Talk:The New Adventures of Tarzan

Alternate dialog track?

It has often been reported that at some point this production's sound track was judged to be too poor to use and was replaced, with a different group of actors redubbing the voices. These reports have varied as to when and to which format (serial/feature/features) this was done. The two features had pretty bad sound when they were part of the Tarzan movie package syndicated to local television stations (USA) in my childhood, in comparison to the MGM/RKO/Johnny Weismuller/Lex Barker films that made up the bulk of the package. Then the serial itself showed on the public domain oriented satellite channel the America One Network in the very late 1990s; the audio was quite good, but Tarzan's voice certainly sounded like Herman Brix/Bruce Bennett's own. Does anybody have good documentation about this? Ted Watson (talk) 22:29, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

These reports come from fans who've drawn a conclusion based on a caveat title card on a post-WWII British reissue of the feature version of the serial. This caveat claims that adverse "atmospheric conditions" in Guatemala reduced quality on some

of the film's sound track. In fact, if you watch the serial, you will find no such claim made and, furthermore, if you then watch the feature bearing this caveat, you will quickly notice that the sound isn't just fuzzy, but the voices are dubbed. This dubbing is best noticed when d'Arnot, at the climax, refers to the leader of the Lost Tribe as "Queen Kia-Kia" when, in the serial, the actor (and the script) called her "Queen Maya". There is no hard documentation available, but it seems clear that the UK reissue company, New Realm, got hold of a print without a viable original soundtrack and re-recorded the whole thing on the cheap. The results were worse than anticipated, so the caveat credit was added to cover their error, blaming the original American filmmakers and Guatemalan air. Just as evidently, prints of the original feature version were lost in the US, and this poorly dubbed British version became the source print. For 50s American TV, the syndicator also clipped in 4 extended sequences of jungle footage taken in Africa to stretch their print out to about 70 minutes (the British version runs only 59, and has a brief shot of hands passing a telegram swiped from Major Martling's pocket replace an extended sequence in which Martling and the steward-henchman fight over the telegram, Tarzan swings to the rescue from the riggings, the telegram is dropped in the struggle and carried by a sea-breeze to Raglan, the steward is captured, and Raglan has to shoot his man from hiding to prevent him revealing Raglan's villanous intentions). Later these African shots (showing black-skinned families in a tribal village along a river, a veldt, and assorted non-Guatemalan animals as lions, tigers, gazelles and so forth) were excised and the 59 minute print has become a staple of 60s TV "Tarzan Theater" packages, PD videos and now PD DVDs. If Burroughs Inc. has a copy of the complete and originally-soundtracked feature, they've clearly made no effort to replace this truncated abomination, and have simply let fan rumor build the story of who dubbed what when. Perhaps it was even Burroughs Inc., and not New Realm, that did the dubbing; that would certainly explain the Burroughs family's resounding silence about the rumors and facts of the making of the serial and its two feature versions, most of which can be figured out by comparison of versions and a *close* reading of Irwin Porges ERB bio, as well as a few un-followed-up-on memories given by Bruce Bennett to his hasty biographer before his death. ~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.73.195.93 (talk) 19:55, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Excised quote

The following quote was in the reception section but it has no source:

"Brix's portrayal was the only time between the silents and the 1960s that Tarzan was accurately depicted in films. He was mannered, cultured, soft-spoken, a well-educated English lord who spoke several languages, and didn't grunt."

Deletion of referenced material

Please don’t delete referenced material outright, especially without providing any sort of reference of your own. If there is a dispute between sources, please add this information with appropriate references. Please refer to Wikipedia:Verifiability for more information. Additionally, avoid self-referencing within the main space articles. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 13:13, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

For reference, I reverted this from the Production section:-

Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises

This section has been deleted as it is error-ridden owing to reliance on early serial/Tarzan movie fan book writers such as William Cline and Gabe Essoe, who based their "histories" of this serial on publicity material imagined for the pressbook. Both Irwin Porges' biography of Burroughs, "Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan", and Mike Chapman's biography of Herman Brix, "Please Don't Call Me Tarzan" should be read and used to develop the facts of its making, especially the non-involvement of Burroughs (and the major involvement of Dearholt) in its creation and execution. This was, I believe, done once, but has been removed in favor of the more erroneous, if frequently recycled, Cline-Essoe-etc. fancruft. The Reference list was intentionally locked, also, to prevent a corrective re-write with citations, so that has also had to be elliminated in its entirety. Someone else can fix this mess - someone who knows what he/she is doing.

Problems and the rivalry with MGM

Same problem as in preceding section.

- AdamBMorgan (talk) 13:17, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup

Recent additions and reversions have messed up the citations - for example under "Production history", references appear without the appropriate citations.Greedyhalibut (talk) 19:49, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I think I've cleaned it up now but I'll leave the tag for the moment. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 15:17, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

You need to unlock the closed "reflist" and add the two references cited; then proper Wiki-footnotations can appear. Instead, you keep deleting them altogether. Obviously, Adam, you want to defend and perpetuate the myths created by Gabe Essoe about this film, in his desire to establish himself as the Tarzan Expert of the 70s, when his "work" actually consisted of an erroneous reading of Porges' history of Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises, and his use of the pressbook synopsis (as did Porges) in lieu of actually watching the serial. You would do well yourself to read the two added references and see the serial before you go on tampering with efforts to correct Essoe's mythology, which has just been rote-repeated by the other sources in the current reflist, uncritically and without additional effort to dig out facts. 12.73.195.214 (talk)4 Jun 09. —Preceding undated comment added 15:46, 4 June 2009 (UTC).

I am going to assume good faith here and I have tried to combine both versions into one. The references from both should be included correctly. Again, please do not delete, remove or alter any existing reference based on your own opinion. This is not how Wikipedia is supposed to work. Whether or not Gabe Essoe was correct, his book remains a valid reference for this article. As it happens, I don't believe that you sources are correct, or even notable, but I have included them anyway. For the record, I own the serial on DVD and have seen it more than once.

Based on your comment "the closed 'reflist'" I assume you don't know how referencing works - all you have to do is type <ref>Whatever</ref> into the article and "Whatever" will appear in the references section through the standard Reflist template. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 19:27, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

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Correct title of chapter 12?

This article lists the title of chapter 12 as "Operator No. 17", but the actual on-screen title of chapter 12 is "Operator 17", and at the conclusion of Chapter 11 the same title, "Operator 17", is cited on-screen as the title of chapter 12, the next chapter. This makes me wonder about the validity of using "Operator No. 17" as the title. Can anyone shed some light on this? My personal view is that the on-screen title is preferable. Aeolopile (talk) 02:17, 3 January 2023 (UTC)