Tarzan, a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first appeared in the 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes, and then in twenty-four sequels by Burroughs and numerous more by other authors. The character proved immensely popular and quickly made the jump to other media, first and most notably to comics and film.

Film

The earlier Tarzan films were silent pictures adapted from the original Tarzan novels which appeared within a few years of the character's creation. With the advent of talking pictures, a popular Tarzan movie franchise was developed, which was anchored by actor Johnny Weissmüller in the title role, which lasted from 1932 to 1948. Tarzan films under Weissmüller often featured the character's chimpanzee companion, Cheeta. Later Tarzan films after Weissmüller have been occasional and somewhat idiosyncratic.

Silent film

The earlier Tarzan films were eight silent features and serials released between 1918 and 1929, most based on novels in the original series. Elmo Lincoln starred in the first Tarzan feature, Tarzan of the Apes (1918), a faithful cinematic rendering of Burroughs' first Tarzan novel. The first portion of the film featured Gordon Griffith as the young Tarzan, so Griffith could technically be considered the first screen Tarzan. (Early in the film, Tarzan is also shown as a baby played by at least two different uncredited children.) Elmo Lincoln returned for two sequels. Additional silents were produced in the 1920s with other actors (three of these films – The Romance of Tarzan (1918, Elmo Lincoln), The Revenge of Tarzan (1920, Gene Pollar), and Tarzan the Mighty (1928, Frank Merrill) – have been lost). One of the silents, Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1927), featured the then-unknown Boris Karloff as a villainous native chieftain. Other actors who portrayed the character in 1920s films were P. Dempsey Tabler and James Pierce (who married the daughter of Edgar Rice Burroughs). The first Tarzan sound film was Tarzan the Tiger (1929), featuring Frank Merrill as the Ape Man, shot as a silent but partially dubbed for release. It was Merrill’s second Tarzan movie, and it cost him the role, as his voice was deemed unsuitable for the part.Tarzan of the Movies, Gabe Essoe, 1968

The Weissmüller era

The most popular series of Tarzan films began with Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), starring Johnny Weissmüller and Maureen O'Sullivan. Weissmüller, the son of ethnic-German immigrants from the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary, was already well known as a five-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming. He became the most famous and longest-lasting screen Tarzan, starring as the Ape Man in a total of twelve films, through 1948, the first six produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the final six from RKO. The beauteous and scantily clad O'Sullivan was a major factor in the early popularity of the series. The role of Jane in the films was reduced after O'Sullivan departed in 1942 following the sixth film in the series (and the last for MGM), Tarzan's New York Adventure. Two Jane-less films followed before Brenda Joyce took over the role for the last four Weissmüller Tarzan films.

Starting afresh with an extremely free adaptation of Tarzan of the Apes which threw out everything that had gone before, the Weissmüller series was a boon to the franchise if not to the character. In contrast to the articulate nobleman of Burroughs's novels, Weissmuller's Tarzan was a natural hero with a limited vocabulary. The ersatz pidgin of his dialogue has often been mocked as "Me Tarzan, you Jane," although that particular line was never spoken in any of the films (see insert).

Tarzan and Jane were clearly married in the novels, but their legal status was left ambiguous in the Weissmuller films, even though they shared a jungle treehouse and (particularly in the second film of the series, Tarzan and His Mate) a strong sexual chemistry. In keeping with Motion Picture Production Code requirements, their son "Boy" was found and adopted rather than born to Jane. The "Boy" character, played by Johnny Sheffield, appeared in eight consecutive films in the series, starting with Tarzan Finds a Son (1939). Weissmüller's yodel-like "Tarzan yell" became so associated with the character that it was sometimes dubbed into later films featuring different actors. Cheeta the chimpanzee provided comic relief through the series.

Competing films of the 1930s

Due to complex licensing issues relating to Tarzan, a number of competing films starring other actors were made during the Weissmüller period. The first of these was Tarzan the Fearless (1933), released as both a 12-chapter serial and as an edited feature film under the same title. It starred another Olympic swimmer, 1932 gold medalist Buster Crabbe, and was the first Tarzan film produced by Sol Lesser, later to become producer of the franchise when it moved to RKO. Crabbe went on to a career in B-films and television, including portrayals of space opera heroes Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935), hearkening back to the original concept of the character as an intelligent Englishman, was a serial featuring Herman Brix that was reedited into two feature films, the first released in the same year and with the same title as the serial, and the second, Tarzan and the Green Goddess released in 1938. Edgar Rice Burroughs had a financial interest in the production. Brix, another Olympian (shotput) changed his name in 1939 and, as Bruce Bennett, enjoyed a long career in film and television.

Tarzan's Revenge, released in 1938, starred Glenn Morris, gold medal winner in the Olympic decathlon in 1936, a feat documented in part two of Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia. Morris was thus the fourth Olympian to play Tarzan. His co-star was Olympic swimmer Eleanor Holm who won a gold medal in 1932 and was expelled from the 1936 Olympics under controversial circumstances. She played a Jane-like character named Eleanor. This film was also produced by Sol Lesser. It was poorly reviewed, causing Morris to abandon any thoughts of a further film career.

With the exception of The New Adventures of Tarzan, which was partially filmed in Guatemala, the Tarzan movies of this period were mostly filmed on Hollywood sound stages and backlots, with stock jungle and wildlife footage edited into the final product.

The franchise after Weissmüller After Tarzan and the Mermaids in 1948, Weissmuller retired from the series, believing that he was now too old to play the loincloth-clad character. He went on, however, to appear in a long series of similar adventures wearing a safari suit as Jungle Jim.

After Weissmüller's departure, producer Sol Lesser led a nationwide search for a replacement, auditioning over 200 actors. The winner was Lex Barker, a tall and strikingly handsome 29-year-old who had grown up in wealth and privilege in New York City. Barker portrayed Tarzan in five films (1949–1953), each with a different actress portraying Jane (the first one being Brenda Joyce, a carry-over from the Weissmüller series). These were mostly low budget affairs similar to Weissmuller's RKO films, although the third one, Tarzan's Peril (1951), was an attempt to upgrade the series by filming on actual African locations and using local Africans in the cast. Despite Barker's aristocratic bearing and good acting credentials, Lesser insisted that he emulate Weissmüller's "Me Tarzan, you Jane" characterization.

Next came six films starring Gordon Scott (1955–1960), a bodybuilder who was discovered while lifeguarding at a hotel in Las Vegas. His first three Tarzan films, produced by Sol Lesser, continued in the Weissmüller formula. Lesser also produced several episodes of a Tarzan television pilot starring Scott that was edited into a feature film called Tarzan and the Trappers.

Then the series was taken over by producer Sy Weintraub, who wanted to move the character closer to Burroughs's original conception. The result starred Scott in two of the best-received entries in the entire franchise, Tarzan's Greatest Adventure (1959) and Tarzan the Magnificent (1960). Weintraub's films abandoned the "Me Tarzan, you Jane" aspect of the character, with Scott (and the actors that followed) speaking normally.

MGM released a remake of Tarzan, the Ape Man in 1959, a poorly received film starring Denny Miller.

The Weintraub series continued in two films featuring veteran stuntman Jock Mahoney (1962–1963), three with former pro-football player Mike Henry (1966–1968), and two (feature versions of television episodes) with Ron Ely (1970). The Mike Henry films were filmed before the Ron Ely TV series, but were released to theatres after the TV series debuted. Weintraub had intended Henry to star in the TV series, but Henry declined because of the injuries and illnesses he had suffered during back to back location filming.

The Weintraub productions, including the Ron Ely television series (see below), dropped the character of Jane and portrayed Tarzan as an intelligent but apparently rootless adventurer. The Mike Henry entries, starting with Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966), were produced at the height of the James Bond craze, and had a well-tailored Tarzan jetting around the world to take on dangerous missions; clean-cut Henry also closely resembled then-current Bond actor Sean Connery (who had coincidentally earlier played a villain in Tarzan's Greatest Adventure). In contrast to most earlier Tarzan films, the Weintraub productions were in color and were shot in exotic locations such as Kenya, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, and Brazil.

By 1965, films starring Tarzan had collectively grossed over worldwide, making him the highest-grossing film character up until then. Tarzan's total gross greatly exceeded that of John Wayne, who was the highest-grossing actor at the time.

Later films After 1970, the movie Tarzan went on hiatus until 1981, when MGM released its third version of Tarzan, the Ape Man with Miles O'Keeffe in the title role and Bo Derek as Jane. The film was financially successful, but critically panned.

The better-received Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes followed in 1984, starring Christopher Lambert. Returning to the source material, it updated Burroughs' original novel in the light of 1980s sensibilities and science, utilizing a number of corrective ideas first put forth by science fiction author Philip José Farmer in his 1972 mock-biography Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke. While restoring Tarzan’s identity as an intelligent human being, Greystoke portrayed his adaptation to civilization as a failure, and his return to the wild as a matter of necessity rather than choice.

The next live-action Tarzan movie was Tarzan and the Lost City (1998) which starred Casper Van Dien. Essentially a follow-on to Greystoke, this film was set in the 1920s and attempted to capture the flavor of some of the later novels in the Tarzan series, in which the ape-man encountered increasingly fantastic civilizations hidden in the deep jungles.

The latest live-action Tarzan film The Legend of Tarzan (2016), produced by Warner Bros. Pictures and Jerry Weintraub & directed by David Yates, was released on July 1, 2016. It stars Alexander Skarsgård and Margot Robbie as Tarzan and Jane, along with Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz and Djimon Hounsou. The new approach blended the characters and the setting from the Burroughs novels with the events and atrocities in the Congo Free State in the late 1880s and historical figures with a significant role at the time, such as Leon Rom as portrayed by Waltz.

On September 30, 2022, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Sony Pictures has picked up the screen rights to Tarzan and is looking to deliver a "total reinvention" of the character.

Animated films