Johnny Weissmuller (Born as
Johann Peter Weißmüller; June 2, 1904 – January 20, 1984) was an
Romanian-born of German ethnicity American
swimmer and actor who
was one of the world's best swimmers in the 1920s, winning five
Olympic gold
medals and one bronze medal.
He won fifty-two US National Championships and set sixty-seven
world records. After his swimming
career, he became the sixth actor to portray
Tarzan in films, a role he played in twelve motion
pictures. Dozens of other actors have also played Tarzan, but
Weissmuller is by far the best known. His character's distinctive,
ululating Tarzan
yell is still often used in films.
Early life
Weissmuller was a Romanian of German ethnicity, born to Peter
Weißmüller and his wife Elisabeth Kersch, in Banat, Romania.
The ship's
roster from his family's arrival at Ellis Island
lists his birthplace as Freidorf
, now a
district of Timişoara
, Romania
,. It
has been claimed that he was actually named Peter by his parents,
but when he arrived in the US he used his brother's name, Johnny,
because it was more American. However, the records of St Rochus
Church in Freidorf show that Johann, son of Peter Weissmuller and
Elizabeth Kersch, was baptized there on 6 May 1904. The passenger
manifest of the S.S.
Rotterdam, which arrived in New York
on January 26, 1905, lists Peter Weissmuller, a 29-year-old
laborer, his 24-year-old wife Elisabeth, and seven-month-old
Johann, The family is listed as Romanian Germans, last residence
Timisoara, despite the fact that they lived for a long time in
Freidorf.
They were going to join their brother-in-law
Johann Ott of Windber, Pennsylvania
. On November 5, 1905, Johann Peter
Weissmuller was baptized at St John Cantius Church in Windber. In
the 1910 census, Peter and Elizabeth Weisenmuller as well as John
and Eva Ott were living at 1521 Cleveland Ave in the 22nd Ward of
Chicago, with sons John, age six, born n Timisoara and Peter Jr.,
age five, born in Illinois. Peter Weissmuller and John Ott were
both brewers, Ott immigrating in 1902, Weismuller in 1904. The
ethnic group known as
Banat Swabians
had lived for several centuries in that region and developed a
distinctive dialect and cultural traits.
Skelton, Johnny Weissmuller. c.
When Weissmuller was a small child, the family
emigrated to the United States aboard the
S.S. Rotterdam as
steerage passengers.
They left Rotterdam
on January 14, 1905, and arrived at Ellis Island in New
York
harbor twelve days later as Peter, Elisabeth and
Johann Weissmuller. The passenger list records them as ethnic Germans and citizens of Romania.
After a
brief stay in Chicago
, visiting
relatives, they moved to the coal mining
town of Windber,
Pennsylvania. (For most of Weissmuller's career, show
business biographies incorrectly listed him as having been born in
Pennsylvania. Some sources state that Weissmuller lied about his
birthplace in order to ensure his place on the US Olympic swimming
team.) Peter Weissmuller worked as a miner, and his youngest son,
Peter Weissmuller, Jr., was born in Windber on September 3, 1905.
Peter Jr. is listed on one census as born in Illinois.
At age nine, Weissmuller contracted
polio. At
the suggestion of his doctor, he took up swimming to help battle
the disease. After the family moved from Western Pennsylvania to
Chicago, Weissmuller continued swimming and eventually earned a
spot on the
YMCA swim team. While living in
Chicago, Weissmuller's father owned a
bar for a time and his mother became
head cook at a famed restaurant. After Peter's business failed, he
began drinking heavily and abusing both his wife and children.
Elizabeth Weissmuller eventually filed for, and was granted, a
divorce (various biographies erroneously state that Weissmuller's
father died of
tuberculosis leaving her
a widow). According to draft registration records for World War I,
Peter and Elizabeth were apparently still together as late as 1917.
On his paperwork, Peter was listed as a brewer, working for the
Elston and Fullerton Brewery. He and his family were living at 226
West North Avenue in Chicago. In his book,
Tarzan, My
Father,
Johnny Weissmuller
Jr. stated that although rumors of Peter Weissmuller living to
"a ripe old age, remarrying along the way and spawning a large
brood of little Weissmullers" were reported, no one in the family
was aware of his ultimate fate. Peter signed his consent for
19-year old John "Weissmuller"'s passport application in 1924,
preceding Johnny's Olympic competition in France. In the 1930
federal census, Elizabeth Weissmeuller, age 49, has listed with
her, her sons John P. and Peter J., and Peter's wife Dorothy.
Elizabeth is listed as a widow. Illinois death records indicate a
Peter "Weissmuller" died in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois on July
17, 1938. A "Katherin Weissmuller" died there as well on October
15, 1946. These may have been Johnny Weissmuller's parents.
Careers
Swimming
As a teen,
Weissmuller attended Lane Technical H.S. before dropping out to
work various jobs including a stint as a lifeguard at a Lake Michigan
beach. While working as an elevator operator
and bellboy at the Illinois Athletic Club, Weissmuller caught the
eye of swim coach William Bachrach. Bachrach trained Weissmuller
and in August 1921, Weissmuller won the national championships in
the 50-yard and 220-yard distances. Though he was foreign-born,
Weissmuller gave his birthplace as Tanneryville, Pennsylvania, and
his birth date as that of his younger brother, Peter Weissmuller.
This was to ensure his eligibility to compete as part of the United
States Olympic team, and was a critical issue in being issued an
American passport. (This comment
seems to be contradicted by data on his actual passport application
- On his 1924 passport application, he listed his date of birth as
June 2, 1904, and his place of birth as Windbar, Pennsylvania. His
father, Peter signed an affidavit to this effect, giving his
19-year-old son permission to travel abroad to participate in the
Paris Olympics and for other competitions in England and Belgium.
His passport was issued in May, 1924.)
On July 9, 1922, Weissmuller broke
Duke
Kahanamoku's world record on the 100-meters freestyle, swimming
it in 58.6 seconds. He won the title in that distance at the
1924 Summer Olympics, beating
Kahanamoku for the gold. He also won the 400-meters freestyle and
the 4 x 200 meters relay. As a member of the American
water polo team, he also won a bronze medal.
Four years
later, at the 1928 Summer
Olympics in Amsterdam
, he won another two Olympic titles.
In all, he
won five Olympic gold medals, one bronze medal, won fifty-two
US National Championships and set sixty-seven world records. Johnny Weissmuller never
lost a race and retired from his amateur swimming
career undefeated.
Motion pictures
In 1929, Weissmuller signed a
contract with
BVD to be a
model
and representative. He traveled throughout the country doing swim
shows, handing out leaflets promoting that brand of
swimwear, signing
autographs and going on
talk
shows. In that same year, he made his first
motion picture appearance as an
Adonis, wearing only a fig leaf, in a movie entitled
Glorifying the American
Girl.
He appeared as himself in the first of
several Crystal Champions
movie shorts featuring Weissmuller and other Olympic champions at
Silver
Springs, Florida
.
He co-starred with
Esther
Williams in
Billy
Rose's Aquacade during the
San Francisco World's
Fair, 1939–41, pursuing her throughout a span of two
years.
His acting career began when he signed a seven year
contract with
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and played the role
of
Tarzan in
Tarzan the Ape Man
(1932). The movie was a huge success and Weissmuller became an
overnight international sensation.
Tarzan author,
Edgar Rice
Burroughs, was pleased with Weissmuller, although he so hated
the studio's depiction of a Tarzan who barely spoke English that he
created his own concurrent Tarzan series filmed on location in
Central American jungles and starring
Herman
Brix as a suitably articulate version of the character.
Weissmuller starred in six Tarzan movies for
MGM with actress
Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane (with whom he
had a brief affair ) and
Cheeta the
Chimpanzee. The last three also included
Johnny Sheffield as Boy. Then, in 1942,
Weissmuller went to
RKO and starred in six more
Tarzan movies with markedly reduced production values. Unlike MGM,
RKO allowed Weissmuller to play other roles, though a three picture
contract with
Pine-Thomas
Productions led to only one film,
Swamp Fire, being
made, co-starring
Buster Crabbe.
Sheffield appeared as Boy in the first five features for RKO.
Another co-star was
Brenda
Joyce, who played Jane in Weissmuller's last four Tarzan
movies. In a total of twelve Tarzan films, Weissmuller earned an
estimated $2,000,000 and established himself as what many consider
the definitive Tarzan. Although not the first Tarzan in movies,
(that honor went to
Elmo Lincoln), he
was the first to be associated with the now traditional ululating,
yodeling Tarzan yell. (During an appearance on television's
The Mike Douglas Show
in the 1970s, Weissmuller explained how the famous yell was
created. Recordings of three vocalists were spliced together to get
the effect—a
soprano, an
alto, and a hog caller).
When Weissmuller finally left that role, he immediately traded his
loincloth costume for a
slouch hat and
safari suit for the role of
Jungle Jim (1948) for
Columbia. He made 13 Jungle Jim films
between (1948) and (1954). Within the next year, he appeared in
three more jungle movies, playing himself. In 1955, he began
production of the
Jungle Jim television adventure series for
Screen Gems, a film subsidiary of
Columbia. The show ran for twenty-six
episodes, which subsequently played repeatedly on network and
syndicated TV. Aside from a first screen appearance as Adonis and
the role of Johnny Duval in the 1946 film
Swamp Fire,
Weissmuller played only three roles in films during the heyday of
his Hollywood career: Tarzan, Jungle Jim, and himself.
After movies
In the late 1950s, Weissmuller moved back to Chicago and started a
swimming pool company. He lent his name to other business ventures,
but did not have a great deal of success.
He retired in 1965
and moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida
, where he was Founding Chairman of the International Swimming Hall
of Fame.
According to David Wallechinsky's
Complete Book of the
Olympics, Weissmuller was playing in a celebrity golf
tournament in 1958 when his golf cart was suddenly captured by
rebel soldiers. Weissmuller sized
up the situation, got out of the cart and gave his trademark Tarzan
yell. The shocked rebels soon began to jump up and down, calling
"Tarzan! Welcome to Cuba!" Johnny and his companions were not only
not kidnapped, but were given a rebel escort to the golf
course.
Sometime
in the 1960s, Weissmuller built a doomed tourist attraction called
Tropical Wonderland, aka
Tarzan's Jungleland, on US 1 in
Titusville,
Florida
. In September 1966, Weissmuller joined
former screen Tarzans
James Pierce and
Jock Mahoney to appear with
Ron Ely as part of the publicity for the upcoming
premiere of the
Tarzan TV series. The producers
also approached Weissmuller to guest star as Tarzan's father, but
nothing came of it.
In 1970,
he attended the British
Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh
, where he was presented to Queen Elizabeth
II. That same year, he made a cameo appearance with
former co-star
Maureen O'Sullivan
in
The Phynx (1970).
Weissmuller lived in Florida until the end
of 1973, then moved to Las Vegas, Nevada
, where he worked as a greeter at the MGM Grand
Hotel for a time. In 1976, he appeared for the last time in
a
motion picture, playing a movie
crewman who is fired by a movie mogul, played by
Art Carney, in
Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved
Hollywood, and he also made his final public appearance in
that year when he was inducted into the Body Building Guild Hall of
Fame.
Personal life
Weissmuller had five wives: band and club singer Bobbe Arnst
(married 1931 – divorced 1933); actress
Lupe Vélez (married 1933 – divorced 1939);
Beryl Scott (married 1939 – divorced 1948); Allene Gates (married
1948 – divorced 1962); and Maria Bauman (married 1963 – his death
1984).
With his third wife, Beryl, he had three children,
Johnny Weissmuller, Jr. (September
23, 1940 – July 27, 2006), Wendy Anne Weissmuller (b. June 1,
1942), and Heidi Elizabeth Weissmuller (July 31, 1944 – November
19, 1962).
Declining health and death
In 1974, Weissmuller broke both his hip and leg, marking the
beginning of years of declining health. While hospitalized he
learned that, in spite of his strength and lifelong daily regimen
of swimming and exercise, he had a serious heart condition. In
1977, Weissmuller suffered a series of
strokes.
In 1979, he entered the Motion
Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland
Hills, California
for several weeks before moving with his last wife,
Maria, to Acapulco,
Mexico
, the location of his last Tarzan
movie.
On January 20, 1984, Weissmuller died from
pulmonary edema at the age of 79. At his
request, he was buried in Acapulco at Valley of the Light Cemetery
where, also at his request, a recording of the Tarzan yell he
invented was played.
Influence
His former co-star and movie son,
Johnny Sheffield, wrote of him, "I can only
say that working with Big John was one of the highlights of my
life. He was a Star (with a capital "S") and he gave off a special
light and some of that light got into me. Knowing and being with
Johnny Weissmuller during my formative years had a lasting
influence on my life."
For his
contribution to the motion picture industry, Johnny Weissmuller has
a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
at 6541 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood
.
Filmography
References
Further reading
- Fury, David A. Fury. Johnny Weissmuller: Twice the
Hero (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Artist's Press. 2000) ISBN
0924556021
- Weissmuller, Johnny Jr. Tarzan My Father, Toronto: ECW
Press 2002
External links
, Smithsonian Institution
.
.
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