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The Tarzan German-Hollywood Connection extends beyond the Germanic Weissmuller. Certain Tarzan films were either directed by, written by, filmed by, or otherwise influenced by other Austrian and German-American film people.

The studio connection

The first six Weissmuller Tarzan pictures were MGM productions. The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio was the creation of the Austrian-American Marcus Loew, the Polish-born Samuel Goldwyn (Goldfish) and the Ukrainian-born Louis B. Mayer (Meir, of Austro-Hungarian parentage) between 1920 and 1924. (For more about Loew, Goldwyn, Mayer and MGM, see our Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer page.)

The director connection

In 1943, Austrian-born William (Wilhelm) Thiele (1890-1975) directed two Tarzan movies: Tarzan Triumphs and Tarzan's Desert Mystery. German-born director, Kurt Neumann (1906-1958) – best known for his sci-fi classic The Fly (1958) — supervised four Tarzan features between 1945 and 1953 (see film list). The script for the 1948 Tarzan film, Tarzan's Magic Fountain, was co-written by the German-American screenwriter and director Curt Siodmak (born 1902, Dresden, Germany).

	A Spanish film poster for Tarzan with Lex Barker. Barker was Tarzan in five films after Weissmuller's 12-film run. He later became a German film star in a series of Karl May westerns.

The Lex Barker connection

Lex Barker (1919-1973) was born Alexander Crichlow Barker, Jr. in Rye, New York. After several mediocre Hollywood films, Barker’s career got something of a boost when he succeeded Weissmuller as Tarzan in five jungle adventures between 1949 and 1953 (see titles on film list). When his Tarzan series ended, Barker switched to Hollywood Westerns. Around 1958, shortly after his divorce from Lana Turner, the American Barker left Hollywood for Europe, soon appearing in Franco-German-Italian “spaghetti Western” co-productions filmed in the “Wild West” of Yugoslavia — much less successfully than another young American by the name of Clint Eastwood.

After appearing in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita in 1960, Barker became better known in Germany than in the U.S. He was popular with German filmgoers as “Old Surehand” or “Old Shatterhand,” characters in films based on the Western adventure stories by the German author Karl May. Barker was cast as the paleface friend of the Indian Winnetou in films called Der Schatz im Silbersee (1962), Winnetou I (1963, titled Apache Gold in English), Winnetou II (1964), Old Shatterhand (1964), and Winnetou III (1965). His last two films, A Place Called Glory (1965) and Woman Times Seven (1967), were also European productions. Besides Turner, Arlene Dahl was also briefly (1951-52) one of his five wives. Barker succumbed to a heart attack in 1973.

Lex Barker on the Web:
See the Lex Barker.com site for more about the actor (in English and German).

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• Weissmuller’s wife at the time of his death, Maria Bauman, claimed she had been married as a teenager in Germany prior to the outbreak of WWII, when her husband was drafted, sent to the Russian front, and killed. He left her the mother of a baby girl, Lisa. She then married a flyer who was shot down only eight months later. She was questioned by the Nazis because a lawyer friend of the family, accused of working with the resistance, had been hanged. All friends were suspect. Released for lack of evidence, she went to Santa Barbara, California after the war to live with her uncle. She married again, but this ended in divorce. She met Weissmuller during the time his marriage to Allene Gates was breaking up. He was in financial difficulty at the time, and he and Allene were having problems. Johnny’s last matrimonial venture was his longest, but Maria was not popular with Johnny’s children, and her true background is still a mystery.


• Weissmuller’s first wife, Bobbe Arnst, was paid $10,000 by MGM to divorce Johnny in 1932. The studio preferred Johnny single for publicity purposes.

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Interview with Johnny Weissmuller, Jr.
 

• The movie-Tarzan’s favorite utterance, “Ungawa” (also spelled “Umgawa” and several other ways), was the invention of MGM screenwriter Cyril Hume (and Weissmuller discoverer). For his books, Burroughs created a complete ape language. Hume, who adapted Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932) for the screen, reduced Tarzan's language abilities considerably by inventing the all-purpose command “Ungawa,” which could mean up, down, halt or go. (For more about the ERB's Language of the Great Apes see the Burroughs’ Tarzan Dictionary (outside link).


• Weissmuller’s famous Tarzan yell was heard in other MGM Tarzan movies in which he did not appear. A different yell was used in the RKO films, including those with Weissmuller.


• The most famous words never spoken: Next to “Play it again, Sam” (never spoken in Casablanca), the honor should go to “Me Tarzan, you Jane,” a line never heard in any Tarzan film.

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• Truly trivia: “Tarzan” means “white skin.” The German name of the actor best remembered as Tarzan, Weissmüller, means “wheat/white miller.” “Weiss” — in addition to meaning “white” — may also refer to Weizen (wheat), called “Weiss” in some dialects.


• In 1919, Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs moved to an immense 540-acre ranch in southern California’s San Fernando Valley which he named Tarzana — since 1970 the name of the city that stands there now. (Burroughs was forced to sell his vast Tarzana estate to suburban subdividers in the '60s.) Visit the Tarzana Chamber of Commerce Web site.


• Not one of the many original Tarzan stories written by Burroughs was ever filmed as a sound movie! Although some of the silent features were based on Burroughs’ books, all of the Tarzan movies from 1932 on were original screenplays based only loosely on the jungle character that Burroughs created. Looking at some of those films, one can’t help but wonder if it might not have been a much better idea to use some of the original works!

Copyright © 1997-2008 Hyde Flippo

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