Tarzan and His Mate Play House

A summer idyll with
Tarzan and His Mate (1934),
essay 2 of 2

Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan) in
Tarzan and His Mate (1934).

Summer is for climbing trees.

“We have a mansion in every glade,” says Jane in Tarzan and His Mate (1934).  More accurately, the glades are backyards for Tarzan and Jane, while they spend their nights in impromptu mansions assembled high above in the trees.

After her visiting American friends coax Jane into putting on an evening dress, Tarzan sniffs the dress, fingers it curiously, then whisks her off via jungle vine to one of their treetop mansions.

Cedric Gibbons, head of the MGM art department, was a master at designing opulent sets.  On a daily basis, he oversaw the designs for royal chambers, grand cathedrals, and rich plantation homes.  MGM specialized in glitzy displays of wealth.  Tree houses were a bit of a stretch for the Gibbons team, headed by A. Arnold Gillespie, especially when the script stressed their simplicity.  No jerry-rigged imitations of modern conveniences were called for.  Tarzan and his mate shared a cozy little pup tent in the trees, with room for one organic mattress and an animal skin blanket.

The exterior of Tarzan's tree house in Tarzan and His Mate (1934).

Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan) and Tarzan (Johnny Weismuller) in the
interior of the tree house in Tarzan and His Mate (1934).

As one of the last movies to fall into the pre-Code era, Tarzan and His Mate barely scraped past the rapidly increasing pressure from the censors of the Hayes Office in 1934.  Two years later, with the Code operating in full force, MGM required radical changes in the Tarzan jungle, including a thorough overhaul of the Tarzan family’s living arrangement.  In Tarzan Escapes (1936), Cedric Gibbons and his art department provided Tarzan and Jane with a proper tree house mansion with fully-equipped kitchen, a dining room, and guest rooms.

Tarzan's townhouse in the trees in Tarzan Escapes (1934).

The elephant-powered lift and the
chimp-powered fan in
Tarzan Escapes (1936).

The charming rustic enclosure that served as their bedroom/mansion in Tarzan and His Mate is briefly shown but then dismissed by Jane as “a little bird’s nest.”  She brags that their real home is a townhouse.  “We’ve got lots of room.  You’ll be very comfortable.  Tarzan made it and I designed it…  Hot and cold water—all the latest conveniences.”

Granted license by the script to build a tree house mansion, the art department set about creating the world’s ultimate arboreal playground.  It’s a multi-room extravaganza with an elephant-powered lift, a chimp-powered fan, a wood-burning oven, a complex pulley system for drawing water from the creek below, and a rope bridge that links the main building to a treetop gazebo.

While setting a new standard for tree houses, the new arrangement unfortunately (to the great detriment of MGM’s Tarzan series) domesticated Jane.  After taming an ape man and fending off lions in the first two movies, Tarzan Escapes relegated her to the kitchen, in charge of cooking the wildebeest roast.  It was an inevitable slide into middle class life for Tarzan and his mate, but at least they’d always have the glorious memories of their pre-Code courtship, when clothes were scantier, every glade was a mansion, and the tree houses were built for two.

Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan) and Tarzan (Johnny Weismuller) in
Tarzan and His Mate (1934).

© 2014 Lee Price

Tarzan and His Mate Go Swimming

A summer idyll with
Tarzan and His Mate (1934),
essay 1 of 2

Tarzan (Johnny Weismuller) and
Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan) in Tarzan and His Mate (1934).

Lacking a backyard pool—not to mention a neighborhood jungle lagoon—I typically plunge into escapist movies during the summertime.  Safe in an air-conditioned room, far from pesky mosquitoes and crocodiles, I mentally swing through the trees in a vine-draped paradise.  Today’s feature:  Tarzan and His Mate, MGM’s 1934 sequel to their 1932 hit Tarzan the Ape Man.

Tarzan (Johnny Weismuller) and
Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan) in
Tarzan and His Mate (1934).

While Tarzan stories undeniably cater to several pernicious imperialist and racist fantasies, Tarzan and His Mate (the greatest of the Tarzan movies) rises above its predictable faults with its depiction the happiest of summertime romantic fantasies:

Jane and Tarzan sitting in a tree,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

Tarzan and His Mate is a romance for newlyweds.  The censors, apparently satisfied with Tarzan and Jane’s implied common-law marriage, let them have their fun.  They disappear behind the leaves for the night and appear blissfully satisfied the next morning.

Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan) and Tarzan (Johnny Weismuller) in
Tarzan and His Mate (1934).

The movie’s most famous scene, albeit one that was deleted by censors from the movie for most of its existence, follows such a night.  After the lovemaking and the cuddling, the time arrives for the skinny dipping.

Johnny Weismuller
and Josephine McKim,
in Tarzan and His Mate (1934).

Playfully tossed into the water, Jane’s evening gown tears off in Tarzan’s hands, rendering her naked, happy, and free as she swims with her lover in the depths.  Maureen O’Sullivan (Jane) appears in the medium shots and closeups, while Olympic medalist Josephine McKim ably doubles for her in the lengthy underwater shots.  Eminently at home in the water, Johnny Weismuller and McKim swim a flirtatious pas de deux.  It’s jungle play.

For this particular scene, Tarzan absent-mindedly leaves his loincloth on but you get the feeling that it’s purely optional, a concession to having a film crew on hand.  Every night and other day, they’re naked together in paradise.

It’s a fantasy of the young, and a nostalgic dream-memory for the aging:

… remembering that night
September’s coming soon
I’m pining for the moon
And what if there were two
Side by side in orbit around the fairest sun?...

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.

Lyrics from the

R.E.M. song Nightswimming

by Bill Berry, Peter Buck,

Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe

© 2014 Lee Price