Customer Reviews

Tarzan of the Movies: A Pictorial History of More Than Fifty Years of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Legendary Hero

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"Essential" and "outstanding" only begin the description of this book. The author obviously loves not only the Tarzan of the screen, but of Burrough's books as well. Photos from the movies on virtually every page, yet thoughtfully and thoroughly textual, as well. We see the hero's beginning in Burrough's (up to that time) disappointing life, rapidly emerging and taking hold of the public's imagination as the most wildly popular multimedia character of the times. Yet the more successful Tarzan became on screen, the further Hollywood took the character away from what Burroughs created. Essoe shows an amazing appreciation for the silent movie art form, given the 1968 writing of this book. He takes Tarzan's movie journey from Elmo Lincoln all the way to the (then) present, never skipping a film or TV effort. Particularly enjoyable is the coverage of the 1930's, when Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Crabbe, and even Herman Brix battled it out at the box office for rival studios (guess who wins?). The making of each film, Burrough's reaction to it, and the stories of the actors and actresses are all covered without ever slipping into drudgery. Also appreciated are the postscripts as to what each Tarzan actor went on to after hanging up the loincloth. I cannot tell you how many times I have reread this book from cover to cover. It also makes a great coffee table book. I have never seen a better treatment of this character, nor of any other.

Essoe's loving collection of Tarzan film lore from the silent teens through the technicolor '60s is not a scholarly book. Some of the anecdotes feel uncritically drawn from press releases--since no sources are cited, it's hard to tell the facts from the spin. (Essoe credits Maureen O'Sullivan with a swimming sequence actually performed by a stand-in in "Tarzan and His Mate," which makes me wonder how reliable he is elsewhere.) The writing style is kind of dated, and it's sprinkled with bits of fan-club hyperbole like "ERB's fantastic creation has (in all likelihood) directly affected more lives than any other character in fiction." Even if the book isn't a great place to do research on Tarzan, though, it's juicy, eclectic, and full of (all b/w) pictures. Fun to flip through.