Le Triomphe de Tarzan

This Tarzan adventure has the hero fighting Nazis as they invade the jungle searching for ore and minerals to bolster their war effort. The visitors also abuse the hospitality of a peaceful native tribe and enslave them while they search for radio parts to maintain contact with the Fatherland. Tarzan doesn't get involved during this Nazi occupation until they snatch Boy and make off with the lad. Johnny Weissmuller is in top form as he battles the invaders alone as he attempts to get Boy back from his captors. Frances Gifford is good as a native girl who is coveted by Nazi boss Stanley Ridges. The film is one of the best of the Tarzan series.

If you are familiar with the original Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, there's no reason to scoff at the idea of Tarzan taking on the Nazis. This territory was already covered in the seventh novel of the Tarzan series (and one of the best), "Tarzan the Untamed." Set during World War I, this novel starts with German troops destroying Lord Greystoke's home and kidnapping Jane. Tarzan sets out to find the officer responsible, and in the process he finds himself in an actual combat situation, in which he uses his jungle wiles to sabotage the German side.

Interestingly, "Tarzan the Untamed" leads to a climax involving a strange European civilization hidden in a deep valley, rather like the one featured in "Tarzan Triumphs." Although the script for "Tarzan Triumphs" is credited as an original story, it seems clearly inspired by "Tarzan the Untamed."

The first of the RKO Tarzans and quite an enjoyable entry. Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) finds himself involved in battling the Nazis when they invade the peaceful nearby village of Palandria and try to make slaves out of its citizens. For this film, Tarzan's partner Jane is absent while doing business in London, so we have the gorgeous Frances Gifford subbing for the feminine interest of the story as a princess of Palandria who makes contact with Tarzan and his son Boy (Johnny Sheffield). Gifford would have made a stunning and perfect Jane. A fun, fast, and entertaining installment with an occasional display of violence, with good actors like Sig Ruman, Stanley Ridges, and Philip Van Zandt playing the Nazi bad guys. *** out of ****

'Now...Tarzan Make Propaganda!'

A lot of people seem to have a bias against the RKO Tarzan films, but in truth, it was MGM which gradually morphed the Tarzan franchise from A-picture status to B-picture status, gradually reducing the budget and running time of each picture. And MGM had a bad habit of recycling footage from previous entries in the series...how many times did audiences have to watch the trapeze-vine and the crocodile-wrestling scenes?

In fact, it was probably a good thing that the franchise migrated from MGM to RKO, because RKO made some of the best B-pictures of all time, including many classy ones like the Val Lewton horror series, whereas MGM treated their B-pictures like red-headed step-children. Here we get a brand-new plot and a good script, and we get to see Tarzan fighting a bunch of WW2 Jerries. Thanks to Indiana Jones, it turns out that Nazis are timeless villains, which likely would have surprised the creators of this film, who clearly were content to make a fun propaganda piece.

Above all other considerations, we get Weissmuller and his distinctive portrayal of Tarzan. Maureen O'Sullivan, who was wonderful in her own right and who brought out the best in Weissmuller, is absent here, but we find that Our Hero delivers a good-to-excellent performance throughout, being strangely moving in the scene where Boy reads Jane's letter and his righteous fury is very effective when he utters this famous line: 'Now...Tarzan make war!'

Frances Gifford was an excellent choice as the beautiful and brave princess Zandra, who besides being eye-candy for the adolescents and adults in the audience, has very good chemistry with Weissmuller. Perhaps the chemistry is a little too good...Zandra attempts to persuade Tarzan to help by engaging in some enjoyable flirtation...if Jane had seen the two swimming and sunbathing together, if she had seen Zandra leaning her head on Tarzan's bare chest in a moment of despair, she might not have come back from London in 'Tarzan and the Amazons.'

The MGM Tarzan films were marred by blatantly racist depictions of African tribes. For some reason, the RKO Tarzans seem to have few dark- skinned African tribes, but numerous groups of hidden pale-skinned cities. I don't know why RKO's fictional Africa was populated this way, but I will speculate that it may be due to the fact that in WW2, the US govt. made certain efforts to squelch racism in the media, due to the fact that excessive racial oppression was deemed bad for the war effort. DC Comics, who published the Justice Society of America, did some anti-racism comics during the war, at the behest of the War Department.

Whatever the reason, we are spared the usual bad African stereotypes, but at the same time, it is odd to think of an Africa inhabited mostly by pale-skinned people.

The action and violence in this film are, by the standards of B-movies and Weissmuller Tarzans, very good and satisfying, particularly the sequence where Tarzan tracks and taunts the lead Nazi. Sig Ruman, who played Sgt. Shultz in my favorite Christmas movie, 'Stalag 17,' plays a comedy-relief Nazi here, to good effect.

The Nazis go to Africa seeking oil and strategic mineral wealth, and they use military domination to secure their holdings...the Jerries' troops were called 'Africakorps.' Today, the USA and other military powers are still active in many African nations, perpetrating intrigue, fomenting violence, allying themselves with unsavory characters and regimes, so as to secure petroleum and strategic minerals, such as coltan, which is vital for cell phones and personal electronics. The USA has 'Africom.' Now more than ever, the world needs a Tarzan. Barring that possibility, at least we can watch and contemplate this fun adventure.

While Tarzan was a popular moneymaker at MGM, with the outset of WWII, the studio felt Johnny Weissmuller was getting too old, Maureen O'Sullivan wanted out of the series, and the overseas market was lost, so the series was dropped...but RKO would prove the Ape Man had a LOT of life left in him!

Veteran producer Sol Lesser, 53, loved the character, and snapped up the rights for the studio, wisely keeping Weissmuller, 39, and 'Boy' Johnny Sheffield, now nearly 12, in their signature roles. O'Sullivan, no longer interested in 'Jane', was written out (caring for her ailing mother in London), and the elements that fans loved best (nearly superhuman heroics, comedy from chimp co-star, Cheetah, wild animal footage) were 'beefed up', dropping the romantic interludes, the large number of black 'extras', that provided authenticity (but were expensive for a smaller studio to maintain, for a single series), and, indeed, most of the 'glossiness' that marked the MGM entries. Even the signature Tarzan 'yell' had to be replaced (as the manufactured howl, part Weismuller, part studio magic), was the property of the studio; Weismuller created a 'new' one, that would become so popular that it would be kept, long after he finally retired from the role.

The first RKO entry was perhaps the best of their series; TARZAN TRIUMPHS brought the Nazis into the jungle to tap the mineral resources of a 'lost' city, eventually kidnapping Boy, and leading the previously isolationist Ape Man to utter the famous tag line, "Now Tarzan make war!" With lovely Frances Gifford as a native princess, providing sex appeal (and a really weird scene of Boy trying to 'hook up' the princess and lonely Ape Man, to enlist his help against the Nazis), and Sig Ruman, who went from Marx Brothers' foil to one of Hollywood's busiest 'Nazis', as one of the villains, the action adventure is very entertaining (if extremely violent...Tarzan actually encourages the locals to grab a gun and kill, Boy shoots one Nazi soldier with a pistol, and even CHEETA machine guns one!), and the film was a huge hit for the studio.

Tarzan, at a new home, was back in the 'swing' of things!