The ‘Lord of the Jungle’
V. GANGADHAR
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Gordon Scott who immortalised Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan on screen, died recently. He was 80.
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Photo: AP
Playing the fictitious Tarzan: Gordon Scott.
Generation after generation, Hollywood thrived on popular fiction. Fellow writer Randor Guy wrote about the different versions of Sherlock Holmes movies, which starred a number of famous actors who played the lead role.
Holmes still remains popular and one of the most enjoyable television serials on him features Jeremy Brett as the detective.
There are other fictitious characters, played by noted actors, who have been immortalised on the big and small screens. Peter Ustinov and Albert Finney were among those who played Agatha Christie’s famous detective, Hercule Poirot. So was the case with the Saint, the adventure hero created by Leslie Charters. More recently, show business watched with interest the emergence of the different James Bonds.
Then there are the famous comic book characters - Captain Marvel, Flash Gordon, Phantom, Superman and more recently Spider-Man. The movies are popular on two counts, the older generation remembers them with nostalgia and the younger generation finds them interesting.
Comic strip hero
Edgar Rice Burroughs’ creation Tarzan, belongs to this category and he became a famous comic strip hero. Abandoned in the jungle, Tarzan is brought up by animals. The Apes are his favourties and soon he is jumping from tree to tree, shouting his trademark cry “Kreee...ga,” and doing everything that the apes do.
Burroughs’ creation became hugely popular with the readers, soon he acquired a human soul mate, Jane, and they fought villains who came to disturb their idyllic surroundings and harm the animals. Tarzan captured the imagination of young boys who imitated him. No wonder, Hollywood filmed many of the Tarzan tales.
Eighty-year-old Gordon Scott, who died recently, was one of the most popular Tarzans and starred during the 1950s and early 1960s in more than a dozen Tarzan movies. Burroughs’ hero is handsome, with clean cut features, well built and athletic. All the screen Tarzans possessed these qualities, but Scott was particularly handsome. Some of his well-known roles were in ‘Tarzan and the Lost Safari,’ ‘Tarzan and the Trappers,’ ‘Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure’ and ‘Tarzan the Magnificent.’
In most movies this ‘Lord of the Jungle,’ was pitted against greedy, cruel men who came to ravish the jungle in search of ivory, hides and to capture animals for show business.
Holding his own
Scott held his own against some of the more well-known Tarzans, among whom Johnny Weissmuller was the most prominent. He was the original ‘Tarzan’ who achieved celebrity status with his ‘Tarzan the Ape Man.’
Lex Barker was another famous Tarzan who, however, achieved more fame for his romance with one of Hollywood’s sex symbols, Lana Turner. Larry ‘Buster’ Crabbe, who was then the popular screen ‘Flash Gordon’ also tried his hand at playing Tarzan.
Scott deservingly got kudos from Danton Burroughs, grandson of the creator of Tarzan. “He was an absolutely wonderful Tarzan who played the character as an intelligent and nice man and who carried himself well, much as my grandfather had originally written the role.” We can only add, “Kreee...gaaa”!
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