Robin Maxwell’s novels are rich with historical detail and passion for her characters, and her take on Tarzan and Jane’s love story in Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan, out September 18, is no exception. Today, Heroes and Heartbreakers is pleased to welcome her to the site to share a bit about how the legendary ape-man first caught her eye and why she still loves him today.
Thanks, Robin!
My first heartthrob was Tarzan—and who can blame me? A next-to-naked ape-man swinging through the vines with a pretty brunette in an equally skimpy outfit. They’d swim nude together in an elegiac underwater ballet, and ride on the back of elephants. He’d fight alligators and lions, to save her neck. They were friends with exotic African tribes and enemies of some pretty scary cannibals. This wild couple lived in a cozy little “nest” high up in a tree, bathed in paradisiacal waterfalls, had a chimp for a buddy, and best of all, had nobody telling them to behave or act more civilized. This was a very rich brew.
Let’s return to the “next-to-naked” part. While I saw boys and men in bathing trunks at the local pool every summer, my first Tarzan–the Olympic champion Johnny Weissmuller in his pelt loincloth–leaping and flying through the jungle canopy, strutting his stuff, muscles rippling and engaging in sexy, embraces with a woman-not-his-wife was, back in the ’60s, nothing short of radical. But this feral, chest-thumping jungle-yodeling creature was also a great adventurer – protecting elephant graveyards, discovering lost cities and ancient civilizations, and hitching rides on dinosaurs. He was always deflecting the advances of exotic priestesses in their tiny golden breastplates, fearless huntress, and Acquanetta, the smoldering “Leopard Woman.”
Even more appealing than being Tarzan’s Jane was my identification with the “female Tarzan,” Sheena Queen of the Jungle to whose TV series I was seriously addicted. This leggy blonde beauty didn’t need protecting. She, with her tiny va-va-va-voom animal-skin dress, daring upper arm bracelet and long spear was a perfect match for the ape-man, especially when Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane in later movies (after the 1930s censors reined in her costume and wildness) began acting like a suburban housewife. In my daydreams it was Tarzan and Sheena as the dynamic jungle duo battling side-by-side against the forces of evil in the natural world.
Tarzan didn’t re-enter my consciousness until 1984, when “Greystoke” opened. With its Academy Award-winning director, sensually lanky Christopher Lambert as Tarzan and a gorgeous young Andie McDowell as his Edwardian girlfriend, how could they go wrong? The first half of the film lived up to expectations, from the stranding of the noble-born parents on an African beach to little Lord Clayton being born in a tree-house. I shuddered at his violent abduction by apes after his parents’ murder, delighted at the feral upbringing, believing he was an ape. My heart thumped. Memories flooded back. Soon he’d be meeting Jane and then…
But Jane never appeared in this scenario – at least not in the rain forest. It was all about Tarzan saving the life of a Frenchman. Then Tarzan was put into clean clothes and whipped off to England. What the hell?! The first time Tarzan (now called “John”) meets Jane, who’s wearing a high-necked, corseted dress, is on a grand staircase in his grandfather’s mansion. Surely they would quickly make their way back to Africa so the love story could take off. But no! It was not to be. The entire second half of “Greystoke” took place in England with Tarzan trying to assimilate into civilized life. The only reversion to his primordial self happened when he visited Jane one night and he, crouching and hopping apelike around her bed, sniffs the lady a few times before jumping her bones.
Jane had not set one toe in Tarzan’s jungle throughout the entire movie. It would be another twenty-five years before the characters returned to my imagination. When my husband of thirty years asked what my next romantic book would be I blurted out “Tarzan and Jane!” before I knew what I was saying.
Only then did I discover the magic of Tarzan’s creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and begin reading the original novels (there are twenty-four of them, the first published a full century ago). This Tarzan was a truly extraordinary, complex character, one with all the strength, courage and utter fearlessness of the movies, but a man who could do more than grunt nouns and verbs. He was fluent in seven languages! Was as comfortable in a tuxedo or flying a plane for the RAF in WWII as he was swinging naked in the jungle canopy!
With the full blessings of the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate I was given the freedom to rewrite the classic for sensibilities of modern readers. Tarzan became a kinder, gentler savage, and Jane a woman to be reckoned with.
I got them naked and intimate in his nest fast, only then detouring to tell the story of how she came to be stranded alone in Africa with him. “My” Tarzan is still a perfect male specimen – the ultimate adventurer, at one with nature and ridiculously strong, with violent hatred towards all evil-doers. Yet he is vulnerable and tender, a man who struggles with deeply buried memories of his human parents, and allows a woman to “save him,” even as he is saving her.
Finally, a version of Tarzan that suits my own primal fantasies. I hope my ape-man swings his way into yours, too.
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Image credits (top to bottom): Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan by Robin Maxwell; Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan (“Tarzan and His Mate” - 1934); Buster Crabbe and Jacqueline Wells (“Tarzan the Fearless” 1933); Christopher Lambert and Andie McDowell (“Greystoke” - 1984); Casper Van Dien (“Tarzan and the Lost City” - 1998); and “Tarzan and Jane with Tantor” by Thomas Yeates
Robin Maxwell grew up in New Jersey, graduated from Tufts University School of Occupational Therapy, and practiced in that field for several years before moving to Hollywood to become a parrot tamer, casting director and finally a screenwriter.
