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American
Eleanor Reed travels to the interior of Africa with: her father
Roger, who hopes to capture animals for zoos; her mother Penny, who
sneezes and complains incessantly; and her fiancée, Nevin Potter, who
wants to kill all the animals he can. On the steamship, Ben Alleu
Bey, an Oxford-educated royal playboy with one hundred wives, sends
Eleanor a ruby. She refuses it and, at the landing, beats and
insults Bey when he thrashes a servant for bumping into her.
Bey, who controls the tribes of the
interior, makes secret arrangements with Olaf, the Reed party guide, to
have Eleanor abducted by tribesmen near Bey's palace. During the
safari, Tarzan, a white man whom the jungle animals obey, curiously
watches the group in hiding. When a leopard gets too close to
them, he calls it away, and when Eleanor gets stuck alone in mud, Tarzan
pulls her out. No one in the party believes her story about the
mysterious man.
After Eleanor and Nevin put two lion cubs in
cages, their angry mother enters Eleanor's tent, but Tarzan sends the
lioness away and retrieves the cubs. When Nevin cages Tarzan's
chimpanzee, Tarzan frees all the caged animals that the party have
captured and carries Eleanor to his tree, after which they swing on
vines, swim and sleep next to each other.
The next day, as Tarzan gets some cocoanuts,
the party finds Eleanor. Dejected at finding her gone, Tarzan is
comforted by the chimp.
Near Bey's palace, tribesmen capture Eleanor
after Nevin cowardly swims away when a crocodile chases her, but Tarzan
breaks into the palace and rescues her. As the party prepares to
go home, Nevin, jealous of Eleanor's concern at leaving Tarzan, shoots
at him and grazes his arm. Tarzan throws Nevin off, and on the
boat back, Penny wonders what the people back home will think, while in
the jungle Eleanor swims with Tarzan. |
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Sensing a weakness in the MGM series, Sol Lesser decided to
exercise his remaining Tarzan film right. He assigned screenwriters Robert Lee
Johnson and Jay Vann to work up a story and set about casting.
Since the last three screen Tarzans had been Olympic athletes, he
began following sports closely. The 1936 Olympic decathlon champion, Glenn
Morris, came to his attention in January, 1937, when Morris was awarded the
Sullivan Award, which is given to the outstanding amateur athlete of the year.
Morris, who had been a famed footballer at Colorado State College of
Agriculture, won the Award over Jesse Owens, the triple Olympic champion Negro
sprinter.
After casting the elated Morris as Tarzan, Lesser than contracted
for Eleanor Holm Jarrett, champion backstroke swimmer, who had been dropped from
the U.S. Olympic team for breaking training rules on the way to the 1936 Olympic
games, to play the romantic lead. Johnson and Vann rewrote their script of
Tarzan's Revenge to employ Miss Holm's swimming ability. She more
or less played herself in the film and was called Eleanor, even though she
became the Apeman's mate at the conclusion. Lesser's explanation of this
scripting was that, "being so well-known, Eleanor would not have been as
acceptable to the general public as Jane."
Tarzan's Revenge was filmed by Lesser's Principal
Productions on the back lots of Twentieth Century-Fox, and it was distributed by
that company. D. Ross Lederman was director of this low-budget project.
Its rather unconvincing plot had Eleanor and her millionaire parents (George
Barbier and Hedda Hopper) hunting big game in the jungle, accompanied by her
sniveling fiancée (George Meeker). A swarthy,
turbaned nabob called Ben Alleu Bey (C. Henry Gordon) marked Eleanor as an
addition to his 100-wife harem. But Tarzan, who also took a fancy to her,
stole her away for himself.
Tarzan's Revenge was Lesser's worst failure of the sixteen Tarzan films
he eventually produced. He himself called it a "cheap quickie."
"Morris was no actor," he said. Time didn't think so either: "This new
Tarzan is lean, 6 ft. 2 in. Glenn Morris, summoned to replace Johnny
Weissmuller... {He} heroically combines the facial qualities of Broadway's
Burgess Meredith and Hollywood's Harpo Marx, but has the acting ability of
neither."
Released on January 7, 1938, Tarzan's Revenge lacked the
gloss and spectacularity of the MGM films. The reviews reflected its
dullness. Film Daily said "it suffers from repetition and a slow pace."
Variety: "Even the youngsters, at which this type of production is aimed, will
not be much impressed." "It's greatest lack," wrote John Mosher in the New
York, "is in the two leads. {Both} have many rows to hoe before they can
be called actors...either good or bad." Liberty magazine went so far as to
call Miss Holm "one of the year's worst actresses."
In addition to lowering the Tarzan films another notch,
Revenge also caused considerable confusion as to who was really Tarzan.
There was Weissmuller; but here were other pretenders to the loincloth—Morris
and Herman Brix, who was making the rounds in the re-hash, Tarzan and the
Green Goddess. Fortunately,
Buster Crabbe, who was still remembered
from his 1933 appearance, was really Flash Gordon and couldn't be Tarzan, but
that still left two Tarzans too many.
At a Hollywood party, while Tarzan's Revenge was still in
production, Morris was introduced as the new Tarzan.
Lupe Velez, who was
present without Weissmuller, ran up to Morris and kicked him in the shins.
"You are not heem! There is onlee one Tarzan. And that's my Johnnee!"
she cried.
The confusion arising from three Tarzans was dispelled when
Tarzan Finds a Son was released the following year. This picture
affirmed Weissmuller's position as king of the cinema jungle until he chose to
turn in his loincloth in 1948. With Lesser having produced his last film
right, exclusive rights to the Tarzan character reverted to MGM as had been
promised by their 1931 contract. Metro and Weissmuller had out-Tarzaned
all the others.
Shortly after Tarzan's Revenge opened, Tarzan Morris sped
back to his home town, Denver, Colorado, to escape the reviews. He then
reappeared in Los Angeles and became a successful insurance agent. When
Pearl Harbor was attacked, he enlisted in the Navy, earned the rank of an
officer, was wounded in combat, and spent a great deal of time recovering in the
Navy Hospital in San Francisco. He never made another film (Not true.
He was in Hold That Coed later in 1938 ― Doctor Macro).
Neither did Eleanor Holm, who resumed her swimming career in Billy Rose's
"Aquacade." |
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