Tarzan of the Apes

TARZAN OF THE APES - 1918


SILENTS	NEXT

Director

Sidney Scott

Producer

Bill Parsons

Story

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Adaptation

Fred Miller & Lois Weber

MAIN CAST

Tarzan

Elmo Lincoln

Tarzan as a boy

Gordon Griffith

Jane Porter

Enid Markey

Lord Greystoke

True Boardman

Lady Greystoke

Kathleen Kirkham

Professor Porter

Thomas Jefferson

Binns, a sailor

George French

Greystoke's nephew

Colin Kenny

Bar Maid

Bessie Toner

Captain of the Fuwalda

Jack Wilson

BACKGROUND
• After many unsuccessful attempts to bring his creation to the screen, Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) signed a contract in June 1916 with Bill Parsons, a Chicago life insurance salesman with an ambitious plans to found a film company and sell stock to fund the project. The venture was eventually successful and Parsons signed Winslow Winston, a stocky new York actor and ukulele player, to portray the ape-man. Enid Markey was enlisted for the role of Jane and 10-year-old Gordon Griffith was signed to play the young Tarzan. A film crew was dispatched to Brazil where they used local Indians to portray Africans in an important village burning sequence. Only days into production Winston, overcome with patriotism, quit the film to enlist in WWI. His eventual replacement was 28-year-old Elmo Lincoln, a 6 foot, 200 pound, barrel-chested character actor. Lincoln had appeared in a few silent features under silent film pioneer, D W Griffiths, who had persuaded him to change his name from Otto Linkhelter. The film opened on 27 January 1918 and was a huge success, becoming one of the first half dozen silent films to gross over a million dollars. A much-circulated story about Lincoln actually killing a lion on the set appears to be apocryphal. Enid Markey, who continued to work in film and TV into the 1960s, had no recollection of the event and it is possible that Lincoln concocted the story at a later date when he had fallen on hard times. (Essoe & Taliaferro)

PLOT - Note: Spoiler warning
• Lord and Lady Greystoke set sail for Africa but the ship is hijacked by mutineers and they are abandoned on the west coast of Africa. They build a cabin for shelter, Alice gives birth to their first child, but eventually both die in the jungle. Their orphaned son is raised by a female ape named Kala who names her baby Tarzan. Years later a sailor named Binns meets Tarzan, now a young boy and teaches the savage child to read and write before he returns to England. Tarzan grows to manhood and uses his father's hunting knife, which he has found in the cabin, to become the King of the Apes. Binns eventually organises a rescue party to recover the boy he met in the jungle. The search party, consisting of Professor Porter, his daughter, Jane, and Greystoke's nephew, travel to Africa where Tarzan rescues Jane from a lion attack. Natives pursue Tarzan and Jane through the jungle but Tarzan burns their village, forcing them to flee. Tarzan and Jane escape in the mayhem and return to her people where Jane expresses a desire to stay in the jungle with her new love.

MOVING PICTURES A

Click on the image below to see a short montage of scenes from this film:

MOVING PICTURES B

Click on the image below to see the entire film on the Filmschatten Tarzan of the Apes page:

SOURCE
• Tarzan of the Movies by Gabe Essoe, 1968, The Citadel Press
• Tarzan Forever by John Taliaferro, 1999, Simon & Schuster
IMAGES
• Both photos are from Tarzan of the Movies by Gabe Essoe, 1968, The Citadel Press
• The video clip of the montage of scenes from this film was uploaded to Youtube by me specifically to embed in this web page
• Many thanks to the Filmschatten film blog for providing the entire film online. Incredible!
LYNX
• Read a review and rating of this film at the At-A-Glance Film Reviews Tarzan of the Apes page
• Buy a copy of My Father, Elmo Lincoln, a biography written by his daughter
• Essay: Five Tarzans - The Silent Apemen by Gene Popa
• Learn much more about this film at Bill Hillman's comprehensive Tarzan of the Apes page
CAPTURE
• This film has never been released commercially but you can sometimes bag yourself a copy on DVD from collectors on eBay