Tarzan

Tarzan was one of my favorite fictional characters growing up. I loved Tarzan movies, then watched the Tarzan TV show that ran from 1966 to 1968. Then read some of the Edgar Rice Burroughs books in the early 1970's. Never did watch any of the later animated TV shows.

Probably the first Tarzan movie I saw was the 1959 version of Tarzan the Ape Man which I saw at a Saturday matinee at the New Lyric Theater in our neighborhood. I remember that movie in every detail.

Later I would see most if not all of the earlier Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies on TV in the mid sixties that were made between 1932 and 1948. Then the other ones made with Lex Baxter 1949 and 1953. After that Gordon Scott played Tarzan several times/

And then there was my first Tarzan... Denny Miller.  Not so good but it was all thrilling to me at the time. He only played Tarzan once but it was the first time I saw Tarzan on the silver screen. In hindsight it was really bad. Here is a funny summary of the movie from IMBd...

This movie has little connection with the 1932 original. It does, however, have lifted footage (tinted to more-or-less match the color), including obvious footage of Weissmuller's vine-swinging. Miller is not once called Tarzan in the movie, and his yell is also lifted Weissmuller. The elephants who wreck the pygmy village are lifted/tinted from the original, but the "pygmies" (real in the original) were kids from Fairfax High School in Los Angeles. Costumes are left over from "King Solomon's Mines" so that more stock footage could be lifted. And the crocodile fight is taken from "Tarzan and his Mate"

-Ed Stephen