The Capture of Tarzan

I found an old magazine in a flee market the other day, which reminded me of Ron Hall's quest to find information on a lost Tarzan movie.

In 1934, Johnny Weissmuller had become the one and only Tarzan for generations to come and his last film Tarzan and his Mate even showed Jane swimming nude underwater. Talk about jungle adventures!

The next outcome would have to be even more adventurous. So Tarzan would encounter all sorts of evils in The Capture of Tarzan, directed by James C. McKay, who had done some uncredited directing duties on Tarzan and His Mate. Because of the Hays censorship code, Maureen O'Sullivan would now have to wear a one piece suit.
MGM executives weren't satisfied with the result (allegedly because it was too gruesome).

A succession of directors proceeded to reshoot the picture that eventually became Tarzan Escapes. John Farrow, George B. Seitz, William A. Wellman took the job, and eventually, only Richard Thorpe got on-screen credit for it.

Ron Hall remembers that, as a kid, in the fifties, he saw at least one of the sequences from the original cut, that of the climatic vampire bats which still appear on various promotional material. He explains that this was probably one of the only scenes retained from the original film and that even it got cut before release eventually. However, there must have been a negative of the new version of the film with this sequence intact somewhere in the vaults of MGM which they used for the 1954 re-release.

The French magazine I picked up loosely follows the story of the new version but it does include the sequence although it is summed up as "monsters they had to fight". Ron also found these two trailers:
the first one is specifically about the film and mentions the bats among other elements now lost, and the second one is an MGM tour that offers a snippet of a deleted scene.

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That's all for today folks!