Movies

While the "Tarzan" series was going full blast at MGM, several independent producers managed to secure the screen rights to Edgar Rice Burrough's Lord of the Jungle for their own low-budget adventure films. Taking into consideration the fact that MGM's Tarzan was Olympic swimming star Johnny Weissmuller, Sol Lesser managed to cast two Olympic athletes in 1938's Tarzan's Revenge: 1936 decathlon champion Glenn Morris as Tarzan and aquatic medal-winner Eleanor Holm as "Eleanor". The audience doesn't see much of old Tarz' during the first few reels, as Eleanor, her uncle (George Barbier), her sweetheart (George Meeker) and her aunt (Hedda Hopper) safari through the jungle in search of big game. But when Eleanor is kidnapped by lascivious jungle sultan Ben Alieu Bey (C. Henry Gordon), Tarzan comes swinging to the rescue. Though an irredeemably awful actor (his "jungle yell" is so ludicrous as to be laughable), Glenn Morris cuts quite a figure in his Tarzan loincloth, while the curvaceous Eleanor Holm demonstrates just what it was that attracted so many celebrity suitors on both sides of the Atlantic