Tarzan's Magic Fountain

Tarzan's Magic Fountain
Tarzan's Magic Fountain
	Film poster
Directed by	Lee Sholem
Written by	Curt Siodmak; Harry Chandlee
Based on	Characters created; by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Produced by	Sol Lesser
Starring	Lex Barker; Brenda Joyce; Albert Dekker; Evelyn Ankers
Cinematography	Karl Struss
Edited by	Merril G. White
Music by	Alexander Laszlo
Production; company	Sol Lesser Productions
Distributed by	RKO Radio Pictures
Release date	February 5, 1949 (U.S.);
Running time	73 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Tarzan's Magic Fountain is a 1949 Tarzan film directed by Lee Sholem and starring Lex Barker as Tarzan and Brenda Joyce as his companion Jane. The thirteenth film of the Tarzan film series that began with 1932's Tarzan the Ape Man, the film also features Albert Dekker and Evelyn Ankers. It was co-written by Curt Siodmak.

This was Barker's first appearance as Edgar Rice Burroughs' ape-man, while Joyce had played Jane opposite Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan in four previous films. She was one of only two actresses to portray Jane in movies with two different actors as Tarzan. (The other was Karla Schramm in the silent era.) Tarzan's Magic Fountain was Joyce's final turn in the role, and different actresses played Jane in each of Barker's four subsequent Tarzan movies: (Vanessa Brown, Virginia Huston, Dorothy Hart, and Joyce MacKenzie). Elmo Lincoln, who had been the first screen Tarzan three decades earlier, appears uncredited as a fisherman repairing his nets. The film was followed by Tarzan and the Slave Girl in 1950.

Plot[edit]

Aviator Gloria James Jessup went missing twenty years ago. Tarzan and Jane hear news of a man back in the United States who is about to be sentenced to life imprisonment; the only way he can be cleared is for Jessup's testimony. Tarzan secretly leaves for the hidden valley where Jessup has secretly been living for almost two decades and brings her back to testify.

Jessup looks decades younger than her actual age and this prompts a pair of men to ponder the rumor of a magic Fountain of Youth and try to find it after she returns from testifying and heads back there.

Cast[edit]

Lex Barker as Tarzan
Brenda Joyce as Jane
Albert Dekker as Mr. Trask
Evelyn Ankers as Gloria James Jessup
Charles Drake as Mr. Dodd
Alan Napier as Douglas Jessup
Ted Hecht as Pasco
Henry Brandon as Siko
Elmo Lincoln as a Fisherman
Henry Kulky a Vredak
Rory Mallinson as Vredak's Companion
Rick Vallin as the Flaming Arrow Shooter

Critical reception[edit]

The New York Times welcomed Lex Barker's new Tarzan as "A younger, more streamlined apeman with a personable grin and a torso guaranteed to make any lion cringe, he seems to be just what the witch-doctor ordered for this tattered series. The picture, though, is a matter of stale peanuts at the same old jungle stand. Instead of resorting to new ideas and treatment and a timely overhauling job, the studio has dragged out a mouldy script, the same sheepish-looking extras, and the wheezing chimpanzee, Cheetah, who isn't getting any younger, either."^[2]