#18. Tarzan and the Lion Man
Part 10: Tarzan's Excellent
New York Adventure
10: Tarzan's Excellent New York Adventure
Sound movies were a unique cultural addition. The Studios had little or nothing to do with 'artists.' The Studios were entertainment factories organized along much the same lines as Ford's assembly plants. Like Ford's factories their interest was to mass produce entertainment. There was a tremendous investment in theatres and distribution. The theatres could not sit idle waiting for the next picture hence the goal was to produce fifty-two A movies a year, or, one a week.Unlike Broadway theatres where the production and performance would hopefully last a year, two or three or publishing where a bestseller would take a writer quite some time to compose, usually, and would take a year or two to sell through, the writers, actors, directors and such were merely employees. 'Workers' in Communist terminology. This was a major departure in the 'arts.'
The only entity taking a risk was the Studio or corporation hence each and every film was organized and supervised from the top down. Once the executives determined on a project the necessary 'workers' were assembled. With the amount of money involved in each production the Studio could ill afford to let projects originate in any other way.
Thus as industrial units writers were not allowed sole authorship of any movie. One writer might work up the idea which was then assigned to other writers to add, change and polish until the executives thought they had a money maker. And then the movie was taken for a test drive for audience reaction and underwent other changes. Few original ideas were used. Usually a project was based on a proven entity like a novel, old play or tried and true plot line.
Naturally in such a situation any group could be disciplined to follow one of any number of tacks. The jobs were highly paid and desirable. To not go with the flow, to not follow orders was to lose very lucrative employment.
The executives were in control. When Burroughs was in the employ of MGM for those five weeks he had a chance to view the system in operation. As he observed in Lion Man, p. 8:
"There ain't no tigers in Africa, Milt," explained the director.Quite clearly the writer is not an originator but an employee who works up material to order. This quite natural consequence of mass production, then, played into Communist hands.
'Who says there ain't?"
"I do." replied Orman, grinning.
"How about it, Joe?" Smith turned toward the scenarist. (Writer.)
"'Well, chief, you said you wanted a tiger sequence."
"Oh, what's the difference? We'll make it a crocodile sequence."The Communists arrived in Hollywood almost simultaneously with sound while Communism was already the normal way of Jewish thinking.
Thus the collective mindset of Judaism and Communism was already in place. It remained only for the Communists to organize the 'cultural workers' as in any other industry which they immediately set out to do. The cultural clash between individualistic actors and writers as 'artists' was already undermined by the studio system but some 'cultural workers' were still offended by becoming mere ciphers in an industrial machine. Nonetheless the Communists organized the cultural workers into units such as the Screen Actors Guild - SAG - and Screen Writers Guild - SWG. IATSE covered the technical people.
Once a collective is formed, whether a guild, a religion, a corporation or political party, an executive committee is necessary to handle affairs and set policy. Anyone who doesn't accept the policy must be disciplined until he does or be expelled, denied work, blacklisted or in the extreme case of Stalin's USSR, eliminated.
So the Communists set their ideals against those of the Studio. In a few years this would create a conflict between the Communists and the Studio heads when HUAC came to Hollywood. The Communists denied guilt according to John Howard Lawson, one of their leaders. (Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund: The Inquisition In Hollywood: Politics In The Film Community, 1930-1960, University Of California Press, 1983.)
(Ceplair and Englund speaking)While I would disagree with Lawson that a clever writer couldn't slip quite a few items past any censor or censors I think the point has been clearly made that the final film product reflects the wishes and attitudes of the Studio executives. Thus whatever the process, the content and apparent meaning of the six MGM Tarzan films reflect the intent of the MGM executives from Louis B. Mayer on down. Thus Judaeo-Communists are forming the popular image of Tarzan to reflect their own ends. The chief caveat is that the films must make money so any motives on the screen must be ulterior so as not to destroy the entertainment value. Ceplair and Englund's idea of making bloated political speeches as the only way of injecting political content is absurd.
Communist screenwriters could not themselves, directly improve or change content through political inserts- whistling the "Internationale", speeches about democracy- or by writing Communist films stressing the importance of collectivity over the individual and graphically depicting the plight of the dispossessed, the nature of their struggle, and their inevitable class triumph, or by imitating Russian Marxists aesthetics. (John Howard) Lawson for one, was very forthright about the lack of success in those directors:
Ceplair, Englund quote of Lawson:
As a matter of undeviating practice in the motion picture industry it is impossible for any screen writer to put anything into a motion picture to which the executive producers object. The content of motion pictures is controlled exclusively by producers; [all aspects of a film] are carefully studied, checked, edited and filtered by executive producers and persons acting directly under their supervision...Perhaps in those days people weren't as yet so sensitive to multi-culturalism and Diversity as we are today. For that reason I am reevaluating the era in terms of modern Multi-Culturalism and Diversity. It's like hitting the Saturation button, if you know what I mean.
Before moving on from the background of the situation to the actual analysis of MGM's last Tarzan effort it will be necessary to update the Jewish Cain and Abel play to the United States.
As mentioned previously the thirties brought a tremendous influx of Central European Jews to Hollywood. While Freud himself remained in Vienna until well past the last moment then choosing to emigrate to England as his 1909 visit to Clark college left a worse taste in his mouth than those horrid cigars, huge numbers of psychoanalysts and psychologists found their way to the West as well as a large percentage of the Jewish film colony of Germany. Accompanying these Europeans West were the Jewish criminals attached to the Outfit of Chicago. These were all Jews from the Pale born c. 1900-10.
The earlier German Jews arrived after the 1848 Revolution were now being absorbed by the Jews from the Pale or dying out. They had been responsible for establishing the first Jewish occupation when they aligned themselves with the Woodrow Wilson Administration of 1913-21. There they established the classic Abelite relationship with the higher authority. President Wilson gave them pretty much the same latitude as the Spanish kings of the pre-Inquisition or any number of early rulers. This has gone unnoticed but they established their traditional role of 'tax farmers' or overseers of the goyim cattle under Wilson.
The WIB, or War Industries Board, was a key instrument in the attempt to subordinate the goyim. Wilson himself was a self-absorbed simpleton who was easily manipulated; I doubt if he had any idea of what was really going on. He placed the Jewish speculator and financier, Bernard Baruch, at the head of the WIB.
Baruch then, under the guise of the 'war emergency,' required each and every business of each and every industry to submit their confidential data so they could be organized as a component of the war effort.
This sounds reasonable enough but there was no war emergency in the United States. War hysteria, perhaps, but no emergency. Wilson himself, beneath his outward calm, was an hysteric. He was not emotionally qualified for the Presidency. Interestingly Teddy Roosevelt perceived this without any difficulty. The stringency of the measures taken to ensure uniformity were not based on war necessities but on a socialistic program to render everyone 'equal' or the same while at the same time bringing industry under Jewish control.
Industry protested vigorously against the measures taken by Baruch and his WIB only to be called anti-Semites. Foremost of these were Henry Ford and the Dodge brothers. The Dodge brothers who were less temperate than Ford in denouncing the WIB and Baruch correctly identified the problem as the Cain and Abel syndrome. For this they were murdered in 1920. Ford went into strong reaction buying the Dearborn Independent which ran his series of articles denouncing the syndrome thereby being characterized by the Jews as 'anti-Semitic.'
The 'war emergency' ended just as some of the more remarkable edicts were about to be put into effect. Wilson was run out of office in 1921, he would have run for a third term had his health permitted, thus the Jewish Cultural program was put into abeyance until 1933.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was an under Secretary of the Navy during Wilson's last term. Roosevelt became a disciple of Wilson's so that when he was elected President in 1932 the whole Wilson program was reinstated. The Jews returned to government in unprecedented numbers under the shelter of the higher authority of Roosevelt. Punitive income tax rates were established to emasculate men the Jews considered enemies such as W.R. Hearst.
Twentieth century America was different from fifteenth century Spain in that the executive role was considerably reduced as Government functions had become institutionalized. The executive was now subject to a constitution and the rule of law. Secure under the wing of the executive it was necessary for the Cain and Abel Syndrome, the Culture, to subvert the law.
Woodrow Wilson had appointed the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis. He had been canonized by the media as would be his successor to the Jewish 'place' on the Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter. These two men were put forward as secular saints although it is difficult to imagine why when one examines their careers in the light of today's multi-culturalism and diversity.
The agents of Jewish Culture would make many decisions to undermine the British based legal system to convert it to a Semitic based system favoring the culture of the Jews. Today's 'hate' laws promulgated under the cover of a mistaken version of multi-culturalism and diversity are an example of what evolved.
Thus working above board legally and below board criminally the Jewish Culture sought to realize the age old Cain and Abel ideal in the United States. While Gus Russo in his Supermob concentrates on arch criminals like Sidney Korshak and other crooks looting the American industrial system he passes lightly over the career of one who seems very significant by the name of David Bazelon, also from Chicago's Lawndale.
Bazelon functioned as an enabler while being a civil servant. In this way he was able to direct certain opportunities to his mob contacts in the Chicago Outfit. All the Jews connected to the Outfit were lawyers. They used their legal knowledge and skills to circumvent the law rather than applying it.
Bazelon later almost made the Supreme Court. In the year or so following the confiscation of Japanese property in California in 1942 he had his position in the Office Of Alien Properties disposing of that property. In a very corrupt manner he sold the properties at bargain prices to his associates in the Outfit, both Jewish and Sicilian. Thus they were not only able to utilize the immense proceeds from their criminal activities but were able to bilk from the upper world legal profits from these properties.
Thus Bazelon violated the trust placed in him by the American government but at the same time was able to sabotage that same government.
To return to Mr. Netanyahu's complaint about the Jews in Spain. A Spaniard by the name of Marcos Garcia who was a leader of the insurrection against the Jews felt that the crimes of the (Jews) embrace all spheres of life. They are manifest in religion, economy, government, and of course in all personal relationships between the (Jews) and the (Spanish.) Thus they gnaw at (Spanish) society from all angles and undermine all its institutions.
Thus Mr. Netanyahu unconsciously states how 'anti-Semitism' comes into existence. He doesn't seem to be aware of the Cain-Abel Syndrome but that is what he is explaining. From the origins of the Hebrews through Spain to the contemporary situation in Central and Eastern Europe to the United States of then and today the story is always the same.
Just as the Spaniards he is describing were attempting to exterminate the Jews, so as in Burroughs' time both Nazis and Communists were doing the same. That is the inevitable programmed result of the Cain-Abel Syndrome. Mr. Netanyahu should diligently study Sigmund Freud's The Future Of An Illusion.
In the multi-cultural sense the Jews then and now were trying to establish their cultural supremacy. I do not argue against this per se as the inevitable result of the clash of cultures is and must be the dominance of one. The inevitable result of diversity is the destruction of all cultures but one. I have demonstrated this in the Darwinian evolutionary sense repeatedly. The point is there is no reason for me or anyone else to supinely allow their culture to be destroyed for the benefit of another.
I have also quoted Rabbi Schneerson's 'scientific' genetic argument for the superiority of the Jewish culture. In Spanish times a religious argument demonstrating such superiority was used. Quoting Juan de Torquemada, the uncle of the Inquisitor, Mr. Netanyahu argues thusly, pp. 481-82:
...it is a fact that the gentiles, to elevate their status, had to be "grafted" onto the "tree" of the Jews. As the Apostle said, "You gentiles, (this word is added by Torquemada), who are an oleaster" (namely, a wild olive tree which cannot bear good fruit), you had neither the Law nor the Prophets, nor even the worship of God, as you were dedicated to idolatry, ought to remember that you "were grafted in among them"- that is, among the standing branches (ramis stantibus), which are the apostles and the other faithful Jews, "and with them you partake of the root"- that is the faith of the Patriarchs and the Prophets, "and the fatness of the olive tree"- that is, of the doctrine and grace of Christ which came from the Jews.So, the context changes but the argument always remains the same. As George Santayana said: Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Since the Illusion has not changed the result must ever be the same whether Spain, Europe or the United States. Mr. Russo in his Supermob without realizing it was replicating the description in the United States of Mr. Netanyahu's description of Spain.So now, with a grasp of the underlying strategies we can return to Burroughs and MGM. The purpose of MGM was to discipline a 'loose cannon' like Burroughs.
There had been recent renewed activity in Tarzan films after a hiatus of several years, however MGM's interest seems to have been catalyzed by their interest in Trader Horn. Perhaps the story showed them the way. All the MGM Tarzans would bear the imprint of Trader Horn. It appears the MGM first considered a Trader Horn series with Tarzan as a subsidiary character. Cyril Hume's first script was a Trader Horn sequel in which Tarzan appeared only as a supporting character having little or no relationship to the literary Tarzan. There wasn't even a Jane as Tarzan was paired up with a female scientist. That's an interesting subliminal association. As Hume was undoubtedly trying to fulfill suggestions from the executives we don't know why the screenplay was scrapped. As Burroughs got his paychecks for those five weeks probably attending planning sessions in Thalberg's office it may be that he objected.
The finished product clearly reflects the first script although the emphasis is changed to make Tarzan more prominent but not clearly the central character. Jane actually is the more dominant personality.
The entire series takes place on the MGM invented Mutia Escarpment. As is well known the name Mutia comes from the first name of the actor playing Renchoro in Trader Horn.
The first two movies which were either pre-Lion Man or unaffected by the novel don't seem to refer to any of Burroughs' works being a free interpretation of the character. The last four movies have references to Lion Man while Tarzan's Secret Treasure reflects the Opar theme, Tarzan And The Leopard Men as well as Lion Man. Both the later novels make reference to Trader Horn as MGM seems to date the beginning of Tarzan to the post-Trader Horn period. Tarzan is introduced as a grown man in the movies.
The movies attempted to denigrate and belittle the character which if you're familiar with the literary Tarzan they do. The magnificence and appeal of the character is so great that even the MGM Tarzan defeats their efforts remaining an entrancing character for the movie going public.
As a boy I can't be sure which movies I saw other than Tarzan Triumphs although I must have seen all the Lesser films. On reviewing the MGM Tarzans they don't ring any bells. Perhaps the movies were forgettable but Tarzan wasn't. As a young boy I was entranced, seeing nothing negative in the ape man's portrayal so perhaps most of the audience didn't either. Of course neither they nor I knew what to look for.
After five profitable successes MGM decided to abandon the series which must be unique in Movieland. For the final film the location was moved to New York City. In Trader Horn the location was moved from the US to Africa; in the final Tarzan episode Africa came to the US. In this episode Tarzan is subordinated to civilization and stripped of his jungle mystique.
By this time Burroughs himself had been exiled from Hollywood to Hawaii. There he separated from his young wife while sinking into alcoholism. His son had to go to Hawaii in an attempt to win ERB from the bottle. I don't mean to be unkind but it is true. From MGM's point of view he may have appeared a shattered wreck of a man who no longer merited their attention. As they were done with the Lion Man so they were done with his alter ego. ERB might have drunk himself to death if the war hadn't intervened. The movie obviously has a lot of references directed at Burroughs; some I picked up but I may not have interpreted correctly while many have probably gone over my head but I'm sure that as ERB sat watching they didn't go over his.
The reference to the Mutia Escarpment immediately refers to the Trader Horn connection. I can't get the exact relationship between Trader Horn and Tarzan but it obviously existed to MGM. The Escarpment is said to be so high that it reaches to the stars. Stars may be a reference to MGM which boasted 'more stars than there are in heaven.' Thus the reference would be mocking ERB.
One of the key goals of both the Reds and the Jews would be to subordinate Tarzan. One has to keep Freudian concepts in mind at all times. A culture is a group and must obey the laws of its group psychology. That group psychology can be scientifically analyzed just as individual psychology can. There is no escaping the evidence of your behavior or its consequences.
Both groups, Jews and Reds were into collectivization. Independent thought is not allowed. Tarzan was the supreme individualist. He is in fact a loner among humans although on very good terms with the animals. Tarzan was a law unto himself; he was not subject to any external law. Thus he had to have his independence destroyed and brought within the Law and the collectivity. Let's deal with Jewish aspects first.
The movies were made in 1932, 1934, 1936, 1939, 1941 and 1942. The New York Adventure was conceived and finished before Pearl Harbor so that event had no effect on the movie. So the spacing is two, two, three, two and one in years. Burroughs lamented that MGM wasn't producing at least one movie a year. MGM might have chosen to have done this. As the Charlie Chan movies, on which ERB commented, were being popped out at the rate of three or four a year to a profitable tune it is obvious that the same could have been done with Tarzan. One imagines that ERB urged MGM to do so. MGM chose to pass on the profits. One asks why?
As the decade wore on ERB became more and more dependent on the movies for income. Book sales must have lagged overall while he had no major successes after City Of Gold. Lion Man's sales were disappointing, while it is difficult to see its successors doing any better. He was off the radio after 1935 while the comic strip was not a major contributor to his income. Thus MGM controlled his purse strings.
ERB's finances were desperate after his movie venture in 1935-36. He had those notes coming due. MGM might have helped him along by putting out two or three quick Tarzans, instead at this crucial moment there was the long hiatus from 1936 to 1939. With no movie money coming in for three long years the spendthrift writer must have been driven to the wall contributing to his decision to exile himself to Hawaii where he lived on a pittance.
The appearance in Hawaii is that he was a broken man seeking solace in alcohol. In '41 and '42 in quick succession Tarzan's Secret Treasure and Tarzan's New York Adventure were made. As they intended to drop the series, the release of one per year for those two years may have been a calculated insult, both could be viewed as mocking films. A great deal of work has to be done to determine how Burroughs was perceived in Hollywood. I suspect as somewhat of a joke.
In the early novels when Tarzan needed money he made another run on the gold of Opar. Now living in actual poverty in Hawaii MGM made a movie where large gold nuggets lay at the bottom of a pool while Tarzan knew of a place where gold could be scooped out of veins by the bucketful. But ERB's ability to turn a buck now depended on MGM, so the notion could be viewed as mockery.
As it is possible that MGM now saw ERB as a wreck, totally defeated, they decided to wrap their involvement up with the succeeding movie. Their object of the destruction of Burroughs having been realized, they lost interest, abandoning the series.
They certainly had not exhausted the possibilities of story lines. Nor had the series become unprofitable as Sol Lesser proved for a decade or more. The probable reason is simply with Burroughs out of the picture their intent was realized. So as a farewell gesture they lectured Tarzan on his attitude toward the Law by which I mean to say the Jewish Law.
As the New York Adventure begins some circus types abduct Boy to perform as an animal trainer in their circus. As I watch the picture from this vantage point it is easy to see how MGM is ridiculing the ape man.
After ten years of marriage, during which the good cooking of Jane has fattened the feral boy up, Tarzan still can't put together a complete sentence. He's still at the Me Tarzan, You Jane stage or the even simpler, Tarzan, Jane. Boy, who was found in the jungle two years previously, has learned a great deal from the very literate Jane, even being able to write cursively although weak in orthography, but then the kid's big for his age at three.
So if Boy could learn to speak intelligently from Jane why after ten years of living with Jane is Tarzan still grunting? Not only grunting but he appears to be simple minded, purely a natural savage. He doesn't even act like he knows his way around the jungle.
But Jane and Tarzan set out to find Boy in the big wide world with a twenty-five or fifty pound bag of nuggets slung over the big fella's shoulder. Let me say here that the average viewer is not nearly as critical as I am here. The animal scenes are actually pretty thrilling while Boy's fight with the lion using a stick must have bowled the kids over. So, while my point of view here is to understand how MGM mocked Burroughs and disparaged Tarzan, as a theatre experience New York Adventure is not a bad movie.
MGM's attempt to ridicule Tarzan in the first film was not nearly as successful as in this one. Tarzan and Jane in clothes lose all their charm. Jane although dressed stylishly becomes just an ordinary looking woman. A little on the frumpy side, actually. Although Maureen O' Sullivan was a beautiful woman in any circumstances the insouciance and verve of her jungle raiment and demeanor is completely gone in a suit and hat. Not the same.
Tarzan, or Weissmuller in a double breasted suit while handsome is not commanding. So, right away Tarzan and Jane are demi-gods brought to earth. The scene in the tailor's shop with the Chinese tailors might also be a joke on Burroughs bringing to mind Charlie Chan. Tarzan's primitive manner of speech just becomes stupid and oafish in New York City. You can take the feral boy out the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the feral boy. Here the contest becomes one of Tarzan's law versus the law of the legal system. Tarzan fights the law and the law wins just as the Jewish Law did over Burroughs.
Thus the crucial part of the movie begins in the ludicrous scene in the courtroom. The trial is being held for the custody of Boy. On the one side are Buck and his circus associate who have kidnapped and actually enslaved Boy; they have no claim on him legitimate or otherwise. On the other side are his apparent parents, Tarzan and Jane. Tarzan had wanted to handle the situation according to his own law but Jane, as usual, dissuaded him telling him to rely on the law of the legal system and by inference the Jewish Law. I hope Tarzan hadn't forgotten how vilely Jane betrayed him just the previous year.
Jane lets slip that she and Tarzan 'found' Boy in the jungle. Boy is not the issue of Tarzan and Jane. In this zany courtroom scene the 'ownership' of Boy becomes unclear. It seems that the kidnappers and enslavers who are about to sell Boy to a Brazilian circus have as much claim to the kid as his ostensible parents.
Tarzan reacting in the tried and true jungle manner grabs the opposing attorney and dumps him bodily into the jury box. The act of violence proves him an unfit parent. The trial is interrupted. Waiting for the trial to resume Jane concedes to Tarzan that as usual she was wrong, his law was better than the Law. Coming to life Tarzan announces in amazing pidgin English: Tarzan find Boy. Slightly obscene actually but why nitpick? Tarzan crashes through a twelfth story or so window which luckily has an ample ledge. If logic isn't essential to your enjoyment of an 'action' film the next few sequences are quite thrilling.
The end result is that Tarzan is taken into custody and delivered before the kindliest judge who ever graced the bench. Now, there can be no doubt that Tarzan broke the Law by rioting in court. Under Jewish Law the accused is guilty until proven innocent but is supposed to gratefully accept any verdict just or not.
He is then duly convicted of what is apparently considered a misdemeanor rather than a felony as his crime only carried a sentence of thirty days and sentenced as guilty which of course he was. It is important to remember at this point that Tarzan has been convicted as a criminal. He has a criminal record from this point on. The judge generously suspends the sentence but remember Tarzan is still guilty.
Tarzan mutters some more memorable pidgin English to the effect of 'Tarzan bad, Law good.' Thus Tarzan is subsumed to the collective culture giving up his independence. No longer as in Invincible or Triumphant will he pass judgment on jungle offenders or Stalinites.
The judge even invades his territory as a right and as the Law assuming paramountcy in Tarzan's former Jungletopia. The judge advises Tarzan that he will visit him on a fishing trip. Tarzan says something like: Judge come rather than: "Bring money. Tarzan bailiwick. No license, no fishee.' Or he could simply have arrested the judge, convicted him of the offence of fishing without a license, make him a criminal, and then suspend the sentence, appropriating the fish and inviting the criminal to a fish fry.
Tarzan wasn't that quick but from this point on he has a criminal record in Filmtown. MGM successfully emasculated Burroughs and his Big Bwana. After ten years MGM succeeded in its goal. It is probably for that reason they abandoned this profitable series. It wasn't that they had run out of ideas which is an absurd supposition with a couple hundred writers on the lot but that they had said what they meant to say.
It would seem that this part of the series was the primary concern of the MGM executives. If as John Howard Lawson said, that nothing found its way into a movie unless it was approved by the executives, then this long ten-year persecution of both Burroughs and Tarzan must have come from the top - that is, Louis B. Mayer. Mayer who undoubtedly belonged to the AJC/ADL would then be acting as an agent of the Jewish people, religion, race, species or however they would have it.
While it is true that 50-60% of the US Communist Party was Jewish the remaining 40-50% weren't. Thus Jewish supremacy was not part of their goal. Even in the Socialist Homeland of the USSR the Jews were systematically slaughtered by the Central Committee under the direction of Stalin. Thus the goy Communists, a program of their own which differed from that of the Jews. This became clear and obvious after the establishment of Israel in 1948 when the two factions began to drift apart. The Left is also immune to charges of anti-Semitism.
Communism was nothing new in the nineteenth century, it was merely a reformulation of ideals that can be traced back to the dawn of consciousness. The great Swiss mythologist, J.J. Bachofen, on whom too much praise cannot be heaped, is the earliest student of human consciousness known to me. Unfortunately with the exeption of a volume of excerts his work has not been translated into English. The excerpts speak volumes, however.
Bachofen, very likely the first, recognized that the Matriarchal Age preceeded the Patriarchal Age and the developing Scientific Age but he also discerned an age preceeding the Matriarchal that he called the Hetaeric. A large number of modern minds have never made it past the Hetaeric. Thus all four ages of consciousness exist side by side with the five different human species.
Once again the concept of Top Dog enters the picture. Which consciousness will prevail? It will readily by seen that the highest form of consciousness - the Scientific - is in the most danger. One only has to look at the developments in France and Belgium to shudder.
The modern form of the Hetaeric developed in Medieval Europe with such groups as the Beggars and Beguines, the Anabaptists and the Free Spirits. These beliefs were incorporated into those of the Libertines and Jacobins and thence into Communism. The program may be sloganized as Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Like all such organizations the slogan is developed with more malice toward the established order as one moves up the ladder of initiation.
In many ways the ideas of Edgar Rice Burroughs are not in conflict with the Communists whose ideals do reflect universal longings in one form or another. Like them he sees civilization as an imposition on the individual. One of the charms of New York Adventure is the contrast between the natural 'good' ideals of the Mutia Escarpment and the corruption of civilization. One's heart aches for the lost paradise. Louis Prima humorously summed it up in post-war comic song: Bongo, bongo, bongo, I don't want to leave the Congo. It may be coincidence but then it's possible the songwriter at least had Tarzan's New York Adventure in the back of his mind.
Actually New York Adventure may have had the largest audience of all Tarzan movies. According to IMDb: Trivia: This was the first film shown free to servicemen overseas. So there's a good chance that a few millions of all those men in uniform saw the movie for nothing plus the theatre distribution on the home front.
Now, when the Communists say equality they mean just that, they don't mean equal rights but no evidences of distinction whatsoever. Race (or species) income, sex, education or whatever. The ideal is a page full of rows of zeroes. Communism is the rule of pure envy, a terror that one may not be able to compete on an equal basis. On a practical level this translates into the Soviet and Chinese models where the brutal seize power and follow a program of to the victors belong the spoils. This is because the human mind cannot function in an equal manner. The Scientific model is beyond the capabilities of the uncultivated mind. Hence one has the deplorable state of affairs of today where the scientific demands of society crumble before the stunted religious expression of the human mind whether it be Moslemism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism or whatever. Freudianism has allowed the basic criminality of the human conciousness to dominate. There is today no criminal attitude that is not dominant or in the process of becoming dominant. The dormancy of resistance to criminal developments is nothing short of startling. The human conciousness seems to be paralyzed. This naturally would be the end result of equality to the Communist mind.
The movie Tarzan fits this ideal. MGM's Tarzan is quite frankly, stupid. He is not a commanding figure, but a lovable clown. His love for Jane allows him to be led by the nose until her counsels become disastrous at which point Tarzan beats her out by mindless violence, never with any planning, always an impulsive knee jerk reaction. Thus this duncelike Tarzan is always correct over the educated civilized Jane. There is a subtle message there that Communist writers say they weren't clever enough to get past the executive censors who we are led to believe wanted such sentiments censored. I doubt it.
We then get to Communist notions of sex, sexuality and family. There can be no doubt that Tarzan and Jane were doing what was then known as 'shacking up.' Their romance was a version of 'free love.' A common access to women was the Communist ideal. They were opposed to marriage and the ideal of the family, preferring communal living with free access to every woman. Any notion of female 'liberation' always gets down to every woman should make herself available on demand to any man after the homosexual manner; a quick bang and we'll see you around.
Had Cyril Hume had his way there would have been no movie Jane. He had already written her out of his first draft. If he had had his way Tarzan would have had a succession of brief affairs. Wham! Bam! Thank you Ma'am and off swinging into the jungle again. Thus the movie Tarzan would have realized the Communist ideal completely but for reasons that remain unknown.
One should note that Hume tried to kill Jane off in Tarzan Finds A Son so that Tarzan could live a more libertine existence. By then the family role of Tarzan, Jane and Boy became established but the writers were always trying to break it up going so far as having a court award Boy to his kidnappers and enslavers.
As I say, it isn't clear why the Studio made the decision to include Jane from the beginning. The Jewish attitude toward women was and is as brutal as that of the goy Communists. From the White Slavery days to the present, Jews have exploited the women of Central and Eastern Europe without either shame or mercy, whether goy or Jewish. Prostitution of women on the Lower East Side of NYC showed a psychology of complete lack of self respect.
On the other hand, as intermediaries between God and mankind, Jews feel they are entitled to whatever they want which includes free access to any woman. Thus one has the sexual morality of Hollywood. That morality has been propagated around the world by movies, such as for instance, the Tarzan series. While you can talk women into any fashion, the women are the losers, the victims, as Yoko Ono said - the niggers of the world.
The psychological damage being inflicted on humans by the brutal approach to living is astounding. No matter what you tell yourself the effects of evil living are murderous. You cannot lie to yourself.
Consider the words of one of Stalin's mass executioners, G.G. Yagoda as he himself was about to be executed. Simon Sebag Montefiori: Stalin: The Court Of The Red Czar, pp. 220-221.
Yagoda told his interrogator, "You can put down in your report to Yezhof that I said there must be a God after all. From Stalin I deserved nothing but gratitude for my faithful service; from God, I deserved the most severe punishment for having violated his commandments thousands of times. Now look where I am and judge for yourself; is there a God or not?"Yagoda's plight doesn't prove the existence of God nor does his 'punishment' which was so richly merited and for which deeds he shows no remorse do anything for his victims, but his attitude does indicate the conflict in his mind as he carried out his orders. The conflict found expression in his need for pornography and violating the innocence of very young prepubescent girls. Unhealthy mental states always find expression in sexual obsessions. Once again, look at the world today. Such perversions male and female are rampant. And don't think they aren't perversions. The propaganda today that would make you think they're normal is just the sort of denial Yagoda experienced.Some say the Victorian role of woman was negative but I'd rather have a mother who had self-respect than one who was at the beck and call of any scuzbag with a hard-on.
So, in their subtle way the Tarzan films were anti-marriage and anti-family while being for female promiscuity.
These ideals were placed in an African utopia, a place that appears on no map, the Mutia Escarpment. The place is such a parallel universe pilots can't even see it until they apparently pass through an interface and are suddenly confronted by it. Using what appears to be identical footage the scene is replicated in both Finds A Son'and New York Adventure.
Both Burroughs and Communists are aligned in their views of the evils of civilization. Civilization, but not science or technology. It seems that Tarzan has some Rube Goldberg genius for inventing 1930s technological items like dishwashers, fans, etc. In fact, for being an inarticulate boob without the ability to use verbs his inventive genius is nothing less than startling. I don't believe the MGM Tarzan had even seen a wheel, yet astoundingly he has mastered the concepts of wheels, pulleys and leverage from scratch. That's as good as the literary Tarzan teaching himself to read. Well, Henry Ford was nearly inarticulate too and look how he changed the world.
Further, the screenwriters, once Boy is introduced, try to break up the family. In Finds A Son one has the bizarre situation where Jane lures Tarzan into an inescapable pit while she, supposedly a Mother, gives Boy to the adventurers.
One can only wonder at Hume's own childhood and upbinging. Not only is Hume sending Boy off to England, but he attempts to kill Jane off thus completely destroying the family leaving Tarzan alone in the jungle. Jane takes a spear in the back, square on the spine. In the original script she was then dead. Burroughs politely, even apologetically, explained to MGM that eliminating Jane was not wise as he himself had discovered when he tried to kill Jane off. After consideration MGM agreed, so that when Tarzan forgives Jane for her betrayal she miraculously recovers.
Bear in mind that as John Howard Lawson says, nothing went into the script that was not either suggested from above or approved by them. Compare with ERB's scene with the producer Milt Smith/Thalberg and his scenarist. That writer was Cyril Hume. So it is reasonable to assume that the scene was dictated to him. For whatever reason then, Mayer and his executives wanted the family broken up.
In Tarzan's New York Adventure not only is there a threatened abduction but an actual one. Boy is taken to New York City by his kidnappers. This time not only is Jane near death but the script leads us to believe that both Tarzan and Jane have died from a hundred foot or so fall when the vine they are swinging on is severed by a Jaconi. The grass surrounding them is set afire so that they will be burned beyond recognition much as Jane was in Tarzan The Untamed. Just as Burroughs had a death wish for Jane so, it appears, do the MGM execs for both she and Tarzan. Fortunately displaying superb equality with his human counterparts the chimp has more brains than anyone else involved rather miraculously rescuing the pair.
You may argue this is the story. Yes, but it doesn't have to be this story. Lesser's stories were quite different. The stories of each represent subliminal wishes. Dream wish fulfillments a la Sigmund Freud. If I had been script writer at MGM able to do my own writing the stories would have been completely different, reflecting my own psychological interests and needs. The point is both MGM and the Reds wished Tarzan and Burroughs dead. Of course, if they had died they wouldn't have had a movie.
Now, whenever Tarzan and Jane are visited up there on the Escarpment they are invariably visited by greedy capitalists seeking ivory, gold or riches of one sort or another. One may take the Escarpment as the Socialist Homeland where everything is equal, simple and perfect. Anarchy of the highest order. Civilization is represented by New York City and the circus as the Capitalist Homeland.
This contrasts the Communist version of a time of human perfection when the need for government will disappear and a perfected anarchy will come into existence. Freud touched on this problem somewhat in his Civilization And Its Discontents. Before Freud J. G. Frazer's The Golden Bough went into the problem extensively while Burroughs dwells on the problem throughout the corpus. Indeed, in this scene, ERB and the Communists are in agreement, as were many, many people who were discontented with civilization. Tarzan, Jane and Boy are actually living out the Communist ideal up there in Cloud Cuckooland on the Escarpment. This fact causes a problem for both executives and Communists, where they don't coincide, as they are in love with the Tarzan ideal also as, indeed, who wouldn't be?
While their original intent may have been to ridicule Tarzan into extinction his powerful appeal to the 'masses' undoubtedly prevented this. No kidding, folks, the No. 1 Commissar in the entire free or enslaved world loved the character. That must have counted for something in Hollywood.
So, in a way, Tarzan was a symbol of Communism for the Party faithful, in contrast to the greedy capitalists who invaded Cloud Cuckooland up on the Escarpment much as the Reds invaded ERB's dreamland of Opar. There are many conflicts in life as we wander through this lonesome valley.
It follows then that Communists had no problem injecting Red ideals into whatever movie they chose whether the executives approved each and every scene, as we are told by Lawson, or not. The Studios themselves were fashioned after the USSR government with the Party leader on top surrounded by a Central Committee which ruled with an iron fist. The jobs paid so well that rather than lose them one constantly looked to the top for direction. To err was to be cast into relative poverty blacklisted by every studio. HUAC didn't invent the Hollywood blacklist, the studios did.
Burroughs was essentially blacklisted while MGM played cat and mouse with him until they tired of it in late 1941 or early 1942.
The War then changed the direction of the game as ERB finally became the war correspondent he had always wanted to be. No matter what MGM might do, he would always be Edgar Rice Burroughs to his public.
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Themes And Variations
The Tarzan Novels Of Edgar Rice Burroughs
#18: Tarzan and the Lion Man
by R. E. Prindle
R. E. Prindle welcomes your comments at:
dugwarbaby@yahoo.com
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