The New Adventures of Tarzan ** (1935, Bruce Bennett, Ula Holt, Frank Baker) – Classic Movie Review 8087

Director Edward A Kull’s 1935 feature film The New Adventures of Tarzan stars Bruce Bennett [aka Herman Brix back then], who is the way more than adequate gentleman vine-swinger in this much better than just mediocre adventure, cobbled together from the cinema-screened 12-part serial of the same name.

Cinema owners had the choice of showing the serial as 12 episodes or the film edited into a single feature film as (confusingly) The New Adventures of Tarzan and later another cut-down spinoff Tarzan and the Green Goddess (1938).

Frank Baker plays archaeologist Major Martling, who sets sail off on an expedition to Guatemala to find the Green Goddess totem statue to keep it in a safe place. Tarzan is aboard the same ship for personal reasons. He wants to try to rescue his friend, French Lieutenant d’Arnot, who bailed out of his plane after it was hit by lightning, into the jungles of Guatemala, where he may be held captive by a lost tribe of natives.

Its main distinctions are Bennett’s authentic portrayal of the hero and also the location filming in the highlands of Guatemala.

Young swimmer Ula Holt (born Florence Eugene Watson on 18 May 1915 in Los Angeles) is the female lead as Ula Vale, who is on her own expedition to find the Green Goddess in memory of her fiancé, who died in a plane crashed on the way to Guatemala to find the Goddess. 

This is Holt’s only credited film role. She soon (July 1935) married the film’s producer Ashton Dearholt, who discovered her in Guatemala while trouble-shooting, fell in love with her and hired her as his star, renaming her Ula Holt. He brought her back to Los Angeles and installed her in his home, prompting his wife Florence Gilbert to leave with their two children, and get a divorce.

The New Adventures of Tarzan is the full 65-minute first episode of the serial of the same name, plus the cliffhanger resolution at the beginning of chapter two and 45 seconds of new footage with the capture of the villain and other resolutions.

The British version, which circulated on VHS and on American TV, is edited to 59 minutes and dubbed by British actors using American accents.

Also in the cast are Dale Walsh, Don Castello [aka Ashton Dearholt], Harry Ernest, Lewis Sargent, Merrill McCormick and Jackie Gentry.

The New Adventures of Tarzan is directed by Edward A Kull, runs 70 minutes, is made by Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises Inc and Ashton Dearholt Expedition Picture, is released by Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises Inc (US) and Wardour Films  (UK), is written by Bennett S Cohen (story and scenario) and Charles F Royal, is shot in black and white by Ernest F Smith and Edward A Kull, is produced by George W Stout, Ashton Dearholt, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Bennett Cohen, scored by Mischa Bakaleinikoff (composer stock music) and Abe Meyer (musical director), and designed by Charles Clague.

Bennett performed his own stunts, including swinging from real jungle vines, but he over-shot a pool of water he was meant to land in: ‘I still have the scars from that fall.’

It features an alternate version of the Tarzan yell, described as a rising pitch ‘Man-gan-i’ or ‘Tar-man-gan-i’ sound, which comes from the 1932 Tarzan radio serial starring James Pierce. In the ape language used in Burroughs’s Tarzan novels, ‘Tar-man-gan-i’ means ‘Great White Ape’. Johnny Weissmuller’s jungle call is the now standard yell, starting with Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8087

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