The original "Tarzan of the Apes" was arguably one of the best selling pulp novels of all time. It made a fortune for it's author,
Edgar Rice Burroughs, and spawned numerous sequels, movies, comic books, radio and television series. The action takes place mostly in Africa, but it's final, rousing climax is set in the north woods of Wisconsin, complete with a Peshtigo style fire to drive the plot along. In this vignette, the books heroine, Jane Porter, is reunited
with Tarzan, who has followed her to her childhood summer home in the north woods...
"That she had been carried off her feet by the strength of the young giant when his great arms were about her in the distant African forest, and again today, in the Wisconsin woods, seemed to her only attributable to a temporary mental reversion to type on her part--to the psychological appeal of the primeval man to the primeval woman in her nature."
The thoroughly excellent Wisconsin sequence was never used in any of the movie versions. Damn them, don't they know?
2 comments:
Oh, man, that's one of my favorite books ever. When I tell people the climax takes place in Wisconsin, no one believes me. Of course, thanks to that damn Greystoke movie, everyone seems to think Jane is English...
I love Burroughs description of Jane Porter as a Baltimore girl who summered in the wilds of northern Wisconsin. Kind of a back story setup for her eventual meeting with the "pure man of nature."
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