Jock Mahoney is a terrible Tarzan

This is a great Tarzan flick. I think one of the better ones. The climatic fight over the boiling oil was fantastic. If Mahoney hadn't been so desperately ill at the time (it took him a couple years to recover) and wasn't so emaciated by the illness he contracted filming, he would have been a very fit Tarzan. You can practically see him waste away on film from start to finish.

I realize the whole "me Tarzan" conceit was a creation of the movies, but I think it's integral to making the Tarzan character work on screen.


The film series, under Sol Lessor's tenure as producer in the 30's & 40's, was starting to get old, predictable, and tiring towards the end of Johnny Weissmuller's tenure as well as through Lex Barker's, and well into Gordon Scott's in the mid 50's so Lesser sold the film rights in 1959 to producer Sy Weintraub, who injected new life in the franchise by (1) getting rid of Jane and Boy; (2) making Tarzan a lone adventurer; and (3) Weintraub also wanted to get far away from the Johnny Weissmuller image of a grunting, illiterate apeman by portraying Tarzan according to Edgar Rice Burrough's concept in his books: as well-educated, well-spoken, and more civilized. Weintraub wisely retained Gordon Scott to star in the first two films he produced: Tarzan's Greatest Adventure and Tarzan The Magnificent, considered by many fans to be the best films in the Tarzan series because of the fast paced action in both films. Besides I liked Scott much better as a literate Tarzan than the previous ones when he spoke broken english, though Lesser's Tarzan & The Lost Safari w/Scott, which was also the first Tarzan film to be filmed in color, maybe the only exception in my book.

From the standpoint of physique my favorite Tarzans are Mike Henry followed by Gordon Scott.Jock,while one of the most superb stuntman Hollywood has ever known,was too skinny for me to be Tarzan.That being said though,I think he was the best actor of all the Tarzans in film.