12 December 2014

MY VERY OWN TARZAN

My Tarzan was a TV Tarzan, and I remember watching this avidly as a kid in the 1970s. It starred the very beautiful Ron Ely (amazingly still alive and still gorgeous!), in the series that ran from 1966-1968, but wasn't broadcast here until the 1970s. It was this version of Tarzan that I got to know first, formatively, as well as getting the first inkling of issues like Nature threatened, the nasty white racist, witch doctors, loincloths, safari suits and various animal attacks embedded in my psyche. Tellingly, I don't have any memories of a Jane, just Tarzan, chimps and natives. 
"I never thought of myself as representing a sex symbol; I didn't see anything attractive in what I was doing or the way I was presented. I just saw it as natural and normal — never beyond that." - Ron Ely

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