A century ago, before he became the most famous cinematic Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller was the world’s greatest swimmer.
Provided the 20-year-old could meet expectations at the 1924 Paris Olympics, where the Games will be held again this summer. And the native-born Romanian could somehow show that he was born in the United States, then a necessity for representing the country he moved to as an infant.
The Weissmuller swimming story offers a glimpse back to the Golden Age of Sports, as the 1920s now are known, with parallels to today’s social media-fueled world.
“I don’t think people today recognize how big Johnny Weissmuller was in the Twenties,” author David Davis says. “He really was mentioned in the Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey pantheon as one of the great athletes of the 20th century.
“By the time you get to 1924, you’re in this new world of media. Sports writers are a big deal, and they really plump up Johnny Weissmuller. Having this young, strapping guy, they loved him. Ruth and Dempsey, the sports writers made them larger than life in America. It was great timing for Johnny, and he took advantage of it and became one of those heroic figures. He was an amazing talent, perfect build for a swimmer, and he certainly justified a lot of the accolades he got.”
Chasing Kahanamoku
Davis’ 2015 biography “Waterman” about Hawaiian swimming/surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku chronicles the rise of Weissmuller overlapping with Kahanamoku’s third Olympics.
Kahanamoku, born in 1890, first went to the Olympics in 1912 when Weissmuller was 8 and trapped in a Chicago home with an abusive father.
“He began to sneak out of the house at night,” Johnny Weissmuller Jr. wrote in “Tarzan My Father,” sleeping covered with newspapers under the elevated train. “Although he dreaded it, he usually came home in the morning and took the inevitable beatings and cursings” from Petrus Weissmuller.
Petrus deserted his family in 1916, and Elizabeth Weissmuller was granted a divorce in 1925. The turning point for Johnny, who dropped out of school at 12, came when at 16 he was introduced to Bill Bachrach, famed Illinois Athletic Club swim coach.
There was a tryout for Johnny, described by the New York Times in a 1922 story about his rapid ascension in the sport. “Slipping into the pool, the boy traveled through the water with a crude stroke but one that showed unusual power. Immediately coach Bachrach realized that he had what is known in sporting parlance as a find.”
Raw as he came to Bachrach, who compared Weissmuller’s form to a dog swimming with his head out of the water, the transformation to multiple world record holder was swift. After a year of training, Weissmuller began racing in the summer of 1921 and almost immediately bettering Kahanamoku’s best times.
Kahanamoku by then was a two-time Olympian – the Games were not held in 1916 due to World War I – with three gold medals and a silver. Paris 1924 was not his priority, rather a move to California with aspirations of breaking into acting.
“Weissmuller is the greatest swimmer of all time,” Kahanamoku said in a 1922 interview. “It would be foolish to match him against me. I wouldn’t have a chance with him now,” about to turn 32 when Weissmuller became the first to break one minute in the 100-meter.
They were photographed together but did not race during a Weissmuller trip to Honolulu in 1922, but Kahanamoku was not yet finished with competitive swimming or his heir apparent.
Citizenship deception
As the 1924 Olympic Swim Trials approached, questions about Weissmuller’s citizenship status increased, led by an Illinois congressman.
The Chicago Tribune declared in an April story going national that Weissmuller would not be barred from Paris based on his word and that of his father, who said he twice failed to be naturalized due to an inability to speak English.
“He may very well have been born in Chicago,” Congressman Henry Rathbone is quoted saying in Weissmuller Jr.’s book. “It’s just that there’s no record of his birth in the city, and he and his family have produced no evidence to support their claim.”
To assure Weissmuller could obtain a U.S. passport, he and his younger brother Peter switched names on their birth certificates. Johnny became Peter John Weissmuller, born in Windber, Pennsylvania, in 1905 and his brother John Peter Weissmuller, born in 1904 in Romania. Even baptismal records for Peter were altered.
“Presented with my father’s falsified records, Olympic and government officials were finally satisfied,” Weissmuller Jr. wrote.
Knowing that Jim Thorpe’s 1912 Olympic track medals were taken away because of being paid $25 per week for minor league baseball, Weissmuller would never be at peace with the deception and the impact its revelation would have on his mother Elizabeth, who participated in the document alterations.
“Dad decided to take the secret with him to his grave,” Weissmuller Jr. wrote. “No one ever knew the full truth of the matter.”
In the moment, though, Weissmuller was cleared for the Olympic Trials and beyond.
1924 Olympic Trials
Kahanamoku, unable to ignite his acting career, recommitted to swimming in 1923, training with Fred Cady at the Los Angeles Athletic Club and swimming faster than Weissmuller’s 50-yard freestyle best.
Still, they did not swim again each other until the 1924 trials in part because of Weissmuller being so ill the summer before that the New York Times reported his career was in jeopardy due to “leakage of the heart.”
Weissmuller recovered, lowering his 100-meter record to 57.4 seconds in February 1924.
The trials were held in an outdoor pool at the Broad Ripple amusement park in Indianapolis, coincidently the site of the 2024 trials at Lucas Oil Stadium with a swimming attendance capacity of 32,000.
Only a few hundred were on hand in the rain in 1924 for the trials 100-meter final featuring Weissmuller flanked on each side by Duke Kahanamoku and his brother Sam. There was a false start, heightening the anticipation. Weissmuller led slightly at 50 meters and won by a second over Duke in 59.4.
Only 24 male swimmers qualified for Paris, down from the expected 36 due to an American Olympic Committee funding shortage. Weissmuller and Kahanamoku left no doubt they would be on the SS America when it sailed for France.
Starring at Paris Olympics
The 1924 Olympics now are best remembered for the British track rivalry between Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams, cinematically made famous in the 1981 Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire.
Paavo Nurmi, the Flying Finn, won a remarkable five of his career nine gold medals including a 1,500-meter/5,000 double within two hours.
Nurmi, though, lacked the raw appeal of the 6-3, 190-pound Weissmuller, already flashing an entertainer’s charm with a comedy diving act he and Stubby Kruger performed between races (popular exhibitions that were subsequently banned from the Olympics).
The Piscine des Tourelles outdoor pool was the only venue built specifically for the 1924 Games and still exists. It will be used for swimming training in 2024.
There were only six men’s swimming events a century ago with Weissmuller entered in half and on the U.S. water polo team. He made his Olympic debut in the 400-meter freestyle, overcoming two bad turns to pull away from Sweden’s Arne Borg in the final lap and win in a record 5:04.2.
Kahanamoku was unhappy that U.S./Weissmuller coach Bachrach did not choose him to swim anything other than his earned spot in the 100 free. But Duke at 33 also could put all he had into defending his two-time Olympic title while Weissmuller was swimming in not only the 400 free but on the 4×200 free relay and in water polo on the same day as the 100 final.
Legend has it that on the blocks Kahanamoku told 20-year-old Weissmuller what mattered most was “to get the American flag up there three times.” Like at the trials, Weissmuller lengthened his slim lead over the final 50 meters, winning in an Olympic record 59.0. Duke and Sam Kahanamoku completed the U.S. sweep in second (1:01.4) and third (1:01.8).
The Associated Press wrote from Paris, “Johnny Weissmuller in sprint swimming is in a class by himself.”
“Obviously they were the two best swimmers, but to some degree it was a friendly rivalry,” says author Davis. “Duke was a very competitive person. At that elite level, you have to be. At the end of the day, he understood this was a once-in-a-lifetime talent. It was Johnny’s time.
“What would have been amazing in retrospect to have them both be racing in their prime. Then it really would have been neat to see how Duke would have responded to the challenge.”
Olympics leads to Tarzan
Weissmuller won three gold medals and a bronze (water polo) in Paris then added two more golds at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics.
Continuing through the 1932 Games in Los Angeles made sense because of the location but not financially. Weissmuller signed a contract in 1929 to represent BVD swimwear for a then princely $500 per week.
Living in Los Angeles in 1931 and working out at Hollywood Athletic Club, Weissmuller was asked to do a screen test at MGM for “Tarzan the Ape Man.” Producer Bernard Hyman and director Woody Van Dyke wanted Weissmuller for the part, but not his lengthy name. After being educated on Weissmuller’s Olympic fame, Hyman gave in, saying, “We’ll just lengthen the marquee. And, put lots of swimming in the film.”
Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote his first Tarzan book in 1912. Hollywood took its first crack at the material in 1918 during the silent film era with Elmo Lincoln in the starring role. Weissmuller’s debut in 1932 was the first Tarzan movie filmed with sound including his legendary yell, harking back to yodeling as a boy and high-pitched because of injuring his throat trying to jump a picket fence, according to his son.
The public embraced Weissmuller’s Tarzan. Variety in reviewing “Tarzan the Ape Man” backhandedly credited Weissmuller with a “fine, artless performance by the Olympic athlete that represents the absolute best that could be done with the character.”
Weissmuller played Tarzan in 12 films, through 1948, then at age 44 switched to playing Jungle Jim, a role good for 16 films and a syndicated TV series (1955-56).
“The public forgives my acting because they know I was an athlete,” Weissmuller told Sports Illustrated in 1970. ‘They know I wasn’t make-believe, like a lot of actors.”
His athletic accomplishments faded compared to those on film. Still, in 1950, Weissmuller was chosen as the greatest swimmer of the half-century in an Associated Press poll. He received 30 more votes than other candidates combined. Johnn Lohn, in his 2013 book “They Ruled the Pool,” rated Weissmuller as No. 7 among the greatest swimmers in history with only Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz as men ahead of him (Kahanamoku is No. 27).
Weissmuller was an inaugural inductee (and founding chairman) of the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1965 and a charter member of the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983. The Beatles included Weissmuller among a myriad of icons on the 1967 cover of their “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album.
Weissmuller suffered a major stroke in 1977 and died in 1984 at 79.
“He did as much to promote swimming as anyone in history,” Bruce Wigo, former International Swimming Hall of Fame president and current curator. “He did so much for culture when it was illegal for men to go topless (while swimming).”
In 2019, the Washington Post wrote about 1930s bathing suit restrictions for men: “Men grew tired of being told what they could do with their bodies and kept rebelling, especially after observing the way dames swooned after seeing Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller bare-chested in “Tarzan the Ape Man.”
“Nobody surpassed him. He had the longest reign as the world’s greatest swimmer,” Wingo says.
All thanks to swimming, Weissmuller always insisted.
“I’ve certainly had a great time swimming,” Weissmuller wrote in his 1930 book “Swimming the American Crawl.” “If I had my boyhood to live over again, I can’t imagine anything more interesting to do than just what I have done.”
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