Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942)

Tarzan and Jane go to New York to rescue Boy after he is kidnapped into a circus.

Director:

Richard Thorpe

Writers:

Myles Connolly (screenplay), William R. Lipman (screenplay)

Stars:

Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O'Sullivan, Johnny Sheffield

1 nomination.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Johnny Weissmuller	...	Tarzan
Maureen O'Sullivan	...	Jane
Johnny Sheffield	...	Boy (as John Sheffield)
Virginia Grey	...	Connie Beach
Charles Bickford	...	Buck Rand
Paul Kelly	...	Jimmie Shields
Chill Wills	...	Manchester Montford
Cy Kendall	...	Colonel Ralph Sergeant
Russell Hicks	...	Judge Abbotson
Howard C. Hickman	...	Blake Norton (as Howard Hickman)
Charles Lane	...	Gould Beaton
Miles Mander	...	Portmaster
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Matthew Boulton	...	Portmaster (scenes deleted)

Storyline

Circus owner Buck Rand kidnaps Boy to perform in his show. He forces a pilot to fly him, Boy and his animal trainer out of the jungle. Tarzan and Jane follow them to New York. At a trial over custody of Boy, Tarzan becomes violent and is jailed. With the help of the pilot's girlfriend Tarzan (who has since escaped, diving off the Brooklyn Bridge) finds the circus. He and the circus elephants complete the classic rescue.

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Plot Keywords:

reference to shakespeare | reference to hamlet | pilot | elephant | airplane | 

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Taglines:

Don't Miss It! 1942's Best and Most Thrilling Picture!

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Genres:

Action | Adventure

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Certificate:

Passed

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

May 1942 (USA)

Also Known As:

Tarzan Against the World

Filming Locations:

Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, New York, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

71 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Color:

Black and White (Sepiatone)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The vehicle in which Charles Bickford tries to escape a herd of angry circus elephants is a 1937 Cadillac Series 60 convertible coupe, which was all but demolished while filming the sequence.

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Goofs

When Boy is poking at the lion with a stick, the stick changes between shots.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Boy: Cheetah! What is it?
Jane: Cheetah must be seeing things. What is it, Tarzan? What is it?
Tarzan: Uguna. Strange sound in sky. Big. Far off.
Jane: I don't hear anything.
Tarzan: Tarzan hear. Cheetah hear. Elephant hear.
Boy: Now I hear it. Like a great wind coming.

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Connections

Followed by Tarzan and the Slave Girl (1950)

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Soundtracks

Dance of the Hours
(uncredited)
from the opera "La Gioconda"
Music by Amilcare Ponchielli
Played by the orchestra at Club Moonbeam

User Reviews

A fairly decent entry from the Tarzan oeuvre

In a fairly decent entry from the Tarzan oeuvre, Johnny Weissmuller is the quintessential Tarzan. All others pale in comparison. His athleticism is legendary, but even so, I was surprised to read that he actually made the two hundred foot jump from the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River. Can a man really do that? The effects were pretty good for its day, however cheesy they look in this era of computer generated images. I suppose that audiences were not supposed to notice that the elephants doing the tricks were all Asian, and not African elephants. And I guess that the child-labor laws were a bit more relaxed in those days, what with "Boy" darting around underneath and atop said pachyderms. Maureen O'Sullivan was so pretty. I noticed that she carried a curvy, womanly body, a little soft around the middle, and with stout legs. This is not a put-down, I think it is lovely, but it struck me as to what a product of the times that this was. Nowadays, an actress would spend six months in the gym and be more muscular than Weissmuller before being filmed in that costume. Too bad in my opinion.