48 Fun Facts About Johnny Weissmuller

Weissmuller won five Olympic golds with a high-riding version of which stroke?

Front crawl: he rode it with his chest high out of the water, a style credited with revolutionising freestyle swimming in the 1920s, and titled his 1930 book Swimming the American Crawl.

Weissmuller won three golds at the 1924 Paris Olympics, the Games dramatised in which film?

Chariots of Fire follows Britain's sprinters at the same Paris Games, where Weissmuller's three golds included a narrow win over Sweden's distance star Arne Borg in the 400 metres.

Weissmuller's Olympic bronze medal came in which team sport?

Water polo: the bronze came in Paris in 1924, within days of his three swimming golds, which made him a medallist in two sports at a single Games.

Weissmuller was born in 1904 in Szabadfalva, then part of which kingdom?

Hungary ruled the Banat village then; today it is Freidorf, a district of Timișoara in Romania. He was seven months old when his family sailed for America in 1905.

Weissmuller later admitted the tale that swimming cured his sickly boyhood was put about to do what?

Inspire children: he told Sports Illustrated in 1970 that the yarn was 'something we put out to inspire the kids', adding that he had been skinny but never sick.

Weissmuller lied about his age at 11 to join which organisation and start racing?

The YMCA wanted members to be twelve, but he was tall for his age, got in at eleven and went on to become its champion swimmer.

Why did Weissmuller learn to beat his world records by only a fraction each time?

To leave himself more to break: crowds, and the promoters who paid his coach appearance money, expected a new record at every meet, so he trimmed his times a tenth of a second at a go.

At the 1924 Olympics Weissmuller and team-mate Stubby Kruger delighted the crowds with what kind of exhibition?

A comedy diving act: the clowning helped make Weissmuller one of the most popular athletes in Paris, and Kruger went on to a career as a Hollywood stuntman.

Weissmuller was the first man to swim 100 metres freestyle in under what time?

One minute fell in July 1922, when he was 18 and swam 58.6 seconds. The legend that he never lost a race is only partly true, though: he did lose in his early days.

Who took silver behind Weissmuller in the 1924 100 m freestyle, with his brother taking bronze?

Duke Kahanamoku, Hawaii's surfing pioneer, had won the event in 1912 and 1920; Weissmuller took first his world record in 1922 and then his Olympic crown.

What did an MGM producer want to change about Weissmuller until told he was the world's greatest swimmer?

His surname: the producer thought Weissmuller too long for a marquee, then relented on learning who he was and had extra swimming written into Tarzan.

In 1927 Weissmuller helped save eleven people from which Lake Michigan disaster?

A capsized boat: the excursion boat Favorite went over in a sudden squall off Chicago with dozens of women and children aboard, and Weissmuller, out training for a marathon swim, went to their rescue.

Weissmuller's first screen role, in little but a fig leaf, was as which mythological figure in Glorifying the American Girl (1929)?

Adonis: he stood as a living statue in a Ziegfeld revue number, three years before Tarzan swapped the fig leaf for a loincloth.

To free Weissmuller from his BVD contract for Tarzan, what did MGM agree its stars would do?

Pose in the company's ads: MGM let stars of Greta Garbo's rank be photographed for BVD, and the $500-a-week swimwear salesman became its ape man.

In Tarzan's New York Adventure, Weissmuller's ape man escapes the police by diving from which landmark?

The Brooklyn Bridge: the plunge into the East River was really a dummy, filmed from a tower on the MGM lot.

Who played Jane opposite Weissmuller in six Tarzan films from 1932 to 1942?

Maureen O'Sullivan, an Irish-born MGM contract player, left the series after 1942 to raise her growing family, which soon included the future star Mia Farrow.

What was Jane's surname in the Weissmuller films, as opposed to Porter in the novels?

Parker: the films also changed her nationality, making Jane a well-bred Englishwoman where Burroughs's Jane Porter came from Baltimore.

Why were elephants in Weissmuller's Tarzan films fitted with fake ears and tusks?

Indian rather than African animals were used because film-makers found them far easier to work with, so MGM strapped on outsize ears and tusks to pass them off as African.

Weissmuller always said the Tarzan yell was his own voice, built on which boyhood skill?

Yodeling: he recalled doing it at Sunday picnics as a boy in immigrant Chicago, and said the studio merely modified the call he gave them.

Which all-purpose command did Weissmuller's Tarzan shout at animals?

Umgawa was invented for the films as a command for every occasion, and Weissmuller liked to translate it as Tarzanese for a rather saltier version of let's get out of here.

Which comedienne would perform the Tarzan yell on request during her TV show's weekly Q&A?

Carol Burnett taught herself the yell as a girl, called it a good vocal exercise, and once got opera star Beverly Sills to try it.

What is the name of the chimpanzee sidekick in Weissmuller's Tarzan films?

Cheeta was invented for the screen: Burroughs's novels have no chimpanzee at all, only a little monkey called Nkima.

The 1934 sequel to Tarzan the Ape Man scandalised censors with what scene?

A nude underwater swim: Olympic swimmer Josephine McKim doubled for Jane, and censors had the sequence cut from prints soon after release, so it went unseen for decades.

Which 1934 film, the first sequel to Tarzan the Ape Man, joined the US National Film Registry in 2003?

Tarzan and His Mate is the only film MGM's art director Cedric Gibbons was ever credited with directing, though Jack Conway took over part of the shoot.

Which creatures did Tarzan fight in a sequence cut from Tarzan Escapes (1936) after test screenings?

Vampire bats: a preview left children scared and mothers outraged, so MGM cut the swamp attack and reshot much of the film, which had once been titled Tarzan and the Vampires.

Why is Boy a foundling, not Tarzan and Jane's own child, in Tarzan Finds a Son! (1939)?

The couple were unmarried in the eyes of Hollywood's morality watchdogs, so a baby of their own was ruled out; screenwriter Cyril Hume had one survive a plane crash instead.

Which child actor played Boy in eight Tarzan films alongside Weissmuller?

Johnny Sheffield said the star picked him for the part himself and then taught him to swim; he later led his own series as Bomba the Jungle Boy.

In Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942), why do Tarzan and Jane travel to Manhattan?

Boy has been kidnapped by a circus whose boss saw him performing with young animals; in New York, Tarzan turns the big top's own herd loose to wreck it and get him back.

Tarzan Triumphs (1943), the first RKO entry, pits Tarzan against whom?

Nazi Germans: paratroopers seize a lost city for its raw materials, and the film ends with Berlin mistaking a chimp's radio chatter for Hitler.

Which actress played Jane in Weissmuller's last four Tarzan films?

Brenda Joyce got the part only after the first Jane, pencilled in for a 1945 comeback, dropped out; she then stayed on for a fifth film opposite the next Tarzan.

Where was Weissmuller's final Tarzan film, Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948), shot?

Acapulco, Mexico: Weissmuller got sunburned there and had to wear screen make-up for the first time in his career, yet he later made the resort his home and died there in 1984.

Who took over as the screen Tarzan in 1949 after Weissmuller's twelfth and last film in the role?

Lex Barker inherited the loincloth while Weissmuller, by then in his mid-forties, swapped it for a safari suit and went on making adventure films for another seven years.

After Tarzan, Weissmuller played which safari-suited comic-strip hero for Columbia?

Jungle Jim kept him in films until 1955, though in the last three the safari hero was simply called Johnny Weissmuller.

Weissmuller appears on which band's 1967 album cover?

The Beatles were photographed among full-size cut-outs for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Weissmuller stands in the crowd alongside Marlene Dietrich and Aldous Huxley.

Which fellow Olympic swimmer and screen Tarzan played Weissmuller's rival in Swamp Fire (1946)?

Buster Crabbe won 400 m gold in 1932 and played a rival screen Tarzan the following year; in Swamp Fire the two old pool rivals finally faced each other on film.

In 1940 another swimmer-turned-Tarzan replaced Weissmuller as star of which World's Fair water show?

Billy Rose's Aquacade paired Weissmuller with Olympic backstroke champion Eleanor Holm at the 1939 New York World's Fair, and showman Rose married his leading lady before the year was out.

Weissmuller's cameo in Stage Door Canteen (1943), where stars served the troops, shows him doing what?

Working in the kitchen: like dozens of stars in the film he plays himself doing canteen chores for servicemen, in his case washing the dishes.

MGM's original ending for Tarzan Finds a Son! did what to Jane, before it was changed?

Killed her off: the script had her die of a spear wound while saving Boy, but the ending was rewritten so that she pulls through, and she stayed for two more films.

Weissmuller's stormy marriage from 1933 to 1939 was to which Mexican-born Hollywood star?

Lupe Vélez, Hollywood's 'Mexican Spitfire', fought with him so publicly that she first filed for divorce within a year; he still helped carry her coffin in 1944.

Weissmuller secretly married his second wife in October 1933 in which Nevada city?

Las Vegas hosted the secret ceremony, but the marriage was stormy from the start: within ten months his bride had filed for divorce, the first of several filings before the split became final in 1939.

Where did Weissmuller work as a swimming instructor during the 1930s before Tarzan?

The Miami Biltmore Hotel packed its poolside for swimming galas, and its instructor Weissmuller broke a world record in the vast pool before Hollywood called.

The International Swimming Hall of Fame, launched with Weissmuller as founding chairman, stands in which Florida city?

Fort Lauderdale: Weissmuller moved to the city in the mid-1960s at the urging of the hall's director and was still its honorary chairman in the 1970s.

What was played as Weissmuller's coffin was lowered into the ground?

A recording of the Tarzan yell sounded as the casket went down: the cry was a creation of the screen, since Burroughs's novels could describe it only in words, as 'the victory cry of the bull ape'.

Which honour befitting a head of state did Weissmuller receive at his funeral?

A 21-gun salute: gun salutes began as a show of peaceful intent, since a fired cannon was an empty one, and twenty-one guns became the salute for heads of state.

In the scene misquoted as 'Me Tarzan, you Jane', what does Weissmuller's Tarzan actually say?

Jane, Tarzan: he jabs a finger at her chest and his own, saying the two names over and over, and never utters the line the world remembers.

Cedric Gibbons, credited director of Weissmuller's second Tarzan film, designed which famous trophy?

The Oscar statuette: MGM's art director drew a knight gripping a crusader's sword on a reel of film, and sculptor George Stanley turned the sketch into the figure still handed out today.

Weissmuller opened Paris's Piscine Molitor in 1929, a pool that later gave its name to the hero of which novel?

Life of Pi: Yann Martel's hero is christened Piscine Molitor Patel after the pool, and shortens it to Pi once his schoolmates turn Piscine into 'Pissing'.

Weissmuller claimed all his life to be American-born, passing off whose Pennsylvania baptism record as his own?

His brother's: Peter was born in Windber, Pennsylvania, and the church entry for 'Petrus John' let the European-born Johnny travel to Paris in 1924 as an American.