"Special From Next Avenue"
By Leah Rozen
Hollywood has long carried an Olympic torch for the Games and their charismatic champions
Before he wore a loincloth as Tarzan and yodeled while swinging across movie screens on a vine, Johnny Weissmuller was an Olympic swimming champ.
The strapping Weissmuller -- 6-foot-5, 190 pounds -- power-splashed his way to five gold medals in the 1924 and ‘28 Olympic Games. Recognizing a marketable hunk when it saw one, Hollywood snapped him up.
"It was like stealing," Weissmuller (1904-1984) once said of his Tarzan career, which included a dozen films between 1932 and ‘48. "There was swimming in it, and I didn't have much to say. How can a guy climb trees, say ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane,’ and make a million?"
I was a sucker for Weismuller’s Tarzan films -- as a kid, I used to watch the scratchy prints that repeatedly aired on Saturday afternoon TV.
In fact,...
By Leah Rozen
Hollywood has long carried an Olympic torch for the Games and their charismatic champions
Before he wore a loincloth as Tarzan and yodeled while swinging across movie screens on a vine, Johnny Weissmuller was an Olympic swimming champ.
The strapping Weissmuller -- 6-foot-5, 190 pounds -- power-splashed his way to five gold medals in the 1924 and ‘28 Olympic Games. Recognizing a marketable hunk when it saw one, Hollywood snapped him up.
"It was like stealing," Weissmuller (1904-1984) once said of his Tarzan career, which included a dozen films between 1932 and ‘48. "There was swimming in it, and I didn't have much to say. How can a guy climb trees, say ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane,’ and make a million?"
I was a sucker for Weismuller’s Tarzan films -- as a kid, I used to watch the scratchy prints that repeatedly aired on Saturday afternoon TV.
In fact,...
- 7/29/2012
- by Kristen Stenerson
- Huffington Post
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