Hollywood & Vines or: When Tarzan Left the Jungle

"I was jealous when (Tarzan) married that wimpy other Jane."
- Jane Goodall


For a character created over a century ago, Tarzan has displayed remarkable longevity as a movie hero. From 1918 (a mere six years after the first story was published) to the present, more than 60 adaptations for film and television have been produced.

In the past three decades, however, the King of the Jungle has endured varying degrees of audience appeal, from the "completely ridiculous" (in the words of Roger Ebert) "Tarzan, the Ape Man," starring Miles O'Keeffe and Bo Derek, to the epic "Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes," with Christopher Lambert, to the bottom-of-the-barrel "Tarzan and the Lost City," starring Casper Van Dien (otherwise known as Johnny Rico in a couple of "Starship Troopers" films), to the delightful animated Disney adventure "Tarzan."

Released July 1 of this year, "The Legend of Tarzan," starring Alexander Skarsgard (pictured above), has garnered mixed reviews and struggled at the box office. Considering its $180 million budget, the movie, according to Variety, would need to take in at least $400 million just to break even. After its first two weekends in theaters, the film has grossed just over $81 million.

The New York Times' Manohla Darrgis, whose relatively favorable review stood out amid otherwise negative responses, noted, "The casting of Mr. Skarsgard, who spent a lot of time baring his body...on the HBO show "True Blood," indicates that the filmmakers understand a primal part of Tarzan's allure. This isn't strictly a question of Mr. Skarsgard's considerable physical charms, though these are central to the character. (He isn't playing nerd boy of the jungle.) Mr. Skarsgard is also a fine actor with an enigmatic melancholy..."

Skarsgard's Tarzan, according to critic Manohla Dargis, "carries a profound burden that makes more complex than the usual beefcake in loincloth." On the other hand, Richard Roeper, Roger Ebert's successor at the Chicago Sun-Times, remarked that "there's little about this film that screams YOU GOTTA SEE THIS." Peter Travers, of Rolling Stone magazine, offered, "At least it's watchable. In summer, baby, that's high praise."


"I could write stories just as rotten" - Edgar Rice Burroughs

In a timely statement, Richard Roeper observed, "But there's always been something a bit ridiculous about the whole Tarzan premise..." For the beginning of this ridiculous premise, we have to drop in on original author Edgar Rice Burroughs, a struggling thirtysomething family man who, by 1911, had gone through a string of failed business ventures, from working an unproductive gold-dredging claim to operating a stationery shop, working for his father's battery business, managing a Sears, Roebuck & Company store, roping and riding as a cowboy on a ranch, to working on the railroad as a nightwatchman.

It was while reading stories in pulp magazines that Burroughs, then an unsuccessful pencil sharpener salesman, decided to try his hand at writing. "I made up my mind that if people were paid for writing such rot as I read," Burroughs later recalled, "I could write stories just as rotten." He sold his first story, "Under the Moons of Mars" in early 1912 for $400, using the pseudonym "Normal Bean" (which the printer mistyped as "Norman Bean") for fear that association with pulp magazines would damage his reputation as a businessman.

A modern interpretation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan
by prolific fantasy artist Frank Frazetta

In the fall of 1912, aided by a dictionary and the book In Darkest Africa by 19th century explorer Henry Stanley, Burroughs wrote the first adventure of Tarzan, the descendant of British aristocrats raised by talking apes in Africa. Burroughs had never been to Africa or England (some readers avidly pointed out that there are no tigers in Africa), but who cares? When it was published in All-Story magazine readers greeted it ecstatically. Burroughs wrote his publisher, "About a score of readers have threatened my life unless I promise a sequel to Tarzan. Shall I?"

He shall. In the 38 years between Tarzan's first appearance and the author's death, Burroughs cranked out 23 more Tarzan novels, as well as 11 books set on Mars, seven at the Earth's core, six on Venus, three on the fictional island of Caprona, and one on the moon. He also wrote westerns, medieval romances, Ancient Roman suspensers, Hollywood social novels, and tales of European aristocracy (Burroughs was a shameless admirer of the aristocracy, as well as a xenophobic white supremacist).

"If you write one story, it may be bad," Burroughs once said. "If you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor." He advised, "Don't get the idea that you're through with a basic plot when you've written one story from it. Keep it and sprout another, or three or four. It's easy!" In his lifetime alone, his books sold at least 30 million copies worldwide, yet he was rarely more than spasmodically wealthy, due to his continued attraction to unwise business endeavors. Jealous of the best-selling author of western novels, Burroughs complained, "Zane Grey, the only writer who probably tops my sales, owns yachts and beautiful summer homes...he cruises all over the world, while I sit here with my nose to the grindstone."

Famed astrophysicist Carl Sagan noted, "The Mars novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs...aroused generations of eight-year-olds, myself among them, to consider the exploration of the planets as a real possibility." In an interview, Ray Bradbury said that "Edgar Rice Burroughs never would have looked upon himself as a social mover and shaker...But as it turns out - and I love to say it because it upsets everyone terribly - Burroughs is probably the most influential writer in the entire history of the world...By giving romance and adventure to a whole generation of boys, Burroughs caused them to go out and decide to become special."

What we'd like to do in the Moviehouse on this cinematic safari is take you where others haven't ventured. We'll introduce you to some of film and television's most memorable Tarzan portrayers - nothing new there - but what we want to get to is what happened to these performers once they hung up their loincloths.


"That's quite a chest you have there." - D.W. Griffith addressing Elmo Lincoln

Silent movie actor (and onetime Arkansas lawman) Elmo Lincoln, burly and barrel-chested, was best known as the first Tarzan of the screen, starring in "Tarzan of the Apes" and its sequel, "The Romance of Tarzan," both released in 1918, as well as the 15-part serial "The Adventures of Tarzan" in 1921.

 

Following the end of the silent film era, Elmo Lincoln left Hollywood to go into the salvage business in Salt Lake City. He also tried his hand at mining. In the late 1930s, he returned to the movie industry, often cast as an extra, including roles in 1942's "Tarzan's New York Adventure," starring Johnny Weissmuller, and 1949's "Tarzan's Magic Fountain," with Lex Barker. He would tour with the Seal Brothers Circus, billed as "The Original Tarzan." Lincoln's last screen appearance was an uncredited part in 1952's "Carrie' (based on Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie), starring Jennifer Jones and Laurence Olivier. Lincoln was particularly proud of his participation in the picture because of his admiration for Olivier. Later that year, Lincoln died of a heart attack in the middle of a cough, age 63.


Jane: "Jane." Tarzan: "Jane...Tarzan. Tarzan." Jane: "Tarzan."

Officially Hollywood's ninth Tarzan, Johnny Weismuller remains the actor most closely associated with the character. The son of ethnic-German immigrants from what is now Romania, Weissmuller was an Olympic medalist in swimming (three golds in the 1924 Paris games and two golds in the 1928 Amsterdam games), not to mention a holder of 67 world titles, 52 national titles, and every freestyle record from 100 yards to the half-mile, before being discovered for the starring role in 1932's "Tarzan of the Apes."

Feral and lustful, at the same time innocent and childlike, Weissmuller's performance immediately attracted audiences. And it didn't hurt that the camera loved his svelte, muscular, almost catlike physique.

In the pre-censorship of the 1930s Hollywood that produced "Tarzan the Ape Man" and its sequel, "Tarzan and His Mate," jungle togs were at their briefest for both Tarzan and Jane, portrayed by Maureen O'Sullivan (mother of actress Mia Farrow).

Tarzan and Jane swam in the nude, they slept in the nude, they - well, even pre-censorship filmmakers had some shred of modesty. When "Tarzan Escapes" was made in 1936, the primitive wardrobe was redesigned with considerably more coverage (pictured below).

Johnny Weissmuller made a dozen Tarzan films, six for MGM, six for RKO. (Maureen O'Sullivan, bound to a contract at MGM, played Jane in only the first six pictures.) Edgar Rice Burroughs was pleased enough with Weissmuller, but he detested the studio's depiction of a Tarzan who barely spoke English so much that in 1935 he produced his own 12-part serial, "The New Adventures of Tarzan," featuring Herman Brix as an educated, articulate ape man.

Notice the prosthetic ears and tusks tacked onto an Indian elephant
to make it kind of look like an African elephant. The Indian species
are markedly more docile than their unpredictable African cousins.

Brix, an Olympic silver medalist in the shot put at the 1928 games in Amsterdam, changed his name to Bruce Bennett to avoid being typecast as Tarzan and worked steadily in movies into the 1940s and 1950s, including three pictures with Humphrey Bogart (notably as the ill-fated American fortune hunter in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre").

By the time Johnny Weissmuller made his 12th Tarzan picture, 1948's "Tarzan and the Mermaids," 16 years after his first film, the once sinewy, graceful ape man had grown fat with discontent and decided to abandon the loincloth. But not the jungle.

Jane (Brenda Joyce) and a beefy Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) confront
the evil High Priest (George Zucco, who made a career out of playing
evil high priests) in "Tarzan and the Mermaids."

Almost immediately, Johnny Weissmuller donned a safari ensemble, complete with a slouch hat, to portray Jungle Jim in a series of 16 B-movies from 1948 to 1955. "Jungle Jim" began as a comic strip in January 1934, debuting simultaneously with "Flash Gordon," both of which were created by illustrator Alex Raymond. In the funny pages, Jungle Jim Bradley was a hunter in Southeast Asia, while the movies planted him in (Hollywood-backlot) Africa. In the last three entries in the film series, Weissmuller, perhaps inspired by Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, used his own name for the character.

Weissmuller shot two Jungle Jim pictures back-to-back with nine days shooting for each, with a break of two days between, then returned to his home in Mexico. He also starred in a single season of the bargain basement-budgeted "Jungle Jim" TV series, which aired 26 episodes from 1955 to 1956.

Producers wanted Weissmuller to guest-star as Tarzan's father on the 1960s TV series "Tarzan," starring Ron Ely, but nothing came of it. His final screen appearance, 20 years after the "Jungle Jim" series ended, was a bit part as a movie crewman fired by movie mogul Art Carney in the cameo-crammed, utterly unfunny spoof "Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood" (1976), starring Bruce Dern and Madeline Kahn, directed by Michael Winner, a filmmaker normally not associated with comedy. (It was often said of Winner, who worked with Charles Bronson on a half dozen pictures, including the original "Death Wish," that he "couldn't direct traffic.")

Aside from that brief walk-on, along with an earlier cameo in another bad comedy crammed with cameos, a rarely seen curio from 1970 called "The Phynx," Johnny Weissmuller played only three roles in his career: Tarzan, Jungle Jim, and himself. Oh, there was one other role, as Johnny Duval, in "Swamp Fire," a turgid 1946 melodrama set in a boggy channel at the mouth of the Mississippi River. In the picture, Weissmuller still got to rassle a croc (or a gator), not to mention duke it out with Buster Crabbe, another Olympic swimmer who played Tarzan, in the 1933 12-part serial "Tarzan the Fearless."

A word about the Boy...

Johnny Sheffield, who played Boy, Tarzan and Jane's adopted son, orphaned after a plane crash in 1939's "Tarzan Finds a Son," was born in Pasadena, California, the son of British-born actor Reginald Sheffield. In 1939, the elder Sheffield read an ad in the Hollywood Reporter asking, "Have you a Tarzan Jr. in your backyard?" Five-year-old Johnny was taken to an audition where Johnny Weissmuller chose him from more than 300 juvenile hopefuls to portray Boy. That same year, young Sheffield appeared in Busby Berkeley's movie musical "Babes in Arms," starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.

Johnny Sheffield left the jungle treehouse just before Weissmuller's swan song in "Tarzan and the Mermaids." Unlike his adoptive screen dad, however, Sheffield wasn't ready to give up his loincloth just yet. Starting in 1949, the teenaged actor starred in his own franchise of B-movies as Bomba the Jungle Boy, based on a series of boys' adventure books, 20 of which were published from 1926 to 1938.

Sheffield made 12 Bomba films, from 1949 to 1955. He subsequently starred in a pilot for a TV series with the uninspired title "Bantu the Zebra Boy," written, produced, and directed by his father, but a sponsor was never found.

Johnny Sheffield left Hollywood to attend college at UCLA and start a family in Yuma, Arizona. With a degree in business, he involved himself in farming, real estate, construction, and the importing of lobsters from Baja California.

Pictured in his later years, Johnny Sheffield signs
memorabilia at a fan convention.

In October 2010, 79-year-old Johnny Sheffield was pruning a palm tree at his home when he fell off a ladder. Although his injuries at first seemed minor, he succumbed to a heart attack four hours later.


"If my muscles hold up and my waistline keeps down,  I can play Tarzan till I'm 50."
- Lex Barker

Ivy Leaguer Lex Barker, much to his family's vexation, dropped out of Princeton University to join a theater stock company. Ten months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Rising to the rank of major, he was wounded in action in Sicily. He recuperated and moved to Los Angeles, where he appeared in a string of small roles on screen before his selection as the tenth Tarzan of the movies, replacing Johnny Weissmuller, in "Tarzan's Magic Fountain."

Barker appeared in only five Tarzan movies, from 1949 to 1953. Finding other film offers few and far between, he moved to Europe, where he found renewed popularity in over 40 features, including the role of Anita Ekberg's fiance in Fellini's "La Dolce Vita." He spoke French, Italian, Spanish, and German, and it was, in fact, in Germany where Barker found his greatest success, starring in movies based on the "Doctor Mabuse" stories and as Old Shatterhand, a fictional character in American western novels by German author Karl May.

In one of his many "sauerkraut westerns," Lex Barker portrays
Old Shatterhand, blood brother of Mescalero Apache Chief Winnetou,
played by French actor Pierre Brice

In 1966, Barker was honored with a Bambi Award as Best Foreign Actor in Germany. He successfully recorded songs in German, and Germany remained his professional home for the rest of his life, which wasn't long. Three days after his 54th birthday, the poor sap dropped dead of a heart attack while walking down a New York City sidewalk on his way to meet his fiancee, actress Karen Kondazian (pictured below).

"Your name is Great Scott?" - Groucho Marx to Gordon Scott on "You Bet Your Life"

Lex Barker's successor as Tarzan was Gordon Scott, a former drill sergeant and military policeman with a Herculean build and Adonic good looks. In 1953, he was discovered by a talent agent while working as a lifeguard at the Sahara in Las Vegas.

From 1955 to 1960, Scott portrayed Tarzan in six films, the first four produced by Sol Lesser. Lesser, who had produced the aforementioned 1933 serial "Tarzan the Fearless," with Buster Crabbe, would return to the jungle in 1943 for RKO when MGM relinquished rights to the Tarzan property. Lesser produced Johnny Weissmuller's final six Tarzan pictures, followed by the five featuring Lex Barker.

Lesser's work with Gordon Scott was blemished by slipshod production values, studio backlot sets, and the depiction of Tarzan as an unintelligible noble savage, not unlike Johnny Weissmuller's interpretation. When Sy Weintraub stepped in to produce Scott's final two outings as Tarzan, he broke with tradition, spinning expectations around 180 degrees, and presented an erudite, well-spoken loner, much as Edgar Rice Burroughs originally envisioned. The character of Jane was jettisoned, while Cheetah the chimp was virtually nonexistent.

In fact, Weintraub's "Tarzan's Greatest Adventure" (1959) and "Tarzan the Magnificent" (1960) are viewed by many as the best Tarzan movies in the 100-year-old screen franchise, remarkable for high production values and location filming in Africa. "Tarzan's Greatest Adventure" was further elevated by the presence of villains Anthony Quayle and Sean Connery (two years before his breakout role as James Bond in "Dr. No").

The New York Times' Howard Thompson singled out "Tarzan's Greatest Adventure" as "one entry in a ragged series that moves fast...and looks more African than Paramount." Thompson was impressed that "the performers are allowed to speak intelligible English - including, believe it or not, Tarzan. Probably for this very reason the hero's old chimpanzee sidekick makes an early exit, pouting." The critic added, "In Mr. Scott's Tarzan, we have a steady-eyed giant who looks as if he could spell his name, minus one grunt."

Like actors before him, Gordon Scott was wary of being typecast as Tarzan. He moved to Italy, where he became a poplar star of sword-and-sandal sagas, including "Duel of the Titans," playing Remus alongside Steve Reeves' Romulus. His last film appearance was in the 1966 spaghetti western "The Tramplers," with Joseph Cotten, James Mitchum, and Franco Nero.

The last 40 years of Gordon Scott's life are something of a mystery, since, aside from frequent appearances at fan conventions and autograph shows, he did not appear to have been employed anywhere. As well, he was estranged from his family, including siblings who hadn't seen him in years prior to his death in April 2007, age 80.

Sy Weintraub, incidentally, went on to produce two Tarzan pictures starring Jock Mahoney, a stuntman-actor and stepfather of actress Sally Field who played one of the bad guys (with John Carradine) in "Tarzan the Magnificent," as well as three Tarzan movies featuring the screen debut of former Pittsburgh Steelers-LA Rams linebacker Mike Henry, best known as Jackie Gleason's oafish son, Junior, in "Smokey and the Bandit," and the 1966 TV series "Tarzan," starring Ron Ely.

Like producer Sy Weintraub's other Tarzans, Mike Henry played a jungle loner
who was learned, fluent, and, in this case, adept with military ordnance. Weintraub
 initially cast Mike Henry based on his search for a "younger Burt Lancaster."

Originally, Mike Henry was being groomed by producer Weintraub to star in the "Tarzan" series but his travails - animal bites, food poisoning, infections, taxing work schedules - made him think twice. As a matter of fact, a facial bite from a chimpanzee required 20 stitches and caused the fledgling actor to suffer fever and delirium, leading Henry to sue Weintraub for "maltreatment, abuse, and working conditions detrimental to my health and welfare."

"When they offered me the role I thought: 'No way do I want to step into that bear trap. You do Tarzan and you're stamped for life.' " - Ron Ely, star of the "Tarzan" TV series

The role of Tarzan in the television series went to Ron Ely, a Hollywood ham-and-egger whose numerous bit parts included a U.S. Navy co-pilot in the 1958 movie musical "South Pacific." Ely also had a supporting role in the single-season adventure series "The Aquanauts" (also known as "Malibu Run") in 1960.

The "Tarzan" series aired for two seasons, from 1966 to 1968. During the first season alone, Ely, who insisted on performing his own stunts, sustained several injuries, including a bite on the forehead by an allegedly tame lion (which, at another time, bit his left thigh), a separated shoulder after a 25-foot fall from a vine, a broken shoulder (the other one) after a fall from another vine, singed arms and legs after running through a burning village, fractured ribs, and sprained wrists.

Tarzan (Ron Ely) is accompanied by his constant companion,
the orphaned Jai, played by one of the most annoying child
actors ever, Manuel Padilla Jr.. At age 18, Padilla popped
up as a member of the greaser gang The Pharaohs in George
"American Graffiti." (Coincidentally, "American Graffiti" cast
Johnny Weissmuller Jr. as a badass who roughs up Charles
Martin Smith as Terry "The Toad" Fields.)

An attempt to establish Ron Ely as the lead in a superhero franchise in the 1975 feature film "Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze" fizzled. (Filmmakers are currently hoping to resurrect the franchise with Dwayne Johnson as Doc Savage.) In 1980, Ely replaced the seemingly irreplaceable Bert Parks as the host of the Miss America pageant, a function he repeated the following year. Also in 1980, Ely hosted the syndicated game show "Face the Music" (pictured below), a poor man's "Name That Tune" which lasted one season. Game show fans nostalgically recall the program's unabashed ineptitude, from gaffes in studio lighting and music miscues to Ely's corny wisecracks and gushing enthusiasm.

Ely stepped away from show business in the early 1990s to raise a family and write. He was the author of a pair of mystery novels featuring private investigator Jake Sands.


"How much Keeffe is in this movie anyway?"
"Miles O'Keeffe!"

Chisel-jawed Miles O'Keeffe was an offensive tight end and defensive linebacker in college football. After studying political science and psychology, he worked as a prison counselor in Tennessee's penal system for a couple of years, managing recreational yard activities and inmate weightlifting programs. He moved to California to play in a semi-professional rugby team before being discovered and cast in 1981's "Tarzan, the Ape Man."

"Produced" by Bo Derek, who costarred as a frequently undressed Jane, the movie was ostensibly a remake of the 1932 Johnny Weissmuller-Maureen O'Hara "Tarzan of the Apes," but it plays out more like an extended photo shoot for Playboy. In fact, director and cinematographer (and Bo's husband) John Derek (a former actor best known for his performance as a studly Joshua to Charlton Heston's stoic Moses in the biblical epic "The Ten Commandments") photographed three of his four wives - Ursula Andress, Linda Evans, and Bo - for Playboy magazine. For a change, this Tarzan had absolutely nothing to say, either in pidgin English or the Queen's English.

After "Tarzan, the Ape Man," O'Keeffe became a cult movie star as Ator, a blatant "Conan the Barbarian" wannabe, in three sword-and-sorcery pictures shot in Europe in the 1980s. The "Ator" franchise gained renewed notoriety after the second movie was riffed on the TV series "Mystery Science Theater 3000." The episode, a viewer favorite, featured one of the most quoted quips in the show's history: "How much O'Keeffe is in this movie anyway?" "Miles O'Keeffe!" O'Keeffe was a good sport and enjoyed the ribbing so much that he requested a video copy of the episode.

O'Keeffe continue to work steadily in science-fiction and fantasy genres, notably 1984's "Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," costarring Sean Connery (pictured below), Trevor Howard, Peter Cushing, and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" players Ronald Lacey and John Rhys-Davies. In 1988, O'Keeffe portrayed an effectively brooding Count Dracula in the horror comedy "Waxwork."

"One comes out of 'Greystoke' oohing and aahing over the photography because there's little else to get excited about."
- David Denby, New York magazine

Christopher Lambert was born in Great Neck, New York, the son of a French diplomat for the United Nations. Raised as an infant in Geneva, Switzerland, he moved to Paris in his teens. In 1984, after supporting roles in several French films, credited as Christophe (his birth name) Lambert, he was cast in the title role of "Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes."

The New York Times critic Vincent Canby enthused, "From the most unlikely of source material comes the season's most unexpected, most invigorating surprise...a huge, lavishly produced period film that is part adventure, part comedy of manners and part somber melodrama."

Vincent Canby noted, "Mr. Lambert, a handsome young man with strong, brooding features, is remarkably believable and affecting both as the naked ape of Africa and then as the uncomfortable aristocrat, who tries desperately to fit in with his new family." Interestingly, the name "Tarzan" is never uttered in the film's dialogue.

Lambert's complex performance - sensitive, humorous, athletic - was bolstered by stately thespians Ian Holm and Ralph Richardson (who died months before the movie's release but was posthumously honored with an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor). Andie MacDowell made her screen debut as Jane Porter, but her voice was unceremoniously overdubbed by actress Glenn Close, on account of MacDowell's pronounced Southern dialect. (Glenn Close later provided the voice for Kala, Tarzan's gorilla adoptive mother, in the 1999 animated Disney feature "Tarzan.")

The screenplay was written by Robert Towne, who won an Oscar for "Chinatown," as well as garnering nominations for "The Last Detail" and "Shampoo." "Greystoke" had long been a dream project of Towne's, who toiled on the script for years, a script that became something of a legend itself among Hollywood insiders. He hoped to direct the feature but was predictably passed over by the studio in favor of Hugh Hudson, the Oscar-winning director of the pretentiously artsy "Chariots of Fire." A disgruntled Towne removed his name from the screenplay and replaced it with the name of his pet sheepdog, P.H. Vazak.

Christopher Lambert later earned cult movie star status in the role of immortal Scottish clansman Connor McLeod in 1991's "Highlander," featuring Sean Connery, and its three sequels, up to 2000's "Highlander: Endgame." He also guest-starred on an episode of the "Highlander" TV series, starring Adrian Paul.

For those counting, this is the third picture featuring Sean Connery
in a piece that has nothing to do with him.

It's a little known fact that Christopher Lambert is profoundly myopic and needs to rely on eyeglasses to see effectively. Because he's unable to wear contact lenses, he often acts while virtually blind, often resulting in injuries while performing his own stunts.

Recently, Lambert portrayed Scandinavian filmmaker Arne Slessum (pictured below) in the Coen brothers' show business satire "Hail, Caesar!" (2016).

"There's always been something a bit ridiculous about the whole Tarzan premise."
- critic Richard Roeper

Is Hollywood through with Tarzan yet? Probably not by a long shot.  In her review of the latest outing in paricular, "The Legend of Tarzan," in The New York Times, Manohla Dargis said that "the filmmakers have given Tarzan a thoughtful, imperfect makeover. That must have been tough given the origin story's white supremacy problems."

Dargis astutely offered, "Tarzan has always had bad optics - white hero, black land...Probably the only real way to avoid his negative image would be to let him molder on the shelf and in our cultural memory."