Serial of the Month: Son of Tarzan
Happy Valentines Day Action Lovers! Like last year I thought I would spotlight a romantic serial, or as romantic as a serial can get. And for all of the hack and slash of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ work, all the books were at their core romances with the hero and heroine going through various hazards and long spells of separation to have the books end in a clinch.
The Son of Tarzan opens with a quick 3 1/2 minute recap that tells how Tarzan (P. Dempsey Tabler) was raised in the jungle by apes, discovered by Jane (Karla Shramm), goes to England with her to claim his title as Lord Greystoke and leaves his hated enemy Ivan Pauovich (Eugene Burr) to the mercies of the jungle.
Settled in England, Tarzan and Jane have a son they name Jack (Gordon Griffith), who Jane does not want to learn of the jungle, even though he seems to have inheirited his father’s love of the jungle and a rather aggressive attitude when playing, like climbing high trees and wrestling his scared tutor into submission on the estate lawn.
Meanwhile, back in the jungle Paulovich finds and befriends Akut (actor unknown), one of Tarzan ape friends, and when he is eventually rescued, he takes Akut with him and tours England with his “trained ape” to make money. Jack sees an ad for a local showing and wants to see the ape. Which Jane immediately forbids and Tarzan reluctantly agrees with her.
Jack sneaks out anyway, but Tarzan spots him and follows. During the show Akut notices Jack’s resemblance to Tarzan and jumps into his box seat, which causes a riot. Tarzan arrives and quells the crowd. Recognizing Akut, but not Paulovich, Tarzan pays the man an exorbitant amount of money to ship Akut back to Africa. Then takes Jack home to be grounded for disobeying his mother.
Paulovich on the other hand has recognized his old enemy and plots his revenge. On the day Akut is to be shipped off, Paulovich approaches Jack at the Greystoke estate and asks if he wants to say goodbye to the ape. Jack readily agrees and accompanies him to Paulovich’s room where Akut is chained up.
Paulovich immediately attacks Jack and ties him up. He opens a trap door that leads directly to the river, where he plans to throw Jack’s body after he killshim. Grabbing the struggling boy, Paulovich starts to choke the life out of him…….
I have always found it interesting that up until Johnny Weismuller became The Movie Tarzan, that most of the adaptations followed Burroughs’ original concept of an articulate, educated British nobleman/ jungle lord They also stuck close to his plots as well. Son of Tarzan follows the book fairly accurately, starting a little slow with the young Korack (so dubbed by Akut who couldn’t pronounce Jack) getting to Africa, meeting and rescuing a kidnapped French girl from Arab slave traders (their meeting in Chapter Three is unintentionally hilarious. While the two ten-year-olds introduce themselves and indulge in small talk, Akut is seen off to the side mercilessly pummeling her Arab guard to death), growing up together and falling in love while battling the slave traders, savage natives and Paulovich. They are of course separated for extended periods of time before being reunited with each other and Korack’s parents.
Griffith plays the title character for the first four and a half chapters, then the story jumps ahead ten years and the character is taken over by Kamuela C.Searle for the rest of the serial as an adult Korack. Once he steps forward the action picks up with Korack and Meriem (played by Mae Giraci as a child and Manilla Martan as an adult) getting capture and escaping from any number of enemies, human and animal. There is also an exciting subplot in which Paulovich lures Jane to Africa and tries to sell her to the slave traders, which causes Tarzan to throw off his three piece suit, strap on a loin cloth and starts kicking jungle butt while not caring about taking names.
Then around Chapter Twelve the serial shifts gears from action to melodrama, with Meriem getting separated form Korack, who all but disappears from the serial while he wanders jungle mourning his loss while she ends up at the African estate of Tarzan and Jane who take her in and she is romanced by an effete English nobleman. Korack’s reappearance in the last chapter leads to an an exciting conclusion and also contains the infamous accident that is still heavily debated to this day among fans.
In the last chapter, Korack is tied to a stake and about to be burned alive, when an elephant grabs him and the stake, pulling it out of the ground and walking off with it. Stories differ as to what happened, actor Searle was crushed by the elephant’s grip, Searle was partially trampled on camera, Searle died instantly, Searle survived but eventually died from his injuries (his official cause of death in 1924 was listed as cancer). No one really knows what really happened, watching the serial you can’t see him get injured during the scene (according Harmon and Glut when the story that Searle had died during filming came out, attendance went up considerably by people interested in glimpsing the macabre incident on celluloid.
The acting is decent for the most part, Searle gives an excellent performance as Korack, the slim muscular actor with wild hair looks the part of a jungle wild man, and his expressive eyes contain a startling soulfulness. His scenes of mourning in the later chapters is truly heartbreaking. Griffith, who had played a young Tarzan in Elmo Lincoln’s original version of Tarzan of the apes (1918) does a good job of playing the young Jack as an excitable and energetic son of Tarzan. His best scene is an amusing one in Chapter Two when he sneaks Akut aboard an ocean liner disguised as his grandmother and plays it perfectly straight.
Tabler as Tarzan is not as good, mostly do to his less than muscular physique. He’s okay playing the English nobleman in his three piece suits and even has an exciting fight with several thugs on the lawn of his English estate in Chapter Four, coming close to exhibiting a jungle savagery when attacked. But his believabilty in the role is severely damaged when he strips down and reveals a sunken chest and pot belly, which is not what you want to see in a Taran flick. Thankfully his sans pants scenes are kept to a minimum.
Martan is excellent as the adult Meriem, making her vivacious and energetic. She has two really good scenes. One in which she is captured by Paulovich’s men and one of them makes his intentions toward her very clear and her faces registers a combination of fear, disgust and defiance. Her other scene is later in the serial when she is living with the Greystokes, and a monkey steals her socks and shoes when she puts her feet in a nearby pond. She angrily climbs up the tree and chastises the monkey for his prank.
Schramm does a good job playing a dislikeable character. To be fair she is playing Jane the way she was in the early books, shrill and weepy, more concerned about her social standing than making sure her son and husband were happy. It wasn’t until the mid-twenties that Jane morphed into a character with more use than just being a damsel in distress, who’s only function was to be rescued by Tarzan. Her best showing was in the book Tarzan’s Quest in which she takes charge of a group of stranded plane passengers and leads them through the jungle to safety, coming off as a female Tarzan.
As main villain Paulovich, Burr gives a stereotypical sniveling coward performance, but again this is how the character was written in his three appearances in the book series. Much better is Frank Morrell as Sheik Amor Ben Khatour, leader of the slave traders. He is sleek and sinister, and is a real menace in the serial’s middle chapters, where he chews up the scenery marvelously, making you wish he was the main villain instead of Burr.
While I have never been a fan of silent films, the over the top acting that emerge during the Expressionist movement of the twenties that came out of Germany being one of my main dislikes. I did find myself enjoying this one and found it to be one of the best adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
