Tarzan and His Mate (1934)
CREDITS: Internet Movie Data Base
Directed by Cedric Gibbons ~ Jack Conway (uncredited)
Writers: Leon Gordon and Howard Emmett Rogers (adaptation) ~ James
Kevin McGuinness
Based on the characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Genre: Action / Adventure
Tagline: Johnny Weismuller is back again!
CAST:
Johnny Weissmuller ~ Tarzan
Maureen O'Sullivan ~ Jane Parker
Neil Hamilton ~ Harry Holt
Paul Cavanagh ~ Martin Arlington
Forrester Harvey ~ Beamish
Nathan Curry ~ Saidi
Ray Corrigan ~ Double for Weissmuller
Paul Porcasi ~ Monsieur Gironde
Desmond Roberts ~ Van Ness
William Stack ~ Pierce
Yola d'Avril ~ Mme. Feronde
Runtime: USA:105 ~ Black and White ~ Mono
Plot Summary:
In the first sequel to Tarzan, the Ape Man,
Harry Holt returns to Africa to head up a large ivory expedition. This
time he brings his womanizing friend Marlin Arlington. Holt also harbors
ideas about convincing Jane to return to London. When Holt and Arlington
show Jane some of the modern clothes and perfumes they brought from civilization,
she is impressed but not enough to return. Tarzan wrestles every wild animal
imaginable to protect Jane but when he disallows the expedition from plundering
ivory from the elephant burial grounds, it is he who takes a bullet from
Arlington's gun. Jane eventually believes that Tarzan is dead but he is
nursed back to health by the apes. As Jane and the returning expedition
are attacked by violent natives, we wonder if Tarzan can rescue them yet
again.
Summary written by Gary Jackson
FILM FACTS AND TRIVIA
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The movie was originally budgeted for location shooting in Africa and a
spectacular jungle fire. Both plans were discarded.
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ERB was paid $45,000 for the film with option for two more films. He wanted
to see a new Tarzan feature released every year. The final cost of the
film was $1,279,142.
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Director Cedric Gibbons began filming on August 2, 1933, but he was soon
replaced by Jack Conway who directed most of the films footage. Shooting
concluded in March 1934.
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After being replaced by Conway, Gibbons returned to art direction and designed
most of the sets used in the Tarzan series. He never directed another film.
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Cedric Gibbons went on to design the famous Oscar statuette for the Academy
Awards. He personally won eleven Oscars for his work as a production designer.
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According to Jerry Schneider's Movie
Making Locations website, the film was shot at: Big Tujunga, China
Flats, Lake Sherwood/Sherwood
Forest, MGM backlot, and Pico Rivera
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Maureen O’Sullivan was absent for over a month recovering from an appendectomy.
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Members of the Codonas and Picchiani acrobatic troupes in gorilla suits
doubled for tree-swinging apes.
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Former Olympic swimmer, Josephine McKim doubled for Maureen O'Sullivan
in the swim scenes - including the near-nude underwater scene.
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Thanks to the Hays censorship office, the brief costumes worn by the stars
in this film were replaced by much less revealing outfits in the
Tarzan films that followed.
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Betty Roth, wife of lion owner Louis Roth, doubled for O'Sullivan in the
close contact scenes with the lions.
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In the scene where dummy natives fell out of the trees to be eaten by lions,
the lions actually were chewing meat attached to stakes driven into the
ground.
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The lions Margie and Pasha owned by Bert Nelson were used in many featured
lion scenes.
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Chimps Yama and Jiggs played Cheta.
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The rhino, Mary, was imported from Germany by trainer George Emerson who
did most of the riding. Most of Weissmuller's riding shots were on a dummy.
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The many action sequences with animals were achieve through a combination
of using trained animals, travelling matte shots, dummies and minatures.
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Most of the elephants in the film were of the Indian variety with pasted
on ears to make them appear to African.
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The melody “My Tender One,” (written by Dr. William Axt for the film Eskimo)
was used in this, and the next three films.
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The film was a huge worldwide success but was banned in Germany by Hitler's
Nazi party.
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English actor, Paul Cavanagh, who played Martin, returned to work
with Johnny Weissmuller as Commissioner Morrison in the Jungle Jim TV series.
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The ending in the Whitman Big Little Book version of Tarzan and His
Mate is quite different from that of the film. In the book, Holt
dies taking a spear meant for Jane, and Martin is killed by an elephant
as he tries to shoot Tarzan.
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The film's more erotic scenes were removed by order of film censors. Most
of these missing scenes have recently been restored for modern releases.
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After seeing the film's famous underwater nude scene in August 1933, ERB
wrote to son Hulbert: "It is a very beautiful and artistic shot. Their
movements under water are naturally slow and extremely graceful. I saw
nothing objectionable in it . . . it may get by the censors and it may
not."
Around the time that Tarzan and His Mate was released, Jimmy
Durante played Schnarzan, a spoof of the Tarzan character, in MGM's Hollywood
Party. Coincidentally the female star of the movie was Lupe Velez,
future wife of Johnny Weissmuller.
REVIEWS
The New York Times Review
Having
apparently dwelt in the jungle since they first met in "Tarzan, the Ape
Man," Johnny Weissmuller, the swimming ace, and the comely Irish colleen,
Maureen O'Sullivan, are now to be seen at the Capitol in a sequel to their
first adventure. The current offering, which is hailed as " Tarzan and
His Mate," is, if anything, even more fantastic than its predecessor. One
gathers that the first year of Tarzan and Jane Parker (Miss O'Sullivan)
in the African wilds has been a happy one, that they have made many friends
among apes and elephants and that they have dozens of arboreal abodes.
Harry Holt and Martin Arlington are companions on an expedition.
Holt hopes to win back his sweetheart, Jane, but Arlington's only wish
is to bring back plenty of ivory. It seems to be no more difficult to find
Tarzan and Jane than it is to locate Times Square in Manhattan. Jane's
wardrobe is limited and the very thoughtful Holt has brought with him trunks
filled with many gowns and frocks, some of which are not precisely suited
to leaping from tree to tree as Tarzan and his mate do. Perfume and various
other gifts to appeal to the feminine taste are brought by the love-lorn
Holt.
Tarzan does not think much of the perfume and even less
of a silk gown. He is a man of the forest, an emperor, so to speak, of
the jungle, who likes to get his breakfast by diving into a pool and bringing
forth a fish. Coffee has a peculiarly distasteful flavor to him. He does,
however, cherish his hunting knife, for with it he has laid low many jungle
outlaws, such as lions, tigers, leopards, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses,
and so forth.
It does not even take Tarzan's breath away to have a set-to
in the water with a crocodile, and Jane expects him to emerge from the
fray victorious, as he does at all times. Here he rides astride rhinoceros
and has encounters with a variety of animals. It is all in a day's work!
He even expects Jane to be as agile as he is, seeing to it that she does
her daily dozen, in the shape of springing from branch to branch and taking
headers into lakes. Tarzan is no easy person to please. He speaks only
an occasional word, and even then he gets mixed up, which is apt to make
one conclude that there must be days that pall upon Jane. Yet she prefers
the jungle to Mayfair.
They yowl to each other and cover distance far quicker
via the tress than they could on the ground. In case there should not be
enough excitement furnished by jungle fauna and the villainous Arlington,
who, be it known, would do anything for a couple of hundred ivory tusks,
there is a host of savages, evidently of two different tribes. These natives
are quite expert with their spears and arrows.
Aside from the wild tale, this film is a marvel from a
photographic standpoint. Tarzan has his hand to hand encounters with leopards,
hippopotamuses and other beasts, and Jane has anything but a merry time
with several lions. Some of them are evidently riddled with bullets, but
just when one may think that the beasts' teeth have been extracted and
that their mouths are wired, one perceives Tarzan's arm in a lion's jaw
equipped with splendid white teeth. In another instance one perceives an
elephant limping along and finally lying down to die in a spot known as
"the elephants' burial ground." This provoked from a young lass: "Oh, the
poor lamb!" Just got her animals mixed, but her sympathy was sincere.
Needless to say that Miss O'Sullivan and Mr. Weissmuller
acquit themselves in the same favorable fashion they did in their former
hectic experiences.
Time Magazine Review
Tarzan and His Mate contains no implication that
Tarzan and Jane Parker have been married. They are living together in natural
frivolity, ignoring the precepts of Tsar Hays and obeying no civilized
conventions except, perhaps, those of birth control.
A wild, disgraceful, highly entertaining orgy of comic,
sensual and sadistic nonsense, Tarzan and His Mate was brilliantly
directed by Cedric Gibbons, and acted with vigor by Weissmuller and O'Sullivan.
Variety Review
It may be silly, but it continues to be fascinating, this
"Tarzan" theme. In Tarzan and His Mate, second of the Metro series
with Johnny Weissmuller, the monkeys do everything but bake cakes and the
very human elephants always seem on the verge of sitting down for a nice
quiet game of chess; yet the picture has a strange sort of power that overcomes
the total lack of logic and (probably most important) it is an extraordinarily
beautiful photographic specimen. The picture will doubtless draw business.
Tarzan No. 1 ended with Tarz and the white girl from England
at peace in their jungle kingdom. They're again at peace as No. 2 ends,
but in the 92 minutes between the two fade-outs they're almost in pieces,
several times. Trouble starts soon as the domain of Mr. and Mrs. Tarzan
(Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan) is trespassed upon by Neil
Hamilton and Paul Cavanagh, a couple of Miss O'Sullivan's heels from Mayfair.
The boys after the fortune in ivory which lies in a pachyderm graveyard.
There are gory battles between bands of natives
to liven up the proceedings when Tarzan isn't fighting some jungle beast
that is just about to devour his mate. Tarz's stiffest encounters are with
a horned rhinoceros and a giant alligator, respectively. His encounter
with the rhino is obviously phoney and seemingly impossible, but so well
done that it provides a real thrill. The underwater battle with the 'gator
supplies a big kick also. Tarz's hand-to-paw grappling with lions are,
in comparison, just child's play even when one lion is close-upped with
Tarzan's arm in his kisser, and the long teeth showing. Miraculously, when
the arm is withdrawn it bears nary a scratch. But such slight discrepancies
are easily overlooked, since it's granted that Tarz is a cinch bet in all
matches, despite that he always gives away at least two or three tons in
weight.
But for a white man's bullet, Tarz is just another sucker.
He is temporarily felled by a slug tossed at him by Cavanagh, who at first
can't make up his mind whether he wants the ivory or Mrs. Tarzan, and then
decides he wants both. In this animal picture, Cavanagh represents the
species skunk.
Apes of both the genuine and prop variety play a large
part in the picture. One of the real ones, called Cheta, does messenger
service for Tarz whenever the missus is in danger, such as the identical
pair of lions that a few moments before had made a meal of Cavanagh and
Hamilton.
Tarzan and his mate spend most of their time swinging
through the branches. Film goes so far as to stage a regulation flying
act, with Tarz tossing Mrs. Tarz into an aerial loop, to be caught by the
outstretched arms of an ape. The Tarzans also do some fancy swimming, particularly
during a tank sequence when Weissmuller and a lady swimmer doubling for
Miss O'Sullivan, perform some artistic submarine formations. The lady is
brassiereless but photographed from the side only. Weissmuller duplicates
his first Tarzan performance, which means the girls will probably go strong
for him again. Miss O'Sullivan, never wearing much in the way of clothes,
isn't bad to look at from the masculine viewpoint.
The Culver City jungle and studio exteriors were so constructed
as to look like the real thing. In every technical department, the picture
is first grade.
Los Angeles Times Review Excerpt
This sequel was filled with enough adventure, violence
and erotic fantasy to keep the Hays Office censors working overtime. Nothing
equals these original early talkies. Weismuller's Tarzan makes Harrison
Ford's Indiana Jones look like a wimp, and Marureen O'Sullivan's Jane makes
Bo Derek look anemic, even in black and white.
