TARZAN'S NEW YORK ADVENTURE (1942)

On an uncharted African escarpment (basically a big cliff), Tarzan and Jane, with their adopted son Boy, live in isolated bliss until one day when they see a plane overhead which spooks the jungle animals but excites young Boy who has never seen one before. On the plane is big game hunter Buck Rand (Charles Bickford), hunting lions to take back for Col. Sergeant's circus in the States.  With Rand are his older assistant Manchester Montford (Chill Wills) and easy-going pilot Jimmy Shields (Paul Kelly). The plane lands and as Buck starts to make his hunting plans, Tarzan swings in, busts up Buck's rifle, and warns the men to get out by sunrise. But early the next morning, a curious Boy heads out with some elephants to see the plane up close. He meets the men and shows off his skills making the elephants perform tricks, and when a band of natives attack, Buck snatches Boy up and the group takes off for New York City, with Buck planning on passing Boy off as an orphan so he can sell him to the circus as a performer, though Jimmy is dead set against the idea. When Tarzan and Jane realize what's happened, they (with Cheetah) are able to track Buck down to New York to get Boy back, though first they have to buy big city clothes, and Tarzan has to learn to tamp down his natural aggressiveness in order to deal with the law. Jimmy helps Tarzan get a lead on Boy's whereabouts, and soon they wind up in a courtroom to argue that are Boy's legal guardians. But Tarzan gets violent, is put in custody, and escapes, swinging through the skyscrapers and leading the police on a chase to the Brooklyn Bridge. But it's back the circus where the real action happens, as elephants stampede to save Boy.

This is the last of the MGM Tarzan movies (the rights went to RKO for the next decade) and one of the last ones before Weissmuller went to seed. Here, he's definitely packed on some weight but he still gives it the old college try, though obviously the vine swinging scenes are either done by doubles or borrowed from earlier movies. It's fun to see Tarzan stuffed into a business suit, and it's equally fun to see him bust loose near the end. Despite the title, less than half of the movie takes place in the Big Apple, but the jungle scenes are nicely done; Johnny Sheffield as Boy is more animated than he would be a few years later as the teenage Bomba the Jungle Boy, and Bickford, Kelly, and Wills constitute a much stronger supporting cast than most of the later Tarzan films would muster up. This was O’Sullivan's last time around as Jane and she gets a nice scene in which she muses to Tarzan about the modern world, noting that the city is "a stone jungle" where"men's minds are more tangled that the worst underbrush in the jungle," and saying, "It would break my heart to see your strength and courage caught in the quicksand of civilization." Paul Kelly is especially good as the nice-guy pilot. There's a little too much (actually, for my taste, a lot too much) clowning around with Cheetah the chimp, but I must admit he's a well-trained little guy. One scene has Cheetah making noises on the phone with a confused African-American janitor (Mantan Moreland)—it sounds cringe-worthy, but Moreland, who never gets enough credit for making the most of his often demeaning roles, makes it work. [TCM]