Before there was Michael Phelps or Mark Spitz winning multiple Olympic gold medals in swimming for the United States — there was Tarzan.
FILE - Olympic hero and film actor Johnny Weissmuller is pictured in front of a photo of himself as Tarzan, June 29, 1971. Weissmuller, who played Tarzan in the films was a swimming superstar in France 100 years ago.
Weissmuller's swimming brought fame, and his virile image got him cast in the “Tarzan the Ape Man” film in 1932 — the first of his 12 Tarzan films.— akin to a yodel — and what the character's creator Edgar Rice Burroughs described as “the victory cry of the bull ape." He was a trailblazer, the first to swim 100 meters under 60 seconds. He is regarded as the first athlete to sign an endorsement deal with a sportswear line. He was among the first members inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
A hero on the screen, Weissmuller was also a real-life hero. He and his brother, Peter, are credited with saving the lives of 11 people in a boating accident on Lake Michigan in 1927.Weissmuller was born Janos Peter Weissmuller on June 2, 1904, to German parents in Freidorf, which is now a district of the Romanian city of Timisoara. At the time it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
“He had the gawkiness of an adolescent puppy. Also the stroke he used was the oddest I ever saw," Bachrach said. “But the stopwatch told it all. Nearly record time.”
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