They may not have much but at least they're free.
Like the poster says, Johnny Weissmuller is back again. When we last saw him as Tarzan, earlier this month, he and love interest Maureen O'Sullivan had swung away into the African trees together. But her British friends were always going to return, and sure enough Neil Hamilton and company are back to get their mitts on that legendary cache of elephant ivory. You know the drill. Hamilton and Paul Cavanaugh seek the unobtanium. The jungle comes alive with lethal dangers. Bearers sacrifice their lives to keep the bosses safe. Meanwhile Tarzan and Jane deal with their own cavalcade of jungle horrors—first a lion, then a rhino, then a leopard, then a crocodile, then a lion. We don't have to detail it. What's fascinating is not the action, but the erotic subtext.
This flick oozes sex. O'Sullivan's role has evolved. She's no plain Jane. She's a fantasy of the perfect woman here, the perfect lover. Her character is—in a word—devastating. Her humor, cuteness, and coquettishness are off the charts. She wears less than ever. Her body double Josephine McKim wears nothing, or at most a patch over her pubic area. But audiences who saw the full cut thought it was a bare-assed O'Sullivan. All of this is designed to make her irresistible not only to the male audience, but to Cavanaugh, who goes after her with the charmless persistence of a high school sophomore. Dare we say this is a dangerous game when dealing with the King of the Jungle?
Of course, all the flaws we cited with Tarzan the Ape Man are recurrent here. Once again African bearers are whipped through the jungle, across dangerous rivers, and up that same deadly escarpment from installment one. At which point Cavanaugh says, “Well, I hope we've got the worst behind us.” No, not even. Tarzan and His Mate is not a good look, and what it stylizes—not big men in a big land, but the rape of Africa—is uglier still. But it's up to each viewer to decide whether to watch it, and if so, whether to decide it's simply entertainment, or to compartmentalize its implications, or maybe to use it as a launching point for further thought and discussion. Tarzan and His Mate premiered in the U.S. today in 1934.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1920—Negro National Baseball League Debuts
The first game of Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis, Indiana. The league, one of several that would be formed, was composed of The Chicago American Giants, The Detroit Stars, The Kansas City Monarchs, The Indianapolis ABCs, The St. Louis Giants, The Cuban Stars, The Dayton Marcos, and The Chicago Giants. 1955—Williams Wins Pulitzer
American playwright Tennessee Williams wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his controversial play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which tells the story of a southern family in crisis, explicitly deals with alcoholism, and contains a veiled subtext concerning homosexuality in southern society. In 1958 the play becomes a motion picture starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. 1945—Germany Announces Hitler's Death
German radio in Hamburg announces that Adolf Hitler was killed in Berlin, stating specifically that he had fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany. But in truth Hitler had committed suicide along with his mistress Eva Braun, and both bodies were immediately thereafter burned. 1960—Powers Is Shot Down over U.S.S.R.
Francis Gary Powers, flying in a Lockheed U-2 spy plane, is shot down over the Soviet Union. The U.S. denies the plane's purpose and mission, but is later forced to admit its role as a covert surveillance aircraft when the Soviet government produces its remains and reveals Powers, who had survived the shoot down. The incident triggers a major diplomatic crisis between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. 1927—First Prints Are Left at Grauman's
Hollywood power couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who co-founded the movie studio United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, become the first celebrities to leave their impressions in concrete at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, located along the stretch where the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame would later be established.
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