Tarzan—the chiseled, tree-swinging jungle hero of untold movies, books, television shows, radio broadcasts, and comics—is one of the unlikeliest folk heroes of the pulp era and pop culture.
The ruthlessly masculine adventurer in loincloth has sparked more memorabilia than previously thinkable—from toys and games to more oddball items such as archery sets and golf balls. There is even a self-labeled Tarzanologist or two out there, dedicated to interpreting and explaining the fictitious star’s origins.
Rooted in the archetype of ancient legend, Tarzan and his over-the-shoulder leopard skin soared from the imagination of a man who had, for most of his adult life, only experienced failure and setback. When he was at his lowest point financially, and the stakes were at the utmost, he created an outlandish, make-believe world of thrills, excitement, and noble indomitability.
An Early Life of Struggles and Setbacks
The son of a Union cavalry officer, Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in Chicago on Sept. 1, 1875. As a child, he was said to be a restless boy, a dreamer who liked to doodle, and, for most of his early adult life, he experienced one hard spell after another. Though intellectually able, he could not pass the entrance exam to West Point military academy, and he didn’t exactly resembling a sculpted hero out of Marvel Comics. He was ejected from the Seventh U.S. Cavalry at Fort Grant because of a weak heart.
In 1900, Burroughs married his childhood sweetheart and the couple brought up three children, the enhanced responsibilities leaving Edgar in the most dire straits. Increasingly desperate, he pawned his wife’s jewelry to obtain groceries.
It looked as if Burroughs was destined for a life of mishap, bouncing from one botched career attempt to another, from prodding cattle to accounting, from selling Stoddard’s Lectures, candy, and electric light bulbs, to managerial work at Sears, Roebuck, and Company. He mined for gold. He was even a railroad policeman for the Oregon Short Line Railroad, patrolling the lines across the Western United States.
In 1911, he was selling pencil sharpeners, and the man who had tried his hand at virtually everything thought up one more clever way to help bring in a few dollars: writing.
He didn’t intend to painstakingly construct a masterpiece of literature. He needed the income —and fast. And he must have felt some sense of validation after he sold his first story “Under the Moons of Mars,” submitted under a pseudonym, netting an impressive $400.
His prime success would come with his third novel, “Tarzan of the Apes,” initially written on the backs of scrap paper in long hand. It appeared in the October 1912 issue of the All-Story magazine. The publication sold for $.15; Burroughs was cut a check for $700. It was a gripping chronicle that seized readers’ interest from the opening lines:
Great Escapism
When he wrote the first Tarzan story, Burroughs said that he was “mainly interested in playing with the idea of a contest between heredity and environment.”Burroughs leaned on the prototype of Roman and Greek mythology, the child of English aristocrats Lord and Lady Greystoke, stranded in the jungles of Africa following a mutiny on their ship. John Clayton II’s mother died of natural causes when he was a year old. His father was killed, and he was adopted by apes.
Burroughs connected two vastly unlike worlds for readers—the close, familiarly accepted human one and the far-off, secretive territory ruled lawlessly by the primates. In the process, he constructed a vivid figure that became the epitome of crossbred strength, the supreme hybrid who made the hurdle from prehistoric beast to man. He was assigned the name “Tarzan,” or “white skin,” in the dialect of the apes.
Soon, Tarzan’s fairy-tale escapism was ubiquitous, projected on our screens and delivered to our doorsteps, jumping into motion pictures in 1918, and newspaper comic serials in 1929.
Burroughs, though, was unhappy with the character embellishments that Hollywood made to the original Tarzan that he created in his books; he mostly objected to the depiction of the stoic, silent ape man. Burroughs’s Tarzan was urbane, well educated, and articulate.
War Correspondent
On Dec. 7, 1941, Burroughs was in Oahu, Hawaii and witnessed the Japanese bombardment of the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. He was with his son, Hulbert (1909–91), at the time of the onslaught. He became one of America’s oldest war reporters, dispatching from several Pacific islands, embedded on bombing missions with the 7th Air Force.There have been dozens of fanzines exclusively dedicated to the author, who completed 68 titles books in his years. Well beyond a century after first appearing in print, Tarzan still exudes special might, appealing to all ages, generations, and periods.
Though Burroughs never traveled to Africa, it was there that one of literature’s most distinguished accomplishments was brought to life and flexed its brawn ever since. Denny Miller (1934–2014), who portrayed Tarzan in “Tarzan, the Ape Man” (1959), was later featured in the documentary “Investigating Tarzan” (1997), where he summed up the long-term appeal of Burroughs’s character.
“I think he [Tarzan] was a man before his time,” said Miller. “He was ecologically concerned. He was on the side of the animals. He was on the side of good. He was wholesome and he’s an accessible thing. Anyone can be Tarzan, male or female. They can put on their bathing suit and run through the forest barefoot, swing on vines. … That’s every man’s and every woman’s kind of a hero.”
