It's a very bad memory to have." Of course, the necessary surgery to wire his separated shoulder together wasn't anymore pleasant, but the producers displayed their pragmatism by saving the footage and rewriting the scene to include Tarzan being shot off the vine by a thief.īecause of hazards like that, Ely carried a $3 million insurance policy, paid for by the production company. I still have a memory of the ground coming closer in my head. "I wanted to get up and show I was all right. "To tell the truth, I was kind of embarrassed," he told an interviewer.
In Mexico, where the show relocated after flooding and other problems in Brazil, Ely missed a vine during a swinging sequence, fell 28 feet and landed on his head and shoulder, knocking himself unconscious. He blistered his face and burned his arms and legs running down a flaming street. He slipped a disc and severely strained his neck trying to carry the weight of a fellow actor and a capsized boat at the same time. "I honestly believe I can whip these animals.") And that was just the critters. ("here is an ego factor involved," he admitted.
#TARZAN ACTOR PLUS#
A puma scarred his right calf and a leopard tore up his left leg, plus a lion bit him on the forehead (five stitches there) and sanded down the tops of the actor's feet while dragging him across a field. (It seems a chimp that was supposed to kiss him took a chomp out of his chin instead, prompting 18 stitches, the actor's resignation and an $875,000 suit against the producers.)īut such things didn't shake Ely.
#TARZAN ACTOR SERIES#
In fact, the hazards of the series were bad enough that former pro-football player Mike Henry, who played the character on the big screen and was cast as the original TV Tarzan, walked away rather than face them. Well, I guess one can argue that "seriously" is a relative term, but Ely's stitches, broken bones and torn muscles certainly qualify as big hurts in my book. It's a good feeling, so good that somehow I can't believe I will ever be seriously hurt." "This Tarzan, it's the part I've been waiting for all my life," director James Komack quoted the actor as saying in a 1967 TV Guide story Komack wrote about working on the show. Yet he worked through the pain like a man possessed, which he may well have been. The athletic 6-foot-4-inch actor refused to let a stuntman handle the risky shots, so all that beast battling, vine swinging and waterfall diving took a terrible toll on his body. If there's one thing I can say about Ely, he earned his paycheck on the NBC series, which debuted in September 1966 and left the air three years later.
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