THE BALLOON MAN

Nearly 95 years later, Tarzan returns

from: tri-parishtimes.com

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Tue Apr 3, 2012.

ERIC BESSON
Ninety-nine years and six months ago, a Chicago pencil-sharpener salesman’s story about an infant who was raised by an advanced species of apes in the mossy African jungle published in “All-Story Magazine.”

The story would engender a century’s worth of sequels and replications, good and bad, and provoked a contemporary South African to become a full-time character actor devoting his life to mimicking one of fiction’s first (non-traditional) superheroes. Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, wrote 25 sequels to the first story. A Tarzan authority set to release a documentary on the subject this month says six television shows, 40 authorized films and close to 80 unauthorized films have been produced internationally about the Lord of the Jungle.

DeWet Du Toit, a 24-year-old South African, has made it a goal to land the next featured role as Tarzan. Du Toit comes to Morgan City as part of the "Tarzan, Lord of the Louisiana Jungle Festival."

Not long after the story garnered mainstream appeal, its impact was felt in Morgan City. The swampland was determined by filmmakers to have the moss needed to portray Burroughs’ African jungle, the necessary number of black residents to stand in for an African tribe and the railway to transit the set from Los Angeles. Thus, “Tarzan of the Apes,” one of the first six films to gross more than $1 million, and the first feature film to shoot on location in Louisiana, was accented in 1917 in the lush Atchafalaya Basin.

Al Bohl and his daughter, Allison shoot footage in St. Mary Parish bayous for their documentary “Tarzan: Lord of the Louisiana Jungle,” which premieres April 13 at the Morgan City Municipal Auditorium.

Tarzan returns to St. Mary Parish this month, figuratively, literally, loudly and silently, for the area’s first Tarzan, Lord of the Louisiana Jungle Festival.