One of the most well-known natives of Bánság essentially played himself on the screen. Johnny Weissmüller, the iconic creator of Tarzan, was born 120 years ago. Portrait.
I met Tarzan in 1976. My father also had friends who came to visit us from the developed West whenever they could. One such friend brought me a very thick coloring book as a gift. On the cover is a jungle landscape, with a muscular man (in a loincloth, carrying a knife), a liana in his hands, his mouth open to shout. The title of the book is: Tarzan..., I couldn't read the rest, because it was written in Dutch. But that wasn't much of a problem since it was a coloring book. I colored it steadfastly: the loincloth brown, Tarzan's body pink, his hair black, his lips red (I didn't have a more realistic lip color), the lion ocher, the African natives black.
The meeting here could have lasted for a long time if my father had not been from Nagyvárád. But it was. And this also meant that we spent most of the year's weekends in Paris on the Pece River, as a family. Which was also a jackpot for me, because Hungarian TV was broadcast in Nagyvárád. I watched practically everything that appeared on the screen, even the weather report. One Saturday morning I was crouched in front of the TV when the announcer announced "and now comes Tarzan the Ape Man".
I woke up: whoops, it's a coloring book. The movie started and I fell into a fantasy world, a kind of modern folktale, where the animals talk, the Evil receives its deserved punishment, and the Good... well, the Good distributes the Truth as a kind of Golden Age nature hero.
My father came into the room (he himself was an excellent swimmer, water polo player, fencer) and remarked: he is weak as an actor, but fantastic as a swimmer. Then he obviously couldn't convince him of this: look at what an actor he is, how he flies on the liana, how much he yodels, and hey, he even rides a rhinoceros. From that day on, we were at Várad practically every weekend until the 12 Tarzan films were shown on Hungarian TV.
And then came the bathing suit all summer long (I couldn't get a loincloth anywhere), the daily beach program (what a beneficial effect a movie has!), yodeling, playing the lyana in the forest with friends (I admit, we thought this was lame even then), and the extreme knife-in-the-mouth swimming. In short: I became a Tarzan fan, many of us became. And that hasn't changed in the decades since. With so many differences that I can see now, Johnny Weissmüller really wasn't a good actor. In fact, he was not an actor at all. He was an icon, a star, a demigod. And in a sense, it is our dog's child.
The website johnnyweissmuller.com states that János (Johann) Peter Weissmüller was born to German parents on June 2, 1904, in "Romanian" Freidorf, on the territory of the then Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and was baptized a Catholic three days later. on June 5. I write this because quite a few source texts indicate Windbert, Pennsylvania as the birthplace of the later swimming champion and movie star. Which is not true. Little Johann (János) was indeed born in Szabadfalu, near Timișoara, and was indeed the child of German-speaking parents, if the Swabians of Bánság (including the parents, Peter Weismüller and Erzsébet, née Kersch) really speak a dialect of the German language. Tarzan-loving tourists would no longer look for Szabadfalu in vain: it does not exist, it has been swallowed up by Timișoara, which has grown quite a bit in the meantime. Perhaps this is also why the situation in Faramuc could have arisen, that in Florin Iepan's 2004 documentary (The only, true Tarzan / Unicul și văgărul Tarzan) Weissmüller's son - who came to Timişoara, so to speak, following in his father's footsteps - was taken by the host committee to another house that, lo and behold, that particular parents' house stood here at the time.
Well, he wasn't standing there, but the son of Tarzan glided elegantly over the malar. And this is obviously why the faramuc situation can arise again and again, that Weissmüller is relatively consistently called Romanian by the Romanian press, as well as the fact that, for example, the residents of Párdány in Vojvodina claim the star for themselves, claiming that he was actually born there (even they also wanted to erect a statue to him in the village).
It is true from the story that a resident of Párdány was indeed a distant relative of Weissmüller. I have some bad news for excessive (local) patriots: the Weissmüller family landed on Ellis Island on January 26, 1905. Understand, he emigrated to the star-striped land of promise. So no matter how you count, little Johann didn't spend eight full months in Bánság, that is, in the Monarchy, that is, in the later Romania. Regardless, it would be cool if, in addition to the many old politicians, writers, and great men, a Tarzan statue appeared, stylishly, in one of the parks of Timișoara. According to the news, there is a statue, a bodybuilder and Tarzan fan from Temesvár ordered it at the end of the 2000s, but he couldn't put it on the square because he didn't have a permit. (Also, that statue .)
Let's go back to the Weissmüller family: based on the possibilities, they settled in Windber, famous for its coal mines (the father found a job relatively easily), where Johann's younger brother, Peter, was also born. But the stay there was not for a lifetime: the final destination of the emigration was the city of the winds, Chicago, near which a small colony of Swabian emigrants from the free village had already formed, where Ms. Erzsébet's parents also lived.
Starting in 1908, little Johann (now Johnny) lived and went to school as a child in Chicago. In the meantime, the papa left the family, which resulted in the Újvilág really remaining a blanket of promise for the Weissmüller family.
At least until little Johnny met a swimming coach, a certain William Bachrach, who also became his father instead of his father. And that's where the wild swimming career started, which Johnny Weissmüller (now the head of MGM and then RKO) was able to capitalize on in the celluloid heaven of Hollywood.
The future movie star broke a total of 67 swimming world records in his lifetime (I won't go into the details of what kind of swimming), won three Olympic gold medals in the 1924 Paris Olympics and two more in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics.
According to the news, it happened very often that he broke his own records several times a day, which were not included in the mentioned 67, because they were not considered official. The boy only swam once and someone measured him. Let me note here (I myself swam at the time) that it became apparent when I watched the Tarzan movies over and over again: Weissmüller swam as amateurs in the profession used to do. His head was not in the water, which was considered sacrilegious even at the time. However, he invented footwork that brought his body closer to the surface of the water (so say the insiders), which significantly increased the speed at which he crossed the water. Yes, he was the first person to (officially) swim 100 meters in one minute.
So he was a true superstar long before Hollywood caught his eye.
By the way, Weissmüller never considered himself a film actor (in a wise way), he was a swimmer who also acted in films. A (not so) small quirk in his swimming career is that when Weissmüller wanted to compete in the Paris Olympics, he was not yet an American citizen. Therefore, he practically "rewrote" the birth certificate of his younger brother, who was already born on American soil, that is, he forged a document. Hence the benign misunderstanding that Johnny was born in Windber. And then let's jump to the early 1930s.
The economic crisis was raging in America, and Johnny Weissmüller was drinking at the Hollywood Athletic Club on Sunset Avenue. What will God give, wondered a certain screenwriter named Cyril Hume, who naturally caught his eye on the sculptural swimming star. He offered the boy to go to the MGM studio with him, because they were looking for an actor to play a certain jungle citizen named Tarzan, who was invented by a certain writer named Edgar Rice Burroughs.
And then let me make a little digression here. Pulp magazines (pulp mags), available for pennies, were hugely popular in America at the time, and they serialized everything that could fit into the human imagination: from pulp history to pulp romance, from pulp sci-fi to pulp westerns. And the October 1912 issue of one such magazine (the name All-Story perfectly illustrates the omnivorousness that took place in these pages) carried a story by the aforementioned Mr. Burroughs about a jungle romance with an "ape-man" named Tarzan.
The issue was bought like sugar, the popularity of the character of the pure-hearted, close-to-nature, romantic hero spread like wildfire, as a result of which the first Tarzan novel was published in 1914, normally in book form. It cost two hard dollars. (I'm just saying, if someone has a first edition of this, they could sell it for many thousands of dollars today.)
Burroughs, who was not only a good penman, but also a skillful writer, quickly realized that he could make a great living from this: he wrote a total of 26 Tarzan novels (and obviously countless others). It was in 1931 that MGM mogul Irving Thalberg approached Mr. Burroughs to sell him the film rights. And the bad news came: the clever Mr. Burroughs sold the rights a long time ago. I note here that although Tarzan's career in film history began with Johnny Weissmüller in 1932, it did not begin with him:
the first Tarzan film was made in 1918, directed by Scott Sidney, with a certain Elmo Lincoln playing the role of the "ape-man", and sure enough, it was very successful: it is recorded in film history as one of the first cinemas to gross more than a million dollars.
Seven more Tarzan films were made before Johnny Weissmüller stepped onto the screen. The last of these is the 1929 film series called Tarzan, the Tiger (a popular genre at the time, because there was no TV yet), which, among other things, has the interesting feature that two versions were made: a silent on the border between silent and sound film) and another that included a soundtrack in its details. And in one part, the first Tarzan roar in film history is heard loudly. (I heard: you can't even bring water to Weissmüller's yodel.)
So, there stood Mr. Thalberg scratching his head: what should Mr. Burroughs do if he sold the rights? That's when the big idea came: no problem, they will rewrite the story just enough so that it does not violate the relevant laws of the time, but Mr. Burroughs will also get his money. This is how the Tarzan series was born, treating the Burroughs books as a kind of creative starting point. And that's how Johnny Weissmüller jumped onto the screen, literally.
Even today, anyone can be amazed by the physical performance of the elite athlete on the screen. Specifically, watching Tarzan move is a joy. Weissmüller, who played practically the entire series in a single loincloth (with the exception of the film Tarzan in New York, where he had to dress up), has an impressively beautiful and masculine body. I completely understand the ecstasy of the viewers (both women and men):
compared to previous Tarzan characters, Weissmüller was like a demigod.
It's also true that MGM didn't spare any dollars from the budget of the first six Tarzan films. In other words, Tarzan didn't just show off his body in the movies: the unblemished, civilization-uninfected hero ran, jumped, swung, swam, and waltzed among sufficiently realistic scenery. Of course, it would have been a luxury for the crew to travel to Africa, so some of the environmental footage is archival, with African fauna running around and the natives marching and dancing.
The menagerie of Tarzan films consisted of tamed animals (Cita, the chimpanzee, there were several of them, then Timba, the elephant, leopards, ostriches, lions, etc.), but it is still astonishing to see how Tarzan (a stuntman, but himself Weissmüller too) rides on the back of a rhinoceros. Weissmüller was obviously not a trained actor: the character of the wild man was well received by the producers, because they could tailor his dialogues to a good primitive one. (This could have been a message to the immigrants: people, it's okay, if you just speak English, if the point gets across, you can become a hero...) And the simple recipe worked: the Tarzan films were a huge success in America and around the world. Perhaps precisely because, in addition to the star, the story variations were based on a single template: the Evil One (usually white hunters, adventurers, messengers, but also in the form of Nazis) arrives in the pristine forest reminiscent of the mythical Golden Age, and the Lord of the Forest defeats them . In the meantime, he adores his love and then his found child (he is Boy, played by John Sheffield in the series), also with a pure, simple, Arcadian emotion. This story could have been repeated a thousand times.
There are several reasons why MGM did not continue: Thalberg died in 1936, then came World War II. World War II, MGM's budget began to shrink, critics began to sour, and Maureen O'Sullivan, the coquettish Jane of the Tarzan films, announced that she was getting tired of climbing trees all day and running after and from animals. That's when Sol Lesser came into the picture, skillfully dubbing the Tarzan package to the RKO studio. The six Tarzan films made at RKO seem like an exploitation series, at least compared to the films made at the MGM studio. However, the success was unbroken, precisely until the moviegoers realized that Tarzan, that is, Johnny Weissmüller, was no longer the same. Of course, he didn't get any younger, no matter how hard he tried to maintain his body. Confusions in personal life also contributed to this:
Weissmüller was married five times in total, one of his marriages ended very badly, as the current wife sued him for the joint children in addition to the share of the property.
The people at RKO came up with wilder and wilder stories, until in Weissmüller's last Tarzan film (Tarzan and the Sirens, the music of which was composed by the later Oscar winner Dimitri Tiomkin), some of the characters even sang. The film premiered in 1948 was a dubious success (next to the aging star, the current Csita looks anachronistically young), as a result of which Weissmüller took off the Lord of the Jungle's loincloth once and for all. However, it is important (and ominous) that the film was shot in Acapulco, Mexico, where Weissmüller often returned, for a while he was co-owner of a hotel together with other actors (not just anyone: John Wayne, Red Skelton, Fred MacMurray) , it still works today, the Tarzan myth is still alive by the locals), and at the end of his long life, he was also buried there.
In fact, this text could be ended here, since Johnny Weissmüller's name is still attached to the figure of Tarzan even then. Of course, film history also includes the fact that Weissmüller took on the lead role in a series of 16 films (between 1948 and 1955), adapted from the Jungle Jim comic book series by the Columbia studio. The series was successful, given that it was intended for Saturday matinee screenings, as a kind of family film. In the adventure series taking place in Africa, Weissmüller turned out to be, well, a weak actor, so the critics did not pay much attention to the production. Which didn't bother the studio announcers until ticket sales began to decline. In the last three episodes, the protagonist no longer went by the name Jungle Jim: Johnny Weissmüller practically played himself, or an idealized version of himself.
In the meantime, he appeared in commercials, educational films, had a few cameos, and in addition to these, he started his own businesses. It should be noted here that he was not good either as an actor or a businessman. And although his lack of acting skills didn't cost him much (in fact, on the contrary), his lack of business acumen practically ruined him.
If anyone walked into the Caesar's Palace hotel in Las Vegas in the early 1970s, chances are they were greeted by boxing champions Johnny Weissmüller and/or Joe Louis. And the meeting would not have been a coincidence: it was the daily routine of the two legendary stars.
Then came sickness (strokes) and agony in Acapulco.
On January 10, 1984, János (Johann) Peter Weissmüller, the best swimmer of the first half of the 20th century, the Hajdani Lord of the Jungle, moved to the eternal hunting grounds. He left behind a wife, three children and six grandchildren, and the celluloid myth of Tarzan. No representatives of Hollywood were present at the funeral. The iconic Tarzan roar at the grave might have sounded grotesque, if you like, in front of the empty auditorium.
Speaking of yelling: Weissmüller claimed for a long time that he invented the yell, since he participated in yodeling competitions when he was a kid. Many people have refuted this statement many times. However, no one can say for sure. There is also a wild hypothesis that the roar is composed of the following: Weissmüller's voice, dog growling, camel lowing, hyena howl and the sound of a violin's G string. We may never know the truth. However, the myth of Tarzan has lived on ever since.
Until the 1980s, a Tarzan adaptation was made almost every year, after which they began to become rarer, although Disney's animation exploded, many people essentially know the Lord of the Jungle from there. The last big Tarzan movie was in 2016, starring Alexander Skarsgård, Christoph Waltz, Margot Robbie and Samuel L. Jackson, but I recently saw that Warner is promising the next epic adaptation for 2025, with Dwayne Johnson saying one of the key lines: "Me Tarzan", i.e. "Me Tarzan"... (the legendary cry is the old one, at least in the first trailers). I will watch it. Although I already know it won't be the same:
the simple, charming, naive, yet impressive figure brought by the "monkey man" from Bánság could not be reproduced by any later version that I have seen.
And maybe that's a good thing: because in a certain sense Johnny Weissmüller played himself all the way through, that's where the inexplicable attraction, if you like, golden coating, that emanates from the character... while the others "just" act.
Featured image: johnnyweissmuller.com
