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 T a r z a n i n
A c a p u l c o
In 1963, after a string of four unsuccessful marriages, Johnny married for the fifth and last time. He and the German-born Maria Bauman were wed in a civil ceremony at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas. In attendance at the Las Vegas nuptials were the bride’s daughter, who had flown in from Indianapolis, and actor Forrest Tucker, who was the groom’s best man.
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The best-known Tarzan of the movies lies here in the “Gardens of Time.”
Photo: © Dorothee Flippo |
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Not long after their marriage in Nevada, the couple decided to move from California to Florida. While living in southern Florida Johnny tried to make a living through various business ventures, but most ended in failure. For a time the still-famous actor and Olympian was paid to lend his name and remaining prestige to a swimmers’ “hall of fame” in Fort Lauderdale. The Weissmullers remained in Florida until 1973.
That year the aging Weissmuller was working as a greeter at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, a job he had gotten through a son-in-law. His terrible financial situation had forced him to take a position in Nevada that he otherwise would have refused. And it was in Las Vegas that a long series of health problems began for Weissmuller. By now Johnny was no longer a youngster. He was close to 70 years old when he fell and broke his hip in Las Vegas. After that, he suffered from various maladies, including a stroke in 1977 during a visit to Los Angeles. He was confined to the Motion Picture and Televison Home for Actors until Maria took him to Acapulco in 1979.
See our special
Interview with Johnny Weissmuller, Jr.
Weissmuller had pleasant memories of the making of one of his Tarzan movies in Acapulco in 1947. The RKO production Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948), which would be Weissmuller's last appearance as Tarzan, had been filmed in Mexico. Interior and underwater tank shots for Mermaids were filmed at the Churubusco Studios in Mexico City. Exterior scenes were shot at several locations in and around Acapulco on Mexico’s Pacific coast.
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Weissmuller's Resting Place in Acapulco
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Johnny Weissmuller’s grave lies here in the Jardines del Tiempo
(Gardens of Time) cemetery just outside of Acapulco, Mexico.
Photo: © Dorothee Flippo
> A
close-up view of the grave
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Producer Sol Lesser intended to make Tarzan and the Mermaids rise above the generally mediocre quality of most of the Tarzan movies. Instead of being filmed in the usual RKO back-lot jungle, Mermaids was to be shot on location — if not in Africa, at least in a substitute jungle faraway from Hollywood. But not even an unusually high budget (for a Tarzan picture) of just over a million dollars could overcome an idiotic script, shooting beautiful Acapulco in black and white, a hurricane that destroyed some sets, poor acting and the many other failings of this production. But all that was of little concern to Johnny, who seemed to fall in love with Acapulco right away. (It’s said that he later became a part-owner - with John Wayne - of the Los Flamingos hotel in “Old Acapulco.”)
One of his co-stars in that film was the young MGM contract player Linda Christian (born Blanca Rosa Welter to a Dutch father and a German mother in Tampico, Mexico in 1923). Christian played Mara, “a lovely maiden from the forbidden island of Aquatania.” Although her family and career later took her all over the world, she was the only person from Johnny’s Hollywood days to attend his 1984 funeral in Acapulco. (Former actor John Gavin attended in his official capacity as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico.) When Christian was asked in a 1998 interview about her impression of Johnny during shooting in Mexico, she replied, “He couldn’t have been nicer. I think he fell in love with Acapulco.”
Mike Oliver’s Acapulco
By Mike Oliver
Description: A nostalgic, historical guide to the Acapulco
of Weissmuller’s day - when Weissmuller, Crawford, Stewart,
Sinatra and other Hollywood types wintered on Mexico's Pacific
coast. (See our Books and Video page for more Tarzan books.)
More about this book
Weissmuller died of pulmonary edema (water in the lungs) at his home in Acapulco on January 20, 1984. The man who had been the “King of the Jungle” to most of the world was laid to rest on January 22 near the shooting locations of his last Tarzan movie, shot some 37 years before. He took with him to his grave the decades-long deception about his birthplace. Only later would his own son, Johnny Weissmuller, Jr., discover that his famous father had not been born in Pennsylvania but in Austria-Hungary, a secret Weissmuller had kept even from his family. To this day, many references continue to incorrectly list the Olympic swimmer’s birthplace as Windber, Pennsylvania rather than Freidorf, Austria-Hungary. His New York Times obituary also contained the false birthplace.
In accordance with his wishes, a recording of Weissmuller’s famous Tarzan cry was played as his coffin was lowered into the ground. His grave lies in the grass-covered Jardines del Tiempo (Gardens of Time) cemetery in the hills just outside the Mexican resort city. It is only fitting that the American athlete and actor who was born in a foreign land should lie buried in another foreign land. A white marble plaque near his grave (see photo above) bears this touching inscription in Spanish:
Tarzan
Johnny Weismuller [sic]
An homage to him who chose to live and rest
in his beautiful port of Acapulco.
2 June 1904 - 20 Jan. 1984
View PHOTO of PLAQUE
Copyright © 1997-2006 Hyde Flippo
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