THE EVERLASTING FIRST: Tarzan

Continuing a look back at my first exposure to a number of rock 'n' roll acts and superheroes (or other denizens of print or periodical publication), some of which were passing fancies, and some of which I went on to kinda like. They say you never forget your first time; that may be true, but it's the subsequent visits--the second time, the fourth time, the twentieth time, the hundredth time--that define our relationships with the things we cherish. Ultimately, the first meeting is less important than what comes after that. But every story still needs to begin with that first kiss.

It all started with a scream.

Everyone knew the scream. It didn't matter if you were young or old. The fierce jungle cry of Tarzan was a shared reference in our common pop culture, as was the familiar exchange of "Me Tarzan, you Jane." Some knew the story with a greater measure of depth than that. But everyone knew the scream.

And, with that said, I confess I don't know exactly where and how I first encountered this iconic Lord of the jungle. Well, except that I'm reasonably certain that my introduction to Tarzan came via my TV screen.

I was six years old when the weekly Tarzan series debuted on NBC in September of 1966. Contrary to the collective popular conception of Tarzan as a savage warrior with limited command of the English language, actor Ron Ely played the title hero as articulate and educated. He still had the scream, of course, but he spoke in complete sentences. Years later, I would discover that this well-spoken character was the (if you will) real Tarzan, the Tarzan featured in the original novels written by the character's creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs. That "Me Tarzan" jazz mentioned above? That was just Hollywood messin' with the concept. Eff the man, man.

But, as much as I want to say that Ron Ely and his two televised seasons of protecting the jungle served as my gateway into all things Tarzan...the math isn't there. I was six years old, already a veteran viewer of TV heroes from Flash Gordon and Superman to The Cisco Kid and Batman. By the age of six, I knew about (or at least thought I knew about) Tarzan. Everyone knew Tarzan. The guy with the scream. Tarzan of the Apes.

It's quite plausible that my early knowledge of Tarzan formed via pop culture osmosis. I may or may not have seen a Tarzan movie, but the character was such an integral part of Americana that, well, he was just there. Always. A specific introduction wasn't strictly necessary. No one introduces you to running, or clouds, or snowfall, or the idea that girls can be cute. It's a fait accompli. It is because it is, was, and ever shall be. Chicken. Egg. Tarzan. 

Anyway, knowing Tarzan wasn't quite the same as being interested in Tarzan. Let's presume I caught an episode of the TV show in there somewhere. Let's further presume I'd had a glimpse of one or more of the older Tarzan movies in TV reruns. Neither of these presumptions is Gospel, but sometimes ya gotta grab that vine and take a swing of faith. I might have thumbed through one of Gold Key's Tarzan comic books at the doctor's office. But even if I did see something of the new or old adventures of Tarzan, they didn't inspire me to become a fan. Not yet.

The first Tarzan product I ever owned was a Big Little Book. I went through a Big Little Book phase in fourth grade, 1969-1970, and I snapped up as many of those little treasures as I could. The Big Little Books were licensed properties, tiny hardcover volumes featuring a page of text accompanied by a facing page of illustration. I accumulated BLBs starring Batman, The Fantastic Four, Tom and Jerry, Space Ghost, Aquaman, Dick Tracy, The Lone Ranger, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Flipper, The Flintstones, Mickey Mouse, Frankenstein Jr....man, any of 'em I could get my hands on. I even grabbed some BLBs based on TV shows I didn't really watch, like Bonanza, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and The Invaders. And my haul included the lone '60s Tarzan BLB, The Mark Of The Red Hyena.

I remember the cover. I know I owned it, and I know I read it. I have no other recollection of The Mark Of The Red Hyena.

But my interest in Tarzan was about to manifest. In 1972, the Burroughs estate terminated Gold Key's license to publish Tarzan comics, and DC Comics eagerly picked up that license. At DC, writer-artist Joe Kubert began adapting the original novels, and the result was stunning and irresistible. It would be a little bit of an exaggeration to say I was hooked, but I was intrigued, and I read the book as often I could fit it within my comics-buyin' budget.

Kubert's work was my real gateway into Tarzan's world. From there, I started watching the old movies on TV, both the '30s and '40s films starring Johnny Weissmuller as the less-loquacious hero and the '50s and early '60s action flicks starring Gordon Scott or Mike Henry. I soaked up reruns of the Ron Ely TV series when I could find it. I started reading some of the novels, and DC even published a 100-Page Super Spectacular reprinting a Tarzan newspaper strip storyline, with gorgeous art by Russ Manning.

I became dismissive of the Weissmuller movies, smugly insisting that the monosyllabic brute depicted in those pictures was a distortion of the character. Yet I enjoyed those anyway, especially Tarzan's New York Adventure. Ron Ely was my favorite Tarzan, but I came to respect the Weissmuller films, too.

In this 21st century, Tarzan isn't quite the ubiquitous figure in pop culture that he was in the '60s and '70s, when I was a mere lad and beardless youth. I've never seen the Disney animated take, and I'm sure the House Of Mouse's Tarzan provides the key contemporary reference point for today's kids, if they know Tarzan at all. When my daughter was in college, one of her fiction courses required her to read the first Tarzan novel, ERB's Tarzan Of The Apes from 1912. That was, at least, a text book she didn't have to buy, as I lent her my copy instead. She hated the book, of course, appalled by its casual, implicit racism and its imperialist POV. I'll have to ask her if the Disney version is more to her liking.

And maybe I should check out Disney's Tarzan, too. Does he still have the scream? Gotta have the scream, I say. Gotta have the scream.

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SINGERS, SUPERHEROES, AND SONGS ON THE RADIO: My Life In Pop Culture, Part 7

Continuing my reminiscence of listening to records and reading comic books while growing up in the '60s.  You can review my progress so far in Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 and Part 6


I was always considered weird.  I will pause a moment so you can feign an appropriate level of shock and surprise.  But yeah, I was a square peg from the word go:  a dreamer, not terribly (or at all) athletic, disinterested in sports, overly sensitive, always singing a song or reading a book (or comic book).  My childhood was certainly not unhappy, but I felt more like Charlie Brown than, say, David Watts.

In 1969, I had neither heard nor heard of "David Watts."  Nonetheless, this blog will never pass up on a chance to mention THE KINKS!

But in third grade, I began to feel something new and unfamiliar:  I began to feel as if I belonged.  It's a feeling I have never been able to recapture since then.

After our third grade production of How The Grinch Stole Christmas, 1969 began with a welcome return:  Batman!  With a tag line of "Holy 1969!," one of our local stations began rerunning the 1966-68 TV series on weekday afternoons.  Batman every day!  Maybe this new Nixon Administration was gonna turn out okay after all!



A Saturday morning TV cartoon series based on the popular Archie comic books had begun the previous fall.  I had read some Archie comic books (and the Sunday comic strip); it wasn't my preferred genre of superheroes, but I liked Archie well enough, I guess.  In retrospect, I'm surprised I never sampled Archie's own comic-book foray into superherodom, as the mighty Pureheart The Powerful (circa the 1966 Batman boom).

Still, I watched The Archie Show.  I think I was a bit put off by Veronica's unexpected Southern accent ("Archiekins!"), but it was fun.  And there was music!  The songs were catchy, engaging bubblegum (though I don't think I'd heard that term yet), and I would sing along with delight.  When The Archies had a # 1 hit record on the radio, the irresistible "Sugar, Sugar" was my favorite song, too.  Other than a few cardboard records cut off the backs of specially-marked boxes of Post breakfast cereals, I never owned any Archies records at the time; I own all of them now.

(Years later, I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Ron Dante, the lead singer on The Archies' records.  He was one of the nicest people I ever had the pleasure of interviewing.  Material from that interview was included in my "Informal History Of Bubblegum Music," which will be serialized on this blog in the near future.  Oh, and my current favorite comic book is--surprise!--Archie, though the book's tone today is more somber and serious [if you will] than the Archie of my youth.)





The summer of '69--no, that doesn't make me think of any specific song; why do you ask?--presented a real-life realization of those long-ago Flash Gordon adventures, as Neil Armstrong took one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.  I experienced my first-ever shock of inflation when the price of a single comic book rose from the familiar 12 cents to a whompin', stompin' 15 cents per copy.  Oh, the humanity...!  Mom and I returned to Missouri, and then back to Syracuse for the start of fourth grade.

Bear Road Elementary School at that time housed grades K through 5th.  My fourth grade class was a double-classroom, with two teachers--Miss Lynch and Miss Burns--presiding over something like fifty to sixty kids.  That's crazy.  How they managed that without murdering one or more of us (as far as I know) is a mystery; how we managed to learn anything is equally mystifying.  But somehow, both statements are true.

I got along with, I think, all of my classmates.  We weren't all best buds, but I don't remember any specific rivalries or antagonism either.  It was the only time I ever shared a class with my friend Steve Goettel, who lived across the street from me; like Sharon Doyle, Steve had been my friend for as far back as I could remember.

Fourth grade was the best year I ever had in school.  I don't mean in terms of grades, but in terms of comfort, in terms of camaraderie and companionship...yes, in terms of belonging.  There was a kid in my class, Michael LaHair, who was the first person I ever met who was into comic books just as much as I was.  We got together at his house on Moon Valley Drive to trade comics, and we remained friends for a few years, until he too moved away.

Neither Michael LaHair nor I ever owned a copy of this 1941 comic book.

I developed a sudden and vast interest in World War II.  I don't know what prompted it, but it immediately became as pervasive an interest as snakes, astronomy, and mythology had once been in previous years.  A few times, I had to reassure adults (not my parents, by the way--they knew me way better than that) that my interest in learning more about WWII--especially the dictators--was in no way an indication that I was secretly a neo-Nazi or some other odious fascist sympathizer.  I just found the subject interesting.  (And I daresay I knew more about Neville Chamberlain as a ten-year-old in 1970 than right-wing dunderhead Kevin James knew about him during the 2008 presidential election.)

The book store at Bear Road--The Paperback Shack--implicitly embraced the philosophy that all reading is educational, so why not let kids read books they're interested in reading?  I got into something called Big Little Books, which were small-but-thick kids' books starring licensed characters, with pages of text alternating with pages of illustration.  I would later discover that BLBs predated comic books, with the first Big Little Books appearing in the 1930s, starring characters like Tailspin Tommy, Buck Rogers, and Captain Midnight.  My first BLB starred The Fantastic Four, and I subsequently purchased as many of them as I could.  Years later, I sold my BLB collection for rent money.  Wish I still had 'em!

 

 

 

 


But more importantly, I had friends.  Some of my classmates thought I was funny, some of them liked my drawings...I was bordering on popular!  When the class put on a play for parents, I didn't have a part to play; somehow, I wound up horning in anyway, with an ad-libbed part about a student phoning home from college (and ending the conversation by saying he had to go "bean the Dean").  This was a big hit with my peers.  I had arrived.

My grades were, I guess, better than adequate.  My occasional struggles with math and science made it increasingly clear that I wasn't going to be a brilliant millionaire inventor/crimefighter like Iron Man, but reading and social studies were easy.  And that's where trouble planted its seed.

Tests indicated that I was reading at a ninth-grade level.  Now and forevermore, damn those tests to Hell.  It was decided that I needed more of a challenge; so, for reading, I was separated from the rest of my class.  I had my own, different reading textbook.  I had my own individual reading assignments.  I was...other.  No one in class gave me any kind of hard time about it, but it felt weird.  I was even asked to periodically leave my classroom, and visit another fourth-grade student in another classroom, so that I could tutor him.  That felt really weird.

All of the above would likely have still been okay, if not for the unfortunate decision that came next:  I would skip a grade.  Fifth grade?  Never heard of it.  It was sixth grade or bust.  And, since Bear Road only taught through the fifth grade, that meant I had to leave Bear Road a full year before my friends did.

This was a terrible idea.  Regrets?  I've had a few.  This was the biggest one.

                         


 NEXT:  Only my radio can save me.  And comic books.  Comic books, too.