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Disney's 'Tarzan: The Broadway Adventure' Book On
Sale
 Broadway
World ~ March 27, 2007
Disney Editions, an imprint of Disney Book Group, has
announced the release of the book Tarzan: The Broadway Adventure by Michael
Lassell. "Tarzan: The Broadway Adventure is an intimate backstage look
at the five-year development process of Tarzan, from early concept drawings
to auditions and exploratory flying workshops, through rehearsals and previews,
and even to the gala opening night. The book features never-before-published
photography of the cast at work as well as a look at the collaboration
among the members of the creative team. Tarzan: The Broadway Adventure
features the photos of three amazing photographers: acclaimed Broadway
production photographer Joan Marcus, revolutionary sports photographer
Heinz Kluetmeier and stylized portraits by renowned photographer Ruven
Afanador," state press materials.
"The book gives the reader a peek at the production from
the inside, a story that isn’t told anywhere else. In this colorful volume
are exquisite costume and set design sketches and models as well as images
of the set in all stages of its development. The book conveys the full
beauty of the show’s unequalled drama and offers readers unique insight
into a process few will ever see. It’s the next best thing to a front-row
seat."
Author Michael Lassell was given complete behind-the-scenes
access to the production. He says of Tarzan: The Broadway Adventure,
"I love going to the theater and being surprised, but I have the kind of
mind that always wants to know 'How did they do that?' Observing the rehearsal
process is really the only way to find out, because what you see in the
theater is meant to hide the mechanisms behind the magic. Because this
production rehearsed for so long on the actual set, the rehearsal process
for this show was much closer to performance than is usual. Especially
when the company was in Brooklyn, with set building and costume construction
and harness fittings and rigging and dancing going on all the time—on two
facing sets. Bob Crowley called the studio 'an ecology' of activity. It
was a masterpiece of organization and a real privilege to watch.”
Published by Disney Editions, the book has a list price
of $40. More>>>
The musical opened May 10, 2006 at the Richard Rodgers
Theatre (226 West 46th Street) on Broadway
www.ERBzine.com/disney
Premiere night for Tarzan the Musical in Holland will
be April 15 at Circustheatre near The Hague
www.ERBzine.com/holland
ERBlog Watch:
UNGAWA! The Weismuller Tarzan Movies
 Accelerated
Decrepitude Blog ~ March 27, 2007
Sean Connery fans are fond of saying "There is but one
James Bond" when poo-pooing the many Bonds who came after him. Likewise,
fans of the countless Tarzan movies often say, "There is but one Tarzan
- Johnny Weismuller." (Actually, the Connery-Tarzan connection isn't so
far off: according to ERBzine, Sean
Connery played a villain in the 1959 film Tarzan's
Greatest Adventure and was set to play Tarzan himself in 1961 but instead
took the role of James Bond in Dr. No and...you know how that worked out.)
Whatever the merits of all the Tarzan adaptations by all
the various actors and studios, most critics agree that the 12 Johnny Weismuller
films made at MGM and RKO between 1932 and 1948 represent the Golden Era
of moviemaking for Edgar Rice Burroughs' King of the Jungle. (And of that
dozen, most fans consider the 6 films made at MGM between 1932 and 1942
to be the real cream of the crop, particularly 1934's Tarzan
and His Mate.)
More>>>
THANKS TO DANTON BURROUGHS
 Museum
of the San Fernando Valley ~ March 25, 2007
The Directors of the Museum of the San Fernando Valley
wish to express our gratitude to Danton Burroughs of Tarzana for the loan
of family historical materials for our just closed "Burroughs Family Exhibit.
The exhibit featured books, photographs and artifacts from the lives and
careers of the world famous author Edgar Rice Burroughs and noted American
illustrator John Coleman
Burroughs. The Burroughs family has lived in Tarzana for four generations.
Edgar Rice Burroughs earned a fortune through his famous Tarzan books.
He was the grandfather of Danton Burroughs. John Coleman Burroughs was
Danton's father.
The Museum plans future exhibits based on the Burroughs
family and well known Tarzana
Ranch, when we secure our new headquarters and exhibit space. We are
now actively collecting books and other materials on the lives of both
Edgar and John Burroughs. Steve Falk, long time San Fernando Valley resident,
heads the Museum of the San Fernando Valley's effort to pursuade the United
States Postal Service to issue a 4-stamp block celebrating the genius of
the Burroughs family. The four stamps in the block would feature: Edgar
Rice Burroughs - American author. John Coleman Burroughs - American illustrator
and artist. Tarzan of the Apes/Jane/Boy and Cheetah. And, the community
of Tarzana. If you support the effort to have these stamps printed, add
you comments to this blog post or contact Steve at The Museum of the San
Fernando Valley. More>>>
Mark Fergus: John Carter Talk
Film
Stew ~ March 23, 2007
Screenwriter and first-time director Mark Fergus (First
Snow) came this close to convincing Paramount to move forward with an adaptation
of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel John Carter of Mars. But he’s still stoked
at the prospect of Pixar picking up the slack, either by way of animation
or special effects enhanced live action. “[Executive producer] John [Lasseter]
brought us in to do an adaptation of the trilogy,” Fergus explains during
a recent interview with FilmStew. “The trilogy is huge and I hadn’t read
them before, which was great because it made it fresh material. I was like,
‘Wow. Everyone has pillaged these books over the years for sci-fi stories
and movies.’” “What we really had to do is focus it to just be a mythical
fairy tale,” he adds. “It could be a four-hour movie if you wanted it to
be. But it’s quite a simple story when you strip away the hundreds of side
characters and layers and all of that. When we showed them that we knew
how to travel through this material and find that story, I think that’s
really what made them want to get us involved. I think we nailed that.”
“I felt so happy about that draft. It’s a giant proposition
for anyone who wants to make that. It’s almost employing technology that’s
not even invented yet. It has got to be very scary to a filmmaker to need
the resources that that one might take, to mix different size creatures
and different worlds and different layers and have it all be very seamless.
Even if the creatures are not of this earth, you’d still get an actor to
do a performance and their face would actually be melded with the creature,
so you’d get a real performance. I think Pixar is going to do it now.”
More>>>
Jersey Boys' Trujillo Working on European Tarzan
 Playbill
News
Broadway
World News ~ March 19, 2007
Sergio Trujillo, who was nominated for a Drama Desk Award
for his choreography for Jersey Boys, is currently in Amsterdam working
on the European debut of Disney's Tarzan.
Tarzan, as previously reported, will open April 15 at
the Circustheatre near Amsterdam. Heading the cast of the Dutch-language
production will be 27-year-old Ron Link from Nijmegen in the title role
with 27-year-old Chantal Janzen from Tegelen as Jane.
Trujillo, according to a presss release, is "collaborating
on a new concept for the European production of [Tarzan]." The choreographer
said in a statement, "I am truly honored to be working with Disney. Tarzan
is a wonderfully inventive show and I look forward to moving the characters
and story in new and different ways."
In addition to Jersey Boys, Trujillo also choreographed
All Shook Up, the City Center Encores! productions of Kismet and A Tree
Grows in Brooklyn. He also choreographed Zhivago and The Wiz, both at the
La Jolla Playhouse. More>>>
Filmation "Superman" & "Batman" Cartoons
Coming to DVD
ToonZone
~ March 21, 2007
Tvshowsondvd.com reports that two classic Filmation toons
are coming to DVD. The New Adventures of Superman: Season 1, and The New
Adventures of Batman: The Complete Series will be out on June 26. The New
Adventures of Superman will be a 2 disc set containing 36 classic episodes
of The Man of Steel in action.The New Adventures of Superman was the first
big hit for Filmation Productions, and aired on CBS in 1966. The New Adventures
of Batman will be a 2 disc set containing all 16 episodes. The New Adventures
of Batman aired on CBS in 1977 and later became part of The Batman/Tarzan
Adventure Hour, which became part of Tarzan & the Super 7 for CBS,
and after that Batman & the Super 7 for NBC. More>>>
Broadway Outer Critics Circle Awards
Broadway
World ~ Friday, March 16, 2007
Nominations for the 56th Annual Outer Critics Circle
Awards will be announced on April 23rd at the Algonquin Hotel. The awards
ceremony will take place at Sardi's Restaurant in the Eugenia Room May
24 after the winners are announced on May 14th. The awards are chosen by
writers and journalists that "cover New York theatre for out-of town newspapers,
national publications and other media beyond Broadway." Simon Saltzman
is president, with Marjorie Gunner as president emerita. A new category
for Outstanding New Score, applicable to Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals,
has been added. It was also announced that Tarzan, Disney's Broadway
musical version of its hit animated film, will be eligible this year since
last year's committee was unable to attend the show by Tarzan's eligibity
cut off date. More>>>
ERB's Harvard School converting
to condos
 YoChicago
~ March 15, 2007
When planning the conversion of the Harvard School for
Boys in the South Side's Kenwood neighborhood, developer Steve Soble pored
over old yearbooks to retain period touches. Few finishes from the dilapidated
1917 building were salvageable, so Soble hung onto parts of the original
terrazzo floors and the oak doors, which are nearly three inches thick
and include wire-glass windows. The Harvard School’s history is notable
for more than its architecture . . . He noted some of the school’s other
famous graduates: Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan; Mandy
Patinkin, Broadway and television star; and William Shawn, perhaps the
best-known editor of the New Yorker magazine. Aside from the gym, the Harvard
School Condominiums will have four units, each with four bedrooms and 3.5
bathrooms. Three condos will be housed within the school building, with
one unit on each floor. A fourth condo will occupy two stories in an adjacent
portion of the building, across a courtyard. All of the units are available,
and prices, which include two garage spaces per unit, range from the $830s
to the $940s. More>>>
 
The Sky People
St.
Paul Pioneer Press ~ March 15, 2007
Is Tarzan next? Famed sci-fi author S.M. Stirling has
pulled lots of cool stunts. He threw the island of Nantucket into the Bronze
Age and made it a superpower. He deprived the world of technology and sparked
medieval mayhem. And now, in a tribute to Edgar Rice Burroughs, he's reimagined
Venus and Mars as Earth-like worlds. In "The Sky People," set on Venus,
he mixes Terran colonists with dinosaurs, greatwolves and Neanderthals
packing AK-47s. But this isn't quite E.R.B. That old master could be hard
to beat. The terrific "Sky People" cover art is a dead ringer for the Frazetta
art on E.R.B.'s great old "Beyond the Farthest Star," More>>>
Insatiable appetite for Disney
musicals
Monsters
and Critics ~ March 15, 2007
The number of Disney musicals on New York's Broadway
has doubled to four in the past year, and the number of productions opening
in other cities has also increased. 'It's unprecedented,' said Thomas Schumacher,
president of Disney Theatrical Productions, which this year will open 'The
Lion King' in Johannesburg and Paris, and 'Tarzan' in Holland. www.ERBzine.com/holland
Disney has headed the comeback of Times Square and 42nd
Street and scored a stream of hits for a decade. When one show closes,
another opens. 'Beauty and the Beast' closes in July and will be replaced
by 'The Little Mermaid' by year end. 'Tarzan' and 'Mary Poppins' both opened
on Broadway last year, resulting in an increase of Disney's Broadway revenues
by 42 per cent, or $39 million, to a total of $131 million, according to
Disney.
But where Disney has succeeded on Broadway others have
failed. Its rival Warner Bros. challenged Disney's opening of 'Tarzan'
last year with its Broadway foray, the Elton John musical 'Lestat.' While
Tarzan received mixed reviews but continues on Broadway, 'Lestat' flopped
and closed within two months.
More>>>
Tune in to Dateline
Jasoom Podcast ~ Episode 29
New George of the Jungle cartoon series in production
at Studio B Productions.
Phone calls to Dateline Jasoom.
Game show with a panel of "experts" on Tarzan, Little
Orphan Annie and Dick Tracy
TARZAN Celebrates 350 Performances
on Broadway
 TARZAN®
will celebrated 350 performances on Broadway on Sunday, March 11th. Heralded
by Time Magazine as “sensational” and by The Financial Times as “the only
show of the [2005-2006] season that places us joyously in a world of wonder,
TARZAN® has proven to be a hit, having set the box office record at
the Richard Rodgers Theatre an impressive five times in 2006. Audiences
have responded enthusiastically with over 368,000 people having seen the
show on Broadway to date. Disney Theatrical Productions started 2006 with
the world premiere of Broadway’s high-flying adventure, TARZAN®, one
of the most artistically innovative shows to come to Broadway in recent
memory.
TARZAN® opened May 10, 2006 at the Richard Rodgers
Theatre (226 West 46th Street). TARZAN® is presented by Disney
Theatrical Productions (Thomas Schumacher, Producer). Featuring direction,
set, and costume design by multi-Tony Award® winner Bob Crowley,
and music by Academy Award® and multiple-GRAMMY® winner Phil
Collins, TARZAN® has thrilled audiences since opening in May
2006.” The original cast recording of TARZAN® was released by Walt
Disney Records and is available now at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, in
music stores nationwide and at online retailers including Amazon, iTunes
and Disney Shopping.
Disney’s first international production of TARZAN®
is currently in rehearsals and will open April 15, 2007 at the Circustheatre
near Amsterdam. The production is a continuation of a long-standing partnership
between Disney Theatrical Productions and Stage Entertainment, the collaboration
that has mounted six Disney musicals in Europe, grossing over $400 million
in ticket sales. More at
ERBzine Disney
Coincidence?
Prince Korak & a princess hatched from an egg
on two warring planets. . . mmm?
A space-age spectacle from Northern ballet
Observer-Guardian
UK ~ March 4, 2007
Northern Ballet Theatre ~ Grand Theatre, Leeds
David Nixon's new production for Northern Ballet Theatre,
A Sleeping Beauty Tale, references Petipa's masterpiece in its title
and the intermittent use of Tchaikovsky's music, but thereafter the similarities
are few. Bravely, and perhaps recklessly, Nixon has set the piece in outer
space, with a tale of two planets: one peaceable, one set in a fascist
mould. A political marriage is arranged between the two, that
of Princess Aurora (Keiko Amemori), who has been born fully-grown from
an egg, and Prince Korak (Mark Biocca). Early evidence of Korak's psychotic
character suggests that the marriage is not going to be a happy one, as
does his association with Kasak (Tobias Batley), his scheming and decidedly
camp Grand Vizier. Betrayal, nuclear holocaust and light-speed travel follow,
all set to a frothy cocktail of late 19th-century Russian symphonic music.
More>>>
~ Submitted by Wayne James
For First Time, Chimps Seen Making
Weapons for Hunting
 Washington
Post ~ February 22, 2007
Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have
been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools
to hunt small mammals -- the first routine production of deadly weapons
ever observed in animals other than humans. The multistep spearmaking practice,
documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees'
trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar
tools millions of years ago. The landmark observation also supports the
long-debated proposition that females -- the main makers and users of spears
among the Senegalese chimps -- tend to be the innovators and creative problem
solvers in primate culture. Using their hands and teeth, the chimpanzees
were repeatedly seen tearing the side branches off long, straight sticks,
peeling back the bark and sharpening one end. Then, grasping the weapons
in a "power grip," they jabbed them into tree-branch hollows where bush
babies -- small, monkeylike mammals -- sleep during the day. More>>>
Chimps Make and Use "Spears" to Hunt
National
Geographic ~ February 22, 2007
Since the 1960s scientists have known that chimpanzees
are able to make and use tools—behavior once thought to be an exclusively
human trait. Now National Geographic-funded researcher Jill Pruetz has
observed toolmaking behavior that further blurs the line between the apes
and humans: chimps in Senegal sharpening sticks into crude spears and thrusting
them into tree hollows, presumably to hunt small mammals More>>>
Watch footage of a female chimp caught in the act of
removing a spear from a tree hollow and then breaking the tree to recover
her prey, a primate called a bush baby.
See
Video HERE:
|
David
Burton's highly anticipated vision of Edgar Rice Burroughs' beloved tale...
Bruce
Scivally, longtime ERB fan and researcher, who has worked on a major
documentary on Johnny Weissmuller and is author of one of the most comprehensive
books on the cinematic James Bond, James Bond: The Legacy ~ has just completed:
Artist’s
Press 2007, 520 pages, 150+ photos, $40
From
the creator of Tarzan comes the saga of a Civil War soldier who escapes
an Apache attack only to find himself in the midst of a Martian war. It
was in his next work, the fantasy novel Tarzan of the Apes (All-Story Magazine,
1912; book, 1914), that Burroughs created the best-known character of the
20th century. However, it was his interplanetary romances, especially his
John Carter of Mars series, that made him the most influential author of
20th-century SF. Scores (probably hundreds) of writers pastiched his interplanetary
romances with their own tales of swashbuckling Earthmen on alien worlds,
but Burroughs' influence spread beyond this subgenre to cover the entire
SF field. A few of the many writers who have directly or indirectly acknowledged
his influence are Terry Bisson, Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C.
Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, James P. Hogan and Michael Moorcock. And the
new millennium brings a revival of the Burroughsian interplanetary romance,
reimagined for the 21st century in works like Al Sarrantonio's Haydn
of Mars (2005), Chris Roberson's Paragaea (2006) and S.M. Stirling's
The
Sky People (2006).
WASHINGTON
-- Herman Brix, 100, an Olympic shot-put medalist who became a screen Tarzan
in the mid-1930s and went on to act in more than 100 other films under
the name Bruce Bennett, died Feb. 24 at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica,
Calif. He had complications from a broken hip. Mr. Brix was a star on the
University of Washington football team and won a silver medal in the 1928
Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, throwing the shot 51 feet, 8 1/8 inches.
He was competing for the Los Angeles Athletic Club and doing film stunt
work when he befriended Douglas Fairbanks Sr., the athletic star of silent
pictures who encouraged the strapping blond athlete to make a screen test.