With the greatest character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs celebrating his
centennial, this seemed like the perfect time to showcase Tarzan's best-known
televersion......
TARZAN
AS SEEN IN:
'Tarzan'
CREATED BY:
Edgar Rice Burroughs
PORTRAYED BY:
Ron Ely
TV STATUS:
Recastaway Original
TV DIMENSION:
Earth Prime-Time
From Wikipedia:
'Tarzan' is a series that aired on NBC from 1966 – 1968. The series
portrayed Tarzan (played by Ron Ely) as a well-educated character, one who,
tired of civilization, had returned to the jungle where he had been raised. The
show retained many of the trappings of the classic movie series, including
Cheeta, while excluding other elements, such as Jane, as part of the "new look"
for the fabled apeman that producer Sy Weintraub had introduced in previous
motion pictures starring Gordon Scott, Jock Mahoney, and Mike Henry. CBS aired
repeat episodes the program during the summer of 1969.
Mike Henry had just
filmed several big-screen adventures as Tarzan in Brazil and was slated to play
the lead in the TV series, but backed out due to disagreements with producer Sy
Weintraub. Ron Ely was originally to have played a Tarzan impostor in a proposed
episode of the TV series, but took over the lead role.
Like Jock Mahoney, Ely
insisted on performing his own stunts when playing Tarzan. Unlike Mahoney, Ely
was not a professional stuntman and sustained seventeen different injuries
during the first season. These included singeing his arms and legs running
through a burning village ("Village of Fire"); being bitten in the forehead by a
"tame" lion (in a later fight with the same lion, Ely was bitten on the lower
left thigh); falling down a hill and ripping the skin off the tops of his feet;
falling twenty-five feet off a vine and separating his shoulder; and falling off
another vine and breaking his other shoulder, fracturing three ribs and
spraining both wrists.
O'BSERVATIONS:
With each of the televersions of Tarzan, the story has been modernized to
the time of broadcast; we have yet to see the Tarzan of the Edwardian Age as
envisioned by ERB. Should that happen (and this being the 100th anniversary of
the character would have been the perfect time for that), that Tarzan would be
welcomed into the Toobworld Dynamic as the Tarzan of Earth Prime-Time.
That is, he would be the first Tarzan of Earth Prime-Time. Ron Ely's
portrayal would not be displaced. Rather, he would be considered the grandson
of the original Tarzan and - although the character has been unmentioned (so
far) in Toobworld - he would be the son of Korak and Meriam. (Just my own tip
of the hat to my counterparts like Win Scott Eckert who do such amazing work on
the Wold Newton Universe envisioned by Philip Jose Farmer.)
BCnU!
