Tarzan: Encyclopedia II - Tarzan - Tarzan as literary character

Tarzan - Tarzan as literary character

Tarzan has been called one of the best-known literary characters in the world. He has appeared in films, comic strips, comic books, radio, and television programs. The Internet Movie Database lists 88 movies with Tarzan in the title between 1918 and 1999. Many of the Hollywood Tarzan films from the 1930s on featured Tarzan's chimpanzee companion Cheeta.

Science fiction author Philip José Farmer wrote Tarzan Alive!, a biography of Tarzan utilizing the frame device that he was a real person. See also Wold Newton family.

Tarzan appears briefly as a character in the book Lust, by Geoff Ryman.

Even though the copyright on Tarzan of the Apes has expired in the United States of America, all of Burroughs's works will remain under copyright in the European Union until 2021, and the name TARZAN is a trademark.

In Israel in the 1950's and early 1960's there was a thriving industry of locally-produced Tarzan adventures published weekly in 24-page brochures by several competing publishing houses, none of which bothered to get any authorization from the Burroughs estate. The stories featured Tarzan in contemporary Africa, a popular theme being his fighting against the Mau Mau in 1950s Kenya and single-handedly crushing their revolt several times over. He also fought a great variety of monsters, vampires and invaders from outer space infesting the African jungles, and discovered several more lost cities and cultures in addition to the ones depicted in the Burroughs canon. Some brochures had him meet with Israelis and take Israel's side against her Arab enemies, espcially Nasser's Egypt. None of the brochures ever bore a writer's name, and the various publishers - "Elephant Publishing", "Rhino Publishing" and several similar names - provided no more of an address than POB numbers in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Unconfirmed rumor has it that some later well-known Israeli writers began their careers with writing pirated Tarzan stories. These Tarzan brochures were extremely popular among Israeli youths of the time, sucessfully competing with the numerous Hebrew tranlations of the original Tarzan novels, and are recalled with nostalgia by many Israelis now in their fifties. The Tarzan brochures faded out by the middle 1960s, surviving copies at present fetching high prizes as collectors' items in the Israeli used-book market. See: http://www.violetbooks.com/tarzan-israel.html, http://www.violetbooks.com/REVIEWS/tarzan-holyland.html

Tarzana, California, where Burroughs made his home, was renamed in honor of Tarzan in 1927.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Tarzan as literary character", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki