TARZAN FINDS A SON (1939)

Richard Lancing (aka the Earl of Greystoke), his wife and their toddler son are flying over Africa in a small plane, observing wildlife, when the plane loses altitude and the radio goes dead. They crash in the jungle, on the escarpment on which Tarzan and Jane make their home, and only the baby is left alive. Tarzan finds the boy and he and Jane raise him as their own. Tarzan wants to call him Elephant, but settles for Boy. We watch as Boy grows up, gets pretty good at vine swinging and letting loose with his own high-pitched version of Tarzan's jungle yell, and generally learns the ways of nature. Five years later, a group consisting of Lancing's cousin (Ian Hunter), his wife (Frieda Inescourt), the Earl's uncle (Henry Stephenson), and their guide (Henry Wilcoxon) arrive on the escarpment looking for the lost boy, or preferably, proof that the boy is dead so Hunter can legally get his hands on an inheritance. Tarzan and Jane take them to the wreckage but are reluctant to admit that their Boy is the missing heir, though eventually Stephenson figures it out. Over the uncle's objections, Hunter and Inescourt decide to take the lad against his will back to England where they figure they'll be able to control the money and estate as he grows up. At first, Jane sadly agrees to the plan but when Tarzan rebels, she traps him in a deep grotto and goes off to deliver Boy. But between an attack by a cannibal tribe and Jane's realization that Boy's best interests will not be served, plans go awry. Can Tarzan get free in time to help out? Well, yeah, of course. And with some help from Cheetah and some marauding elephants (which are de rigueur in the 30s Tarzan movies) the bad guys get their comeuppance and the Tarzan family remains intact.

The fourth of the MGM/Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies, this was originally going to be the swan song for Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane; she wanted out of the series so she was killed off by a cannibal's spear, but preview audiences reacted so badly that her final scenes were reshot to allow her to recover and O'Sullivan was given a raise as incentive to continue. Adding 8-year-old Johnny Sheffield helped to keep things fresh. He's a bundle of energy and his acting is better than Weissmuller's. A scene showing Boy and Tarzan frolicking underwater is delightful and a nice break from the usual re-used stock footage that wound up in many of the Tarzan movies river scenes. I especially liked Boy's jungle yell, which I assume was Weissmuller's yell sped up to a higher pitch. The supporting roles in the 30s movies were generally from the first rank of character actors, and they are all quite good here, especially Stephenson as the uncle who regrets his role in the little family melodrama. Worth watching, especially as the series began a nose dive in quality in the next few years. [TCM]