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Volume 6432

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Edgar Rice Burroughs

ECLECTICA v.2019.07

Eclectica Archive
TARZAN'S MAMA
The Talk of the Town: Tarzan.
By Russell Maloney and Harold Ross
The New Yorker, June 21/29, 1935

The Lily tulip-Corporation's latest product is the Tarzan Ice Cream Cup (for serving ice cream to kiddies). In order to popularize the product, a Mr. Bergman, planned to rig up a Tarzan Ice Cream Truck, full of animals, with a real Tarzan in leopard skin to tour the country and make speeches about Tarzan cups. 

It was quite a problem to locate a real Tarzan, Mr. Bergman found one by getting a sturdy giant six feet four, and weighed two hundred-and thirty-five pounds. Everything was set for the tour when Tarzan called Mr. Bergman and told him it was all off. 

"Mother won't let me go," he said.



www.ERBzine.com/events

 
Nikola Tesla Predicted Smartphones in 1926
According to a quote found by Big Think, Nikola Tesla basically describes the modern-day smartphone, a communication device so “simple” that we will be able to carry it in our “vest pocket,” back in a 1926 interview with Collier’s magazine.

Here’s the quote: "When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”

Predicting the Internet (a.k.a. that "huge brain") and instant, transportable communication in 1926 is pretty remarkable. It’s no wonder that in geek world, Tesla is one of the most-admired scientists out there with fans like Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Read Tesla’s full interview with Collier’s, Tesla's interview in Collier's is a seriously fascinating step back in time, but also one in which Tesla eerily predicts a lot of what’s coming to fruition, including wirelessly controlled "flying machines" that require no fuel, and the rise of women in power positions: "This struggle of the human female toward sex equality will end in a new sex order, with the female as superior."

TARZAN IN NORTH AFRICA
According to Porges (pg 152):
"An unusual addition, attached to the work sheet, is Ed’s 'Sketch Map of Eastern Algeria for use with The Ape-Man.' His source was apparently a relief map of Algeria, and Ed reproduced the northeast corner of the country with its cities, villages, and mountains...

"He dotted in the course of the railway from Constantine to Biskra. Towns mentioned in the story, including Bouira, Aumale, Bou Saada, and Djelfa are shown on his map, and Ed even entered the names of the hotels at which Tarzan stopped:

– the Hotel Grossat in Aumale and the Hotel du Petit Sahara in Bou Saada, 
both of these hotels marked as being in 'garrison towns.'"

Antique postcard of the Grand Hotel Grossat in Aumale, Eastern Algeria.
From "The Return of Tarzan" 
(Chapter 7):

"The march to Aumale was fatiguing to Tarzan, 
whose equestrian experiences hitherto had been confined
to a course of riding lessons in a Parisian academy, 
and so it was that he quickly sought 
the comforts of a bed in the Hotel Grossat, 
while the officers and troops 
took up their quarters at the military post." 

— in Aumale, Bouira, Algeria.


Antique postcard of the Hotel du Petit Sahara in Bou-Saada, Eastern Algeria.
From "The Return of Tarzan"
(Chapter 8):

"The front of the Hotel du Petit Sahara, 
where Tarzan stopped in Bou Saada, 
is taken up with the bar, two dining-rooms, and the kitchens. 
Both of the dining-rooms open directly off the bar, 
and one of them is reserved 
for the use of the officers of the garrison. 
As you stand in the barroom you may look 
into either of the dining-rooms if you wish." 
— at Bou Saada.


The modern appearance of the Hotel du Petit Sahara in Bou-Saada, Eastern Algeria.
— Renamed Hôtel Kerdada Bou-Saâda.

Emma Hulbert Burroughs in the News
UC Society for Historic Preservation to hold
Riverside Memories Tours Saturday: September 11, 2018
UNION CITY —Union City’s Society for Historic Preservation will hold their eighth annual Riverside Memories Cemetery tours. 
Former Union City citizens to be featured at this year’s tour include . . . 
Irene Drake Rodwell (1873-1977) Irene was born in New York to Alden and Margaret (Vand Zandt) Drake. She was affectionately known as aunt Irene aroundtown. She married Joseph Rodwell and lived in North Carolina until she came to Union City to live with her niece Norene Drake. She was known for her walnut fudge and Concord grape pies. Her first cousin was Emma Hulbert, who was the wife of Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs. 



Parodies from Michael Tierney
Original Covers from ERBzine UK Comics




ERBzine Silver Screen Update
TARZAN'S FIGHT FOR LIFE
www.erbzine.com/mag19/1955.html
Gordon Scott: Film No. 3 of 6
Tarzan art by Kusnet (né Morris Kusnetov)
Hillman Photos from their Vietnam Adventure
www.hillmanweb.com/indochina/vietnam
www.ERBzine.com/movies
www.ERBzine.com

Thomas Haller Buchanan Art
Edgar Rice Burroughs standing next to his new 
Cord L-29 Cabriolet automobile, c.February 1930.
This was the first American front-wheel drive car to be offered to the public, beating the Ruxton automobile by several months, in 1929. The brainchild of former Miller engineer Carl Van Ranst, its drive system borrowed from the Indianapolis 500-dominating racers, using the same de Dion layout and inboard brakes.

Built in Auburn IN, the Cord was the first front-wheel-drive car to use CV-type drive axle joints. The L-29 came with full instrumentation, including a temperature gauge, oil pressure gauge, and speedometer on the left with a gas gauge, oil level gauge, and Ammeter on the right of the steering wheel.

It was powered by Auburn's 4,934 cc (301 cu in) 125 hp (93 kW) L-head Lycoming inline 8 aircraft engine, with the crankshaft pushed out through the front of the block and the flywheel mounted there, driving a three-speed transmission. It could reach 80 mph (130 km/h),

Despite the 137.5 in (349 cm) wheelbase and steering demanding fully four turns lock-to-lock, handling was reportedly superb. Overall height with the top up was 61 in (155 cm) or 5 ft (1.5 m).

Priced around US$3,000 (US$44,210 in today's currency), it was competitive with Cadillac, Marmon, Lincoln, Packard, Franklin and Stutz. The 1930 Chrysler Imperial E-80 copied several styling elements.

Like many luxury cars during the Great Depression, the Cord L-29 was discontinued in 1932 with just 4,400 sold.

~ Ref: Dafydd Neal Dyar 

Wily Tarzan Lives On, Dollarwise
NY Times ~ August 29, 1975
ERBzine Ref
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 28—Four men, all large and a little paunchy, met here today and let out a jungle scream. Each of them could have said to the other, “Me Tarzan. You Tarzan.”

Amid a reported resurgence of interest in the “King of the Jungle,” the Tarzan Club held its first reunion here today. Four of the 15 men who have portrayed Tarzan of the Apes in 40 films, six movie's serials, 52 televisign episodes and hundreds of radio broadcasts gathered with others to commemorate the 100th anniversary, on Sept. 1, of the birth of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the man who cireated Tarzan in a pulp magazine story 63 years ago. He died in 1950. There were plaudits for the author and a lot of nostalgic talk. There was also some lifting of glasses.

The four actors — Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Crabbe, Jock Mahoney and James Pierce—did a juggle scream in unison for the press at a preluncheon cocktail party. But for all the nostalgia, most of the enthusiasm today was rooted not in literature or folklore, but in dollars.

A Hot Property
Everybody seemed to be rejoicing that Tarzan, whose popularity has risen and fallen cyclically for decades, Appeared to be a hot property again, and, mostly by design.
“The world-wide gross of Tarzan products sold under license to us is at least $50 million a year, and that's conservative,” asserted Robert M. Hodes, a 44-year-old Brooklyn-born lawyer who heads the Tarzan empire. Mr. Hodes is president of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., a company that is owned by the heirs of the author and that held today's promotional festivities. Mr. Hodes was hired by the family in 1967 to run the company, and he said in an interview that he discovered the family was doing nothing to exploit the commercial value of Tarzan.

Since then, especially since 1970, when the company had Tarzan stories translated into French and touched off a cult-like interest in Mr. Burroughs abroad, the family's revenues from Tarzan products has jumped 10 times, he said. “We've created this [Tarzan boom] ourselves,” said Danton Burroughs, a 31-year old grandson of the author. “About 70 per cent of all of our income comes from overseas,” Mr. Hodes said. “Tarzan is much, much more succesful overseas; next to Coca-Cola, Tarzan is the best known name in the world.”

“Mr. Hodes would not say how much money the family takes in from the Tarzan legacy, but he said that it was more than $1 million annually. Besides the income from some Tarzan movies and TV programs, he said, there are royalties from two million Burroughs books published annually, three million comic books published monthly in more than a dozen languages, and comic strips in 250 newspapers. Also, advertisers pay for use of the Tarzan image, and manufacturers pay royalties on Tarzan products.

In the cheering audience today were more than 35 businesmen who are licensed to sell Tarzan products. “I've made millionaires out of some of these people,” Mr. Hodes said. There are Tarzan frisbees, Tarzan T-shirts, Tarzan picture puzzles, Tarzan games, Tarzan gymnasium sets and Tarzan pajamas. There is new his-and-hers bikini underwear on which is printed, respectively, "Me Tarzan" and "Me Jane."

The Tarzan enterprise is based on a Southern California town called Tarzana—a community of 25,000 people in the San Fernando Valley. Mr. Burroughs owned, a ranch called Tarzana there, and the people of the region adopted its name for a new town in 1930. 

In London, a Tarzan rock musical is being mounted, and an American publishing company is introducing remedial film strips about Tarzan. Robert Towne the screenwriter is writing a script for the 41st Tarzan movie, based on the original concept of Mr. Burroughs that Tarzan was an erudite British lord lost in the jungle. 

Mr. Hodes said that he was negotiating with the McDonnell-Douglas Corporation to buy a DC-8 jet for Tarzan Airlines for charter flights to exotic places. Planning is also going forward on a Tarzan bikini bathing suit that will be introduced first in Europe by distributing hundreds of free samples—but only the bottom part.

Mr. Weissmuller, the Olympic swimming star who portrayed Tarzan in 12 movies between 1937 and 1948, said of the reunion, “I love it.”

The Tarzan Yell
Mr. Weissmuller, who is 71 years old and is probably the best-known Tarzan, lives in Las Vegas and is involved in a swimming pool company and a vitamin business. His wife, Maria, told a reporter, “My husband, you know, invented the Tarzan yell.” However, Mr. Burroughs; the author's grandson, said that the yell had been originated by compounding recordings of a camel's bleat, a soprano singing high C, violin chords, a yodel and other ingredients.

Five of the living actors who portrayed Tarzan: Bruce Bennett, Ron Ely, Denny Miller, Gordon Scott and Michael Henry — did not attend the reunion, although Mr. Miller did get together with some of the other Tarzans here last night. The six actors who played the role and who — according to the Burroughs family — are now deceased, were Elmo Lincoln, the first Tarzan in 1918; Gene Pollar, P. Dempsey Tabler, Frank Merrill, Glenn Morris and Lex Barker.

Three actresses who have portrayed Tarzan's mate, "Jane," were also present today—Eve Brent, Louise Lorraine and Joyce Mackenzie.

The Burroughs centennial luncheon was held in conjunction with a convention of the North American Science Fiction convention, whose members, including the author Ray Bradbury, praised Mr. Burroughs' creations as important milestones in the development of science fiction.

Tarzan's popularity, Mr. Hodes hopes, will be enhanced even more by the publication, coinciding with the centennial of Mr. Burroughs' birth, of a biography titled, “Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan.” Published by the Brigham Young University Press, the book was written by Irwin Porges.

“All of this is going to snowball,” Mr. Hodes said. “I'm building snowballs.”


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