Top Ten Actors - who played TARZAN
There were a total of 18 actors who performed the role of Tarzan for feature films and/or video. This list contains the most important actors. Major criteria include: number of movies, successful actors in other genres and miscellaneous. They are listed in order of frequency of performance(high to low)
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1.
Johnny Weissmuller
Actor, Tarzan the Ape Man
Johnny Weissmuller was born as Peter Johann Weißmüller in Freidorf, today a district of the city of Timisoara in Romania, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Weissmuller would later claim to have been born in Windber, Pennsylvania, probably to ensure his eligibility to compete as part of the US Olympic team...
“ appeared in 11 Tarzan movies, really defining the role for generations to come ” - milam_ogden
2.
Gordon Scott
Actor, Tarzan and the Trappers
American actor and body-builder whose greatest claim to fame was his role as the movies' eleventh (and some say best) Tarzan. Scott was born Gordon Merrill Werschkul in Portland, Oregon, one of nine children of advertising man Stanley Werschkul and his wife Alice. He grew up in Oregon, where he discovered body-building...
“ appeared as Tarzan a total of six times ” - milam_ogden
3.
Lex Barker
Actor, La Dolce Vita
Barker was a direct descendant of the founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, and of Sir 'William Henry Crichlow', historical governor general of Barbados. He excelled in football and track at Fessenden School and Phillips-Exeter Academy. He went to Princeton but left to become an actor. A year later he was spotted in summer stock and received a contract offer from 20th Century Fox...
“ appeared in five Tarzan films ” - milam_ogden
4.
Mike Henry
Actor, General Hospital
Mike Henry was born on Saturday, August 15th, 1936. Plus, he was an athletic professional football player at the time he entered the movies. He played for the Pittsburgh Steelers (1958-61) and the Los Angeles Rams (1962-64). During part of that time (1961-64) he was under contract with Warner Brothers and played a variety of bit parts (TV's Surfside 6...
“ appeared in three Tarzan vehicles ” - milam_ogden
5.
Elmo Lincoln
Actor, Tarzan of the Apes
He was the first Tarzan. A former Arkansas peace officer, Elmo Linkenhelt worked in D.W. Griffith's "The Battle of Elderbush Gulch" (1912). In a fight scene his shirt was partially torn off, displaying his powerful chest. Griffith noticed, called him over, and told him "That's quite a chest you have there"...
“ appeared in the first and fourth movies about Tarzan ” - milam_ogden
6.
Frank Merrill
Actor, Tarzan the Tiger
Frank Merrill won 58 National, Southern California and Los Angeles championships in gymnastics (Roman rings, high bars and rope climbing). He was national gymnastics champion from 1916 to 1918. Prior to his roles as the fifth Tarzan, he worked as a stuntman, doubling for Elmo Lincoln in the 1921 "Adventures of Tarzan"...
“ acted as Tarzan twice ” - milam_ogden
7.
Jock Mahoney
Mahoney is of French and Irish extraction, with some Cherokee. At the University of Iowa, he was outstanding in swimming, basketball and football. When World War II broke out, he enlisted as a Marine fighter pilot and instructor. In Hollywood, he was a noted stunt man, doubling for Errol Flynn, John Wayne...
“ appeared in two Tarzan movies ” - milam_ogden
8.
Ron Ely
The 15th screen Tarzan (if you don't count Gordon Griffith) was to have played a Tarzan impersonator in a projected Mike Henry television show, which never materialized. He had been tested fourteen months earlier when Henry got the part. Prior to Tarzan, he had played only bit parts in movies, e.g....
“ appeared in two Tarzan movies ” - milam_ogden
9.
Buster Crabbe
Buster Crabbe graduated from the University of Southern California. In 1931, while working on That's My Boy for Columbia Pictures, he was tested by MGM for Tarzan and rejected. Paramount Pictures put him in King of the Jungle as Kaspa, the Lion Man (after a book of that title but clearly a copy of the Tarzan stories)...
“ appeared in one Tarzan flick but shined as Flash Gordon ” - milam_ogden
10.
Bruce Bennett
Herman Brix was a star shot-putter in the 1928 Olympics. After losing the lead in MGM's Tarzan the Ape Man due to a shoulder injury, he was contracted by Ashton Dearholt for his independent production of The New Adventures of Tarzan, a serial and the only Tarzan film between the silents and the 1960s to present the character accurately...
“ played Tarzan only once but became a very versatile in his own right. ” - milam_ogden
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