I was never a fan of Tarzan. I have a friend, though, who uncharacteristically gushed when she talked about those images of the tanned white guy swinging through trees in a jungle in someone else’s version of Africa. I think it had something to do with her wanting to fly.
I must have watched episodes on TV in the 1960s, but when I got older and read about the early portrayal of the mother continent and its people, Tarzan held even less allure for me.
But when I spotted a towering tanned man in a gray suit with shocking white hair at a nostalgia convention recently, I actually recognized this figure. Behind him were younger photos of the actor in his Tarzan days. He still had that quiet smile and athletic physique (6-foot-4). He seemed to be too tanned in the same way as George Hamilton, but he still looked good at 73.
Though I recognized him, I did not recall his name. A small board on a table identified him as Ron Ely. He was one of several actors and performers appearing for photos at the nostalgia convention I attended recently. I saw actress Shirley Jones at another table signing autographs and singer/actor James Darren at another.
Ely stood with his arms around a woman who had paid $10 for a photo using her own camera. The cost was among several outlined on a price chart on the table. You could get an autographed 8×10 photo for $20, an autographed photo and a picture with him for $25, get your own items autographed by him for $20 and walk away with an autographed Tarzan DVD for $40.
I suppose these types of events are a good place for actors to make a few bucks and meet fans, and for admirers to get photos they can show to a few friends before tossing them in a drawer (to end up on an auction table).
For now, the woman was all smiles as Ely hugged her for the photo-op. Wanting to make sure she got perfect shots, she examined them on her smart phone, wondering aloud if they were slightly out of focus. Ely glanced at them and said they looked good. I peered over and they looked fine to me, too.
Ely was one of nearly 20 actors who have played Tarzan in the movies or on TV since the character was created in 1912 by Edward Rice Burroughs. The first was Eric Lincoln, who starred in the first Tarzan film in 1918. Other actors with recognizable names and faces were Johnny Weissmuller, Lex Barker, Gordon Scott, Mike Henry and Jock Mahoney – all of whom came prior to Ely. Weissmuller introduced the Tarzan signature scream in the first sound movie “Tarzan the Ape Man” in 1932.
Burroughs wrote the first of about two dozen Tarzan novels in 1912 for All Story magazine. He started writing for pulp magazines, as he told the story, after realizing that he could do just as good a job at writing the stories as the ones he was reading. “Tarzan of the Apes” was published in book form in 1914. The story was an instant hit, the movie cemented it, and Burroughs made a good bit of cash.
The writer, though, apparently had never been to Africa – he seemed to have crisscrossed the country but never left it – so his Africa was likely created from popular culture that had its own skewed vision of the continent.
Ely was tapped for the NBC TV series simply named “Tarzan” in 1966, and the show lasted for two years. It was shot in Brazil and Mexico, and the actor said in interviews that he did all of his stunts – a practice that was not planned but evolved. Unlike the movies, the show did not have a Jane; his companions were Cheetah the chimp and the orphan Jai. Warner this year released the first season of the show in two volumes.
The show had its share of guests. I came across a Jan. 12, 1968, episode called “The Convert,” with Diana Ross and the Supremes appearing as nuns and James Earl Jones as a tribal chief.
Ely’s Tarzan always looked tanned in his short loincloth, and one interviewer intrepidly asked him if he wore suntan oil. He wore Bain de Soleil, he said, that somewhat shaded his body but didn’t give him a complete tan.
The actor had been in small roles on TV and in the movies before he became the Tarzan character who had tired of civilization and returned to the jungle. After the show was canceled, he appeared as the lead in the 1975 film “Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze,” hosted the Miss America pageant from 1979 to 1981, among other things. He finally retired from acting and began writing detective novels.
In an interview, Ely said he was initially reluctant to take the Tarzan role because he was afraid of being typecast, as some of the others had been. After the two-year run was over, he tried to escape from the image but later resolved his issues with it.
“I came to realize that there were people that connected me so totally with the character that if I rejected it, it meant I would be abandoning them,” he said. “I eventually re-embraced it. I came around.”
And so he has. He looked to be very at ease with his Tarzan persona at the nostalgia convention.
What are your memories of watching Ely or any of the other Tarzans?
