle with his animal friends. But suddenly he thirsts to wear clothes and steals a native’s loincloth while he has gone swimming.

            When they get to the older Tarzan, played by Elmo Lincoln, he is a big galoot in a wig, dressed in skins and furs. He resembles one of the cannibals in The Hills Have Eyes more than the vine-swinging stud we have come to know and lust for.

            There were movie Tarzans to follow but it wasn’t until Johnny Weissmuller, an Olympic swimming gold medal winner, took the part in 12 rousing films from 1932 to 1948 that this character caught fire with audiences. Watching those movies now it’s surprising how racy and violent the early ones were. In Tarzan and His Mate (1934) we see him swimming with Jane (played by the lovely Maureen O’Sullivan) and she’s completely naked (which was cut from all the television prints). And as for violence- in several of the films one of the popular native methods of disposing of a bad person was to tie them, by each arm and leg, to trees and then cut the ropes tearing them apart. Johnny was fine in those movies- he had a burly, solid presence and he only had to talk in clipped jungle speak. “Jane like fruit?” or “Me get food.” And honestly, how wonderful is Maureen O’Sullivan? She just has such warmth and sensuality, she anchors the movies. Brenda Joyce was her replacement, and while she was appealing she was no Maureen O’Sullivan.

             A nice addition was “son,” a baby abandoned in the jungle after a plane crash who is rescued by their chimp Cheeta. Tarzan and Jane adopt the child and he grows into Johnny Sheffield who continued to play that character until he started his own franchise with Bomba, the Jungle Boy. I have to admit I watched the whole first set of the Bomba movies during the pandemic and they were pretty stupid and all the same, but enjoyable as hell. 

            But how did Tarzan shave? That was a question I posed to my mother when I was young and she never had a satisfying answer. I also remember a dumb joke I heard around the schoolyard about how Tarzan got his famous yell. That he hollered to Jane to “Grab the vine” as he swung down to get her and then screamed out, “AAAAAHHHHHHHHH! Jane grab wrong vine!”

            Ron Ely, the sexy star of TV’s popular Tarzan series that ran on NBC from 1966 to 1968. He played a more educated Tarzan who wearied of civilization and returned to the jungle he loved. There was no Jane here which made this more spank-worthy for many gay fans. Ely did his own stunts in the shows and that resulted in occasional broken shoulders and several lion bites. Who says an actor doesn’t suffer for his art?

            Flash Gordon’s Buster Crabbe took a stab at loincloth-wearing in Tarzan The Fearless in 1933 but his hundred-watt smile and dull persona never caught on with the public.

            The same with Herman Brix who played The New Adventures of Tarzan in 1935. He had better luck when he changed his name to Bruce Bennett and played Joan Crawford’s tormented husband in Mildred Pierce.

            The blonde, athletic, strikingly handsome 6’ 4,” studly, Lex Barker played Tarzan in a series of movies (with revolving actresses playing Jane) for RKO in the late 40s and into the 50s. He was hot, and I love he had a cameo in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, but I’ve read too many sordid books about his relationship with actress Lana Turner and his sexual abuse of her daughter Cheryl, so it’s hard to watch his films now without wanting to reach through the screen and slap the shit out of him.

            Beefbag Gordon Scott had more luck in a series of 6 Tarzan movies. Scott also gleamed in Italian sword and sandal movies like Duel of the Titans, Gladiator of Rome, and my favorite Goliath and the Vampires. I was never into those pumped-up, muscleman Mr. Universe types at all but his face radiated a kind of kindness and strength. I’ve always loved him on screen for some reason and probably should make a pilgrimage to his grave in Valhalla, New York. Imagine- he’s in Valhalla. How perfect for the heroic hunk.

             The boyish, blonde, Denny Miller played the vine-swinger in a cheapie called Tarzan, the Ape Man in 1959 (which recycled footage from older Weissmuller movies), but had more luck in TV westerns. Later in life he wrote an autobiography wittily titled Didn’t You Used To Be….What’s His Name?

            Former stuntman Jock Mahoney played the jungle man in Tarzan Goes to India (1962) and Tarzan’s Three Challenges (1963), but had a more impressive career in a million movie westerns. One has to appreciate the irony that he played an older man in his last feature movie The End.

            Now we get to possibly my favorite Tarzan- Mike Henry, the former football star that slid into the loincloth for several movies in the 60s. What can I say about the strapping, square-jawed, ruggedly handsome Mike Henry? The three movies he shot back-to-back in 1965 aren’t much of anything. They kind of blur together. Was he a good actor? Oh, please. But dear God, was he hot. When he was filming one of the movies in Brazil his chimpanzee “Cheetah” took a dislike to the actor and chomped on his jaw requiring 20 stitches and Henry spent time in the hospital for monkey fever. Henry suffered ear infections, food poisoning, liver ailments, broken bones and was clawed by an enraged leopard. Small wonder that he turned down the TV series which went to Ron Ely.

            Miles O’Keefe was the muscular, long-tressed, strikingly handsome himbo in a Tarzan movie directed by John Derek to show off his beautiful wife Bo Derek as Jane. Why else would he include a scene where tribal elders strip her, wash her and paint her naked body than to titillate audiences that did not flock to this bomb. O’Keefe had better luck with sorcery and sandal films like Ator, and was good-natured about jokes aimed at him like, when, on Mystery Science Theater 3000 they quipped during the movie Cave Dwellers, “How much O’Keefe in in this film?” “Miles O’Keefe.”

            Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes was a big-budget 1984 adventure film directed by Hugh Hudson with Christopher Lambert in the lead and Andie MacDowell as Jane. Lambert made for a brooding, interesting Tarzan, and the early jungle scenes are violent and rousing. But much of the movie is when he is transported back to England as Lord John Clayton, heir to his grandfather’s fortune. “Tarzan” is never mentioned here. Ian Holm is quite good teaching John Clayton how to speak properly, first in French, then English- probably to explain away Lambert’s accent. (Lambert’s parents were French and he grew up in Geneva and then moved Paris in his teens). But the movie delivers in an entertaining way, although I pity the poor theater employee who had to put up all those title letters on the marquee.

            Tarzan heads to the Big Apple to avenge his ape mom’s death in the TV movie Tarzan in Manhattan in 1989. The long-haired, gorgeous, martial artist, Joe Lara played Tarzan and repeated the role later in Tarzan: The Epic Adventures TV series. He left acting to pursue a career in country music and tragically lost his life in a plane crash in 2021. 

            Handsome German-born Wolf Larson played an updated Ape Man in the Canadian series Tarzan which had him fighting for environmental rights with a bevy of scientists. I like pictures of what he looked like with his beefy bod and shag haircut but have never seen this series.

            Criminally cute Casper Van Dien (Starship Troopers) played the lead in Tarzan and the Lost City in 1998. It tries to pick up where Greystoke left off in England in 1911 on the eve of his marriage to Jane (Jane March). But he has to rush back to his beloved jungle to stop the evil explorer Nigel Ravens (Steve Waddington), who is burning a path to the legendary lost city of Opar. Savaged by critics, Variety predicted “Box office action will soon be as scarce as a map to the Lost City.” They were right.

            Brendan Fraser was an inspired choice for the comic box office hit George of the Jungle, a take-off on the Tarzan legend, where he lives happily with the apes and birds until his peace is shattered by a San Francisco heiress (Leslie Mann) searching for the legendary “White Ape.” Fraser plays it more bumbling and dopey/sweet and audiences found him incredibly appealing. Christopher Showerman wriggled into the loincloth for a kid-friendly sequel that Variety called “the funniest made-for-video sequel ever made on the Disney label.” Is that a compliment or a warning?

            Travis Fimmel was the Australian former Calvin Klein model, who, after heating up a Jennifer Lopez video, landed the role of Tarzan for a TV series in 2003, which CNN called “one of the five hottest things happening in entertainment right now.” Impossibly beautiful, Fimmel showed his chops as an actor later on the popular History Channel series- Vikings, playing legendary Viking leader Ragnar Loobrok. But scenes from the Tarzan TV series pilot of the long-haired beauty romantically sneaking in Jane’s (Sarah Wayne Callies) NYC window at night is watched repeatedly on Youtube by horny viewers. And with good reason. 

            The Legend of Tarzan (2016) was one of the last gasps appropriating the Edgar Rice Burroughs tale, starring handsome and buff Alexander Skarsgard in the John Clayton/Tarzan role. This isn’t an origin film. It’s just a lousy film. Clayton is living in an English manor with his wife Jane (Margot Robbie) and a seat at the House of Lords. Samuel L. Jackson plays a character based on reality- George Washington Williams- an American Civil War soldier and author who comes to warn Clayton about the dastardly slave labor going on in the Belgian Congo. So, it’s time for Clayton to tear off his shirt and rush into action. But where’s the loincloth? He wears pants? Really? And shortened ones too. Are those what is jokingly referred to as “flood pants,” or, maybe “Capri pants”? They were better suited to Mary Tyler Moore on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

            There’s a great sexy, mythic quality about this character. And an opportunity to showcase shirtless, muscular, good-looking, long-haired dreamboats to audiences. So maybe it’s time to resurrect this ape-raised hunk. Dear God, just don’t let it be Ansel Elgort.