Did You Know Indiana Quietly Gave the World Multiple Tarzans?

In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs unleashed an iconic literary character on the world with the publication of Tarzan of the Apes. Twenty-five more books, countless movies, and multiple television series followed. We will always have Tarzan.

An Indiana Tarzan Who Never Made It Onto the Big or Small Screen

What I didn't always know about Tarzan was his Indiana connection, and deep one at that. The man in this picture? He's Otto Herr, and, during the mid-20th century, he actually lived as Tarzan.

But Otto was just one Indiana Tarzan. There are four more. Read on...

Indiana Native Elmo Lincoln -- the First Movie Tarzan

In 1918, Tarzan of the Apes became the first Tarzan adaptation for the big screen. (Maybe it was big; it was 1918, after all.) But it was Rochester IN native Elmo Lincoln who was the first to don the trademark loin cloth. In 1952, Lincoln appeared on television and gave us his version of the iconic Tarzan yell. Prepare yourself, though.

James Pierce - Tarzan No. 2

The last silent Tarzan film--Tarzan and the Golden Lion--was the only one that featured James Hubert "Babe" Pierce in the title role. He was born in a town called Freedom and played football for Indiana University.

Denny Miller -- Tarzan of the Late 1950s

Our Tarzan chronology brings us to 1959 when Bloomington IN native Denny Miller was cast as Tarzan in Tarzan the Ape Man. It was a poorly-reviewed film (not by 8-year-old me, though) but may still have been immortalized a few years later on an episode of Gilligan's Island in which Miller portrayed Tongo the Ape Man.

Like the rest of them, that Gilligan episode is etched in my memory banks.

The Most Famous Tarzan

Finally, we have Hungarian-born Johnny Weismuller, perhaps the most famous Tarzan of them all. Weismuller won four gold medals for swimming at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. He won two more at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. Weismuller's expertise in the water led to his being cast in 12 Tarzan movies from 1932 through 1948. And where did he train for the Olympics? At Broad Ripple Park in Indianapolis.

You just never know. One Hoosier State gave us four Tarzans (and a fifth who trained there) with nary a jungle in sight.