The 1998 documentary In Search of Tarzan with Jonathan Ross is a fascinating look at the characters of Tarzan and Jane in movies and TV.

Jonathan Ross interviews Johnny Weissmuller’s son Johnny Weissmuller Jr. and former Tarzans Gordon Scott, Denny Miller, Ron Ely, and Miles O’Keefe. He also interviews former Janes Maureen O’ Sullivan, Eve Brent, and Bo Derek.

They relate many interesting stories in the five sixths of the show which I got to see. It was uploaded to YouTube in six parts of about ten minutes each. Part 3 is missing. The end of Part 2 cut off just as Johnny Weissmuller Jr. was about to tell what his father had to do when fighting a lion and the lion didn’t stop when the director yelled, “Cut!”

The person who uploaded the video tried to send me a link to Part 3 but it doesn’t work. It says, “Video unavailable. This video contains content from Comic Relief (Base79), who has blocked it on copyright grounds.” There is apparently nowhere else to view it, I checked every place I could think of.

The AI overview on the subject is as follows: “Based on accounts of Johnny Weissmuller’s time filming Tarzan (1932–1948), when the director yelled ‘cut’ during scenes involving animal encounters, Weissmuller often had to immediately stop acting and wait for trainers to secure the animals, as many of the ‘fights’ were staged with trained circus lions rather than wild ones.”

This program shows various footage which still looks dangerous. One of the most exciting stories was Ron Ely’s rescue of the Supremes when the script called for their canoe to tip over.

To include the book as well as the movies, author Ray Bradbury is on hand. Luckily he appears in one of the later parts. He says how Edgar Rice Burroughs influenced him when he decided to be a writer at the age of twelve. He wrote like Burroughs at that time but moved on.

This is a delightful program and I would recommend it.