PUSHING THE ENVELOPE --
No. 1
This one is from Charlie Delgado. who
used his Mailer's Postmark Permit cancellation device on this cover of
Jan. 4, 2010. The machine cancel near the top shows that the post office
added its cancellation on Jan. 5. (The machinery also ripped up part of
a stamp!) The art, on left, is an image that Charlie copied from erblist.com
to make what is known in the hobby as a Local Post "stamp." He glued it
on over his own art. of trees, which, he turn, he added over a collage
of strips of colored paper.
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE--
No. 2
"Postal History" or "Historical Cover" is among many
categories of the cover-collecting hobby. Some old covers fit into more
than one category. This one was in the process of tracking down actress
Enid Markey on Jan. 7, 1917.
A "Postal History" cover is one with nothing particularly
special about it other than, perhaps, who sent it, who it was addressed
to, how it was canceled,and if a collector likes it for some reason, etc.
It is an otherwise ordinary envelope that was dropped into the mailstream.
It was originally mailed from Japan, with a Japanese stamp.
The sender was Film Records, 8 Tsuramakicho, Ushigome, Tokyo, Japan. In
the lower left is a logo with the letters "CSS" in the shape of a film
spool with the initials revealed below the logo as standing for "Cinema
S. Society."
After the stamp had been canceled in Tokyo, Japan, it
was canceled again when it reached the U.S. in Culver City, Calif., with
the Jan. 7 date. The new cancel obscures the date of the original cancel.
The envelope appears to be addressed to Miss Markey at
"Ince"(?) Studio. The studio had forwarded it to her at "Hartman Apts,
Wash. & Oaks" and it had been forwarded from there to L.A., at 1305
on a street name I can't make out, but maybe the mailman back then knew
where to find her. There was no letter inside the cover when I obtained
it for my collection.
Miss Markey's film career began in 1911. The Internet
Movie Database credits her with four films in 1917, the year the cover
was mailed. She played Jane in "Tarzan of the Apes" and "The Romance of
Tarzan," both in 1918. She was active in films and television up until
1968 and passed away in 1981. ERB fans Brian Bohnett and Scott Tracy Griffin
have put Enid Markey between other kinds of covers -- book covers.
ENID MARKEY: (born February 22, 1894, Dillon, Colorado
- died November 15, 1981, Bay Shore, New York) ~ Tarzan's first cinema
Jane 1918
Enid Markey Remembered in the Press
http://www.erbzine.com/mag29/2985.html
ERBzine's Enid Markey Photo Gallery
http://www.erbzine.com/mag29/2985a.html
Off-Site Reference
Enid
Markey in IMDB
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE:
No. 3
For a couple of dozen years, the U.S. Postal Service
has issued a stamp each year to note the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year.
The 2009 stamp was for the Year of the Ox. However, the stamp image resembled
a dragon to me so I used it to tie in with a scene of Tarzan battling a
dragon-like creature. The stamp on the cover was postmarked with a Jan.
8, 2009, "First Day of Issue" cancellation, ten years ago.
The last actual Year of the Dragon was 2012 and the next
one will be 2024.
The art by Joe Kubert was the cover of DC's "Tarzan" No.
228, dated February 1974. The story, "Trial by Blood," pits Tarzan against
a "terrible lizard" to which a tribe of pygmies offers sacrifices. The
comic can be read here:
http://www.erbzine.com/mag57/5728.html
The beast depicted by Kubert is not identified other than
as "beast" and "terrible lizard." The latter term, from ancient Greece,
is where the word from which the term "dinosaur"
eventually came:
The year 2019 is the Year of the Pig, also called the
Year
of the Boar. It starts Feb. 5. The Postal Service is using the Boar
designation for this year's commemorative stamp, which will be issued Jan.
17 with an official first-day ceremony in Houston. Looks as if I'll have
to find a good picture of Tarzan going after Horta.
Hillmans Celebrate the Year of the Boar
www.hillmanweb.com/newyear/2007.html
Off-Site References
Virtual
Stamp Club
Chinese
New Year Zodiac
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE: No. 4
The Chinese Lunar New Year of the Monkey in 2004 was celebrated
by Dave and Sabrina Curtis with carved block covers. David's, with a monkey,
also had the Canadian Year of the Monkey stamp with first-day cancel from
that nation as well.
The U.S. stamp was issued Jan. 13, 2004.
Dave and Sabrina both use linoleum blocks to carve designs.
The cover shown here by David is one color; Sabrina's, featuring a silverback
gorilla, is multiple colors, which is more complicated and exacting. When
the block is ready, it is inked and the envelope placed on the block and
pressed down with a roller. Full color covers require multiple printings
with precise placement.
David and Sabrina's covers can be found on ebay by searching
the stamps category with their names.
This website features a few other examples of David's
work.
https://davidecurtisart.weebly.com/postal-portfolio.html
More about the Year of the Monkey on the Hillman New
Year Site:
http://www.hillmanweb.com/newyear/2016.html
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE:
No. 5
Tarzan of the Apes might be seen wrestling a lion, leaping
at a leopard, or ensnarling a snake. But tackling a tiger? Not so likely.
Everybody knows that Tarzan lives in Africa, and there are no tigers in
Africa!
Nonetheless, tigers have been associated with the Jungle
Lord in some ways over the years.
First, as all ERB fans know, creator Edgar Rice Burroughs
mistakenly placed tigers in Africa when his first Tarzan story, "Tarzan
of the Apes," was published in The All-Story magazine in 1912.
It didn't take readers long to point that out. Embarrassed but not bowed,
Burroughs simply changed the name of Sabor, the Tiger, to Sabor, the Lioness,
when his story was printed in book form in 1914.
The word "Tiger" was to be linked with Tarzan again in
1929 when a movie serial, somewhat based on the later Tarzan novel, "Tarzan
and the Jewels of Opar," was made, starring Frank Merill as the ape-man.
The title, "Tarzan the Tiger," referred to Tarzan's physical
prowess.
While Burroughs made the tiger mistake in his first Tarzan
story, he made sure there was no mistake at all in the last Tarzan story
to be published during his lifetime. In "Tarzan and 'The Foreign
Legion'," Tarzan, serving as a Royal Air Force colonel during World
War II, was aboard a military flight which crashed and stranded Tarzan
and the crew on Sumatra. Since tigers are native to the land, it was inevitable
that Tarzan would have to battle one in addition to the Japanese soldiers
who patrolled the island.
There's an illustration in the first edition opposite
page 77 which shows the beast creeping up on helpless Corrie van der Meer.
She was doomed to die, but "...in that instant she saw an almost naked
man drop from above onto the back of the carnivore." Tarzan followed his
customary great-cat fighting technique from there and the ferocious beast
was soon dead and Tarzan gave the victory cry of the bull ape. That was
when the rest of the crew recognized him as Tarzan instead of "Col. Clayton"
and Shrimp Rosetti uttered the classic line "Is dat Johnny Weismuller?"*
I made this cover for the 2010 Year of the Tiger stamp
with images of DVD covers and a movie poster for the 1929 film, "Tarzan
the Tiger. The stamp is canceled with the first-day-of-issue postmark
on Jan. 14, nine years ago today.
The Chinese years are identified by 12 animals which take
their turns at regular intervals. In addition, the Chinese years are differentiated
by the elements of Metal, Water, Wood, Fire and Earth which rotate in five-year
cycles.
Thus, 2010 was not only the Year of the Tiger,
but the year of The Metal Tiger. The Metal element gives the Tiger its
sharpness in action and speed of thought. Tigers born in the Metal year
like to stand out in a crowd. With an inspiring assertiveness and competitive
demeanor, they determine their goals and then do anything necessary to
achieve them.
This good-looking character sometimes has mood swings
and temper tantrums. The Tiger may jump to conclusions or act too quickly
without weighing options or understanding consequences. This is a flaw
Tigers must learn to curb.
The Year of the Tiger stamp design by Ethel Kessler, Bethesda,
Maryland, and illustrator Kam Mak, Brooklyn, NY, features a bouquet of
narcissus flowers, since they are associated with Chinese New Year decorations.
Kessler's design also incorporates elements from the previous series of
USPS Lunar New Year stamps, using Clarence Lee's intricate paper-cut design
of a tiger and the Chinese character--drawn in grass-style calligraphy
by Lau Bun--for "Tiger."
(*The book misspelled Weissmuller's name,
using just one "s.")
Hillman Chinese New Year :: Year of the Tiger 2010
www.hillmanweb.com/newyear/2010.html
Tarzan the Tiger
www.erbzine.com/mag5/0593.html
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE No.
6
The 23rd Olympic Summer Games was in 1984. Several months
before the event, at the Orcoexpo '84 Stamp Show in Anaheim, Calif., a
special postal cancellation was offered to honor the games scheduled for
the local area. One of those featured on a cover was Buster Crabbe, who
played the ape-man in "Tarzan the Fearless" and later went on to star as
space jockeys Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.
Larry "Buster" Crabbe got his start in Hawaii but moved
to the mainland for higher education at the University of Southern California,
where he was the school's first All-American swimmer in 1931.
Earlier, he had participated in the 1928 Summer Olympics
in Amsterdam, where he won a bronze medal for the 1,500-meter freestyle.
At the 1932 Olympics, upon which this postal cover design looks back, he
won the gold in the 400-meter freestyle, winning by one-tenth of a second.
His Tarzan role, which got him his start in a film career,
was in 1933.
Crabbe was also television's "Captain Gallant of the Foreign
Legion" in 1955.
He did guest roles too, including an episode of "Buck
Rogers in the 25th Century," in which he played a retired fighter pilot
named "Brigadier Gordon" in honor of Flash Gordon. When Rogers (Gil Gerard)
praised his flying, Gordon replied "I've been doing that sort of thing
since before you were born."
Rogers (who was born over 500 years earlier) responded
"You think so, old timer?" to which Gordon replied "Young man, I know so."
In fact, Crabbe had been playing "Buck Rogers" since long before Gerard
was born.
This cover was postmarked on this date, Jan. 15, 1984.
The stamp is one of four issued by the USPS for the Winter Olympics. Another
four stamps of similar design were issued for the Summer Olympics.
This cover also features a date stamp and an additional
postmark (March 7) and stamp from the Pitcairn Islands. On the back of
the envelope is stamped the words: "Via Pitcairn Longboat." Apparently,
there was an opportunity for collectors to have covers carried aboard the
Schooner Cornucopia (indicated by the wording on the February-April date
stamp). For comparison's sake, I am including a scan of another cover (found
on ebay) that was carried on the same boat, with an image of the boat itself,
an additional Pitcairn Island stamp, and the boat's date stamp.
This postal cover was carried aboard the Schooner Cornucopia, which
added its date stamp in lower right, and then had Pitcairn Island stamps
added and postmarked March 7. Also getting a ride on the Cornucopia was
a cover featuring a cachet of Larry "Buster" Crabbe (see other scan with
this post). Crabbe's was also postmarked Jan. 15 in Los Angeles, with a
cancellation honoring the 1984 Olympics which were coming up that summer.
Crabbe had won the Gold Medal in the 400-meter freestyle in 1932.
Larry "Buster" Crabbe was featured on a 1984 postal cover for his Gold
Medal performance in the 1932 Olympics. The cover also got a date stamp
from a boat ride and a Pitcairn Island stamp and postmark were added as
well. The 1984 cancellation was at a stamp show on Jan. 15.
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE:
No. 7
Lions seem to be the favorite beast that artists like
to draw while Tarzan is killing them, and some artists follow Tarzan around
and do quick sketches of him killing Bara the Deer. But pictures of Tarzan
slaughtering Horta the Boar are a bit rarer. I guess there's not much really
appealing to the illustrator about showing Tarzan with a lasso around a
warthog or other type of wild pig. Do a search online for Tarzan and boar
and you're most likely to find nothing but scenes from "The Lion King."
Today, Jan. 17, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp
to honor the Year of the Boar, also known as the Year of the Pig. The year
doesn't start until Feb. 5 but the Postal Service like to get a head start.
Because I couldn't find a good illustration of Tarzan
slaying Horta, I had to settle for one of Melvin going after N'Gunga the
pig in the Mad parody "Melvin of the Apes," one of two such parodies done
by John Severin for Mad.
So this is my first Melvin postal cover, canceled with
a Jan. 17, 2019, first-day postmark for the Chinese Lunar New Year stamp
at Galvin, Wash.
Find both of John Severin's ape-man parodies here:
http://www.erbzine.com/mag29/2997.html
Hillman Feature on the previous Year of the Boar:
2007
(Edgar Rice Burroughs was Born in the Year of the
Boar)
http://www.hillmanweb.com/newyear/2007.html
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE:
No. 8
On Jan. 21, 2004, this cover was dropped into the mail
in Cleveland, Ohio, and flew with a Wright Brothers stamp to me in Washington.
Disney’s Tarzan flew along on a convenient vine, perhaps taking a longer
ride than the one Alexander Skarsgard took to catch a train in “The Legend
of Tarzan.”
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE:
No. 9
The U.S. Postal Service commemorated the 2010 Winter
Olympics in Vancouver, B.C., with a stamp showing snowboarding, a sport
with roots in skiing, skateboarding and surfing. This cover was canceled
on Jan. 22, 2010.
When Disney released its animated Tarzan feature in 1999,
it included a jungle sequence of Tarzan sliding along moss-covered limbs
in scenes intended to draw interest from boarding enthusiasts of all kinds.
According to Beth Rowen, on the website infoplease.com,
"The directors of Tarzan, Chris Buck and Kevin Lima, spent countless hours
watching videos of skateboarding guru Tony Hawk in an attempt to create
a character that would appeal to kids. Their efforts paid off; Tarzan not
only swings, he deftly surfs the lush vegetation of the African jungle
as he seeks out his place in the world."
The straight-to-video followup film, "Tarzan and Jane,"
pictured on my First Day of Issue cover, shows Tarzan and his mate taking
the skateboarding technique out of the trees and turning it into a surfing
encounter on the back of a crocodile.
Tarzan never boarded on the snow, but the stamp brings
the ape man to mind, not only because of the acrobatics but also because
there have been several actors in Tarzan movies who have first won their
spurs in The Olympics.
Most famously known as an Olympian is Johnny Weissmuller,
who is probably also the most famous screen Tarzan, playing the title character
in 12 Tarzan movies from 1932 to 1948. Weissmuller won a total of five
Olympic gold medals in the 1924 and 1928 Olympics and set multiple world
records in the freestyle at four different distances. It is said that Weissmuller
never lost a swimming race. His swimming prowess was a regular feature
of his Tarzan films.
While Weissmuller was king of the silver screen jungle,
it didn't stop other Tarzan films from being made. Clarence Linford "Buster"
Crabbe won the gold in the 400-meter freestyle in the Los Angeles Olympics
in 1932, and went on to play jungle men in 1933. First, he appeared in
a Tarzan imitation called "King of the Jungle" and then portrayed the ape
man himself in "Tarzan the Fearless," a serial which was later shortened
to be a full-length motion picture.
Next came Glenn Morris. He won the decathlon at the Berlin
Olympics in 1936, setting a world record for points. He starred as the
ape man in "Tarzan's Revenge," a 1937 Tarzan vehicle.
Not every Tarzan with Olympics experience was a gold medal
winner, though. Herman Brix, who later changed his screen name to Bruce
Bennett, won the silver medal in the shotput in the Amsterdam Olympics
in 1928. In 1935, Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs hand-picked Brix
for the starring role in a serial called "The New Adventures of Tarzan,"
also shortened to a feature film known as "Tarzan and the Green Goddess."
Though Brix was "only" a silver medalist and the film he was in was mediocre,
the man himself won plaudits from Burroughs fans as one who looked as they
thought that Tarzan, as portrayed in the original books, should look and
act -- an intellgent, well-spoken man who also happened to have amazing
jungle skills.
Brix was the longest-lived Tarzan (so far), finally passing
away in 2007 at the age of 100.
Stars of Tarzan films weren't limited to playing the ape
man himself. When Morris played Tarzan in 1935, his co-star was also an
Olympian gold medal winner, Eleanor Holm.
She learned swimming very young and won her first national
championship at the age of 13. In the 1928 Summer Olympics, she finished
fifth in the 100-meter backstroke. Prior to the next Olympics, she won
several U.S. titles in the 300-yard medley. At the 1932 games in L.A.,
she won the backstroke gold medal after Marie Braun, defending champ, had
to forfeit due to an insect bite.
Yet one other Olympian played in two Tarzan movies. Rafer
Johnson was the 1960 decathlon champion and played Barcuma, the leader
of the leopard cult which opposed the ape man in 1967's "Tarzan and the
Great River." The followiing year, he played Nagambi, an evil chief in
"Tarzan and the Jungle Boy."
Playing Tarzan, obviously, required someone with either
a lot of athleticism or a lot of stunt doubles!
Early Tarzan Frank Merrill won 58 national gymnast titles;
Denny Miller, featured in a remake of "Tarzan the Ape Man," was a basketball
stalwart at UCLA, and Gordon Scott, called by many fans the greatest Tarzan,
was an all-around athlete who was discovered by Hollywood moviemakers while
working as a lifeguard.
Mike Henry who, as Tarzan, defeated Rafer Johnson's characters,
played professional football for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Los Angeles
Rams.
This first-day cover features a croc-surfin' Tarzan and Jane to
tie in with a snow-boarding Olympics stamp.
It was canceled on Jan. 22, 2010.
Denny Miller and brother Kent played for UCLA.
Shown with legendary coach John Wooden in this 1958 photo.
A year later, Denny would be Tarzan.
See www.erbzine.com/denny
Before coming to the Los Angeles Rams, from whence he made the leap
to Tarzan,
Mike Henry was No. 37 for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He wore No. 53
for the Rams.
See his trading card and more in ERBzine:
www.erbzine.com/mag2/0210.html
Rafer Johnson
was featured on the cover of Time. He won the decathlon in the 1960 Olympics.
Johnson played a foe to Mike Henry's Tarzan in two movies.
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE:
No. 10
This special commemorative cover was canceled Jan. 27,
2018, on the 100th anniversary of the premiere of the first Tarzan movie,
"Tarzan of the Apes." This was a blockbuster in its time. The most recent
Tarzan movie, "The Legend of Tarzan," was released about 98 years and five
months later, on July 1, 2016. Attendees at the 2016 gathering of the Edgar
Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship in Woodland Hills, Calif., were privileged
to see "Legend" a few days earlier, on June 28, at the Warner Brothers
Studio in Burbank.
The elements of this cover were assembled on my home computer
and canceled at a local post office.
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE:
11
The Covermonster in Elyria, Ohio, sent this mail with a cachet
featuring art from Neal Adams's cover for the Del-Rey edition of "Tarzan
of the Apes." The cover is postmarked Feb. 1, 1999.
In the letter inside, Phil the Covermonster wrote: "You
said you like Tarzan covers so I looked in my library. I have the complete
paperback set of Tarzan....I scanned them and you will be getting them.
The only problem is matching the stamp with the pictures. Any suggestions?"
I wrote back to Phil and suggested that the dinosaur stamps
issued by the USPS would work great on Tarzan covers. Actually, as I hope
I am demonstrating in this "Pushing the Cover" series, a lot of stamps
can work pretty good with Tarzan or other ERB characters.
Whatever the stamp, though, it's just all in fun. With
the "Uncle Sam Hat" stamp on this cover, we can say that the U.S. icon
is tipping his hat to Tarzan!
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE:
No. 12
To celebrate the two Tarzans who were
born this date, Feb. 7, I made two covers, one for Jock Mahoney and the
other for both Mahoney and Buster Crabbe. I made one for Crabbe alone in
2018 on the 110th anniversary of his birth.
I used foreign movie posters on the “not-quite-twins”
cover, Crabbe’s “Tarzan the Fearless” (Intrepide) and Mahoney’s “Tarzan
Goes to India.” That cover features the “Celebrate” 41-cent U.S. Postal
Service stamp issued several years ago along with the Uncle Sam Hats makeup
rate stamp to bring the total postage to an amount sufficient to meet the
current 55-cent first-class rate. Postmarked on the birthday of both.
The Mahoney solo cover features the “Save Vanishing Species”
stamp with tiger, which has a value of 49 cents. It was originally sold
for 60 cents, though, with the extra 11 cents going to funds to protect
endangered species. The other stamp, “The Age of Reptiles,” is a six-cent
stamp issued a few decades ago. Mahoney’s two Tarzan movies were in countries
where roamed the tiger and in one of them Mahoney had to face off a reptile,
in the person of a cobra. Postmarked on Mahoneyi's birthday.
I took the Mahoney covers to the big post office with
the small round cancellation in Centralia, Washington, and then had the
“Twins” cover canceled at the little post office with the big round cancellation
at the nearby community of Galvin.
I made the twins cover on a slightly larger envelope than
the Mahoney-solo cover.
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE:
No. 13
Charlie Delgado, known as ACE 20, is a member of the
Art Cover Exchange, as am I. He mailed this cover and canceled the Christmas
stamp with his own personal postmark from Ace, Texas. The Postal Service
issues Mailer's Postmark Permits to anyone who is willing to do the paperwork
to get one authorized, and Charlie has several from different cities, as
do many other aficiandoes of the Mailer's Postmark Permit hobby.
On this particular postmark there was no date used. However,
the letter inside was written Feb. 10, 2012, and thus the cover was most
likely entered into the mailstream on Feb. 11, seven years ago today. To
make this cover, Charlie printed and folded a Sunday comic feature called
Biographic. Steve McGarry, the creator, often features Tarzan and other
movie themes in his Sunday Biographic and daily TrivQuiz comics. This particular
Sunday comic also features several other Tarzan actors so I'm showing the
backside of the cover as well. The whole feature was first published Feb.
5, 2012, and is viewable off-site at:
https://www.gocomics.com/biographic/2012/02/05
