In the 1920s, you would have only seen Johnny Weissmuller’s name in connection with the Olympic games or other international swimming competitions. He was the Michael Phelps of his era, winning meet after meet. He was a gold medalist in both the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris and the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, set several world records, and was undefeated as an amateur. He is still known in swimming circles for having one of the best competitive swimming records of the 1900s. But in the 1930s, Johnny Weissmuller was a household name for another reason … as the hunky star of the 1932 film Tarzan the Ape Man.
Johnny Weissmuller, who was born in Austria-Hungary, enjoyed an enviable athletic career. He earned five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal, set more than 65 world records, and won 52 U.S. national championships. The first person to swim the 100-meter freestyle race in less than a minute and the first to swim the 440-yard freestyle in less than five minutes. He was named the Greatest Swimmer of the First Half of the 20th Century by the Associated Press, in part because of his records and in part because he never lost a race.
In 1929, Johnny Weissmuller was tapped to make a cameo appearance, along with several others like Irvin Berlin, Billie Burke, Rudy Vallee, Ring Lardner, and Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., in Glorifying the American Girl. The Technicolor movie was produced in the pre-Hays Code era and included some things that would have gotten the film banned in the Code Era. For example, Glorifying the American Girl was the first film to include the word “damn” in the dialog. Another scene that would have raised some eyebrows involved Johnny Weissmuller. In this film, his movie debut, Weissmuller had no lines … and barely had a costume! He wore only a fig leaf and lifted the film’s star, Mary Eaton, on his shoulders.
While Johnny Weissmuller’s movie debut required him to be nothing more than eye-candy, his next forays into show business, following his modeling gig with BVD underwear, required him to be … well, more eye-candy. Writer Cyril Hume watched Glorifying the American Girl and thought Weissmuller would be perfect for the film he was writing, based on a literary character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs called Tarzan the Ape Man.
Tarzan the Ape Man was released in 1932 with Johnny Weissmuller in the title role. Maureen O’Sullivan was cast as Jane, his love interest. Weissmuller was shirtless in the film, wearing only a loincloth. Audiences loved the action jungle flick. Weissmuller went on to star in twelve more Tarzan films, with Maureen O’Sullivan joining him in six of them.
Embracing his typecasting, Johnny Weissmuller took the title role in the 1948 adventure film, Jungle Jim, based on a popular comic strip of the same name. Over the next eight years, Weissmuller starred in 16 more Jungle Jim films. The final one was released in 1955. Two years later, Johnny Weissmuller officially retired from acting.
In addition to the Tarzan and Jungle Jim films, Johnny Weissmuller was featured in a few documentary films about his swimming career and acting career. It was rare, however, to see Weissmuller on the big screen wearing a shirt.