Johnny Weissmuller doing the Tarzan yell for Jean Harlow at MGM while she worked on Sam Wood’s HOLD YOUR MAN (1933)

Propaganda

Ray Bolger (The Wizard of Oz)—i had such a huge huge crush on him in college i gave a presentation on him and my teacher was like "what was that about" and i didnt know how to convey i was horny for the scarecrow from the wizard of Oz

Johnny Weismuller (The Tarzan movies)—no propaganda submitted

This is round 1 of the bracket. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage man.

Johnny Weissmuller as 'Tarzan' by Cecil Beaton, 1932

Johnny Weissmuller on the set of Tarzan, Hollywood, (1932), Cecil Beaton

Too loud, too bright, too sexual… Mexico's Lupe Vélez was utterly broken by scandal-hungry 1940s Hollywood – even after her death.

The wild saga of Lupe Vélez, Hollywood's first tabloid casualty

On the evening of December 13, 1944, 36-year-old Mexican film star Lupe Vélez was found by her personal secretary, laid out on her bed in California like a painted doll and wearing blue satin pyjamas, surrounded by fresh flowers and burning candles.

She was dead, having intentionally overdosed on 75 Seconal pills (a barbiturate) with a glass of brandy after dinner. She was also pregnant, no doubt suffered from bipolar, and left behind a life papered in tabloid headlines and scandal.

Yet, what should have been an international tragedy – a wake-up call to the media around the fragility of celebrity and mental health – was soon turned into farce by underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger. He published Hollywood Babylon, a widely-sold compendium of Tinseltown’s juiciest rumours.

“Her ethnicity was played up for her films, and, for the sake of her 'public image' she fell into that characterization, both on and off screen,” writes Vélez biographer Michelle Vogel in her book Lupe Vélez: The Life and Career of Hollywood’s Mexican Spitfire.

Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel and Lupe Velez, in the 1930s

Lupe Velez and Douglas Fairbanks in O Gaucho

Violent love: Lupe Vélez and Gary Cooper in 1929

Vélez exercarbated the intrigue in her interviews, chillingly telling one fanzine, “I think I will kill my Gary, because he does not get angry when Lupe is angry with him.” Eventually Cooper left her, and was ordered by Paramount Studios to take a holiday on account of his nervous exhaustion and 45-pound weight loss considered a result of his relationship. The day he boarded the train to get away, Vélez ran onto the platform, smashed the glass of his window pane and tried to shoot him with her pistol while reportedly shouting, “Gary! You son of a bitch!”

A brief marriage to Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller followed suit in October 1933, and the bruises and love bites they both sported as a result of their “passionate lovemaking” were regularly noted in the press (and commented on by makeup artists on the Tarzan films, whose task it was to cover Weissmuller’s up).

“Another misconception is that she was a loose woman…” said Vogel. (In Hollywood Babylon Kenneth Anger described her “going through a small army of lover – cowboys, stuntmen, and American gigolos.”) “Sure, she loved to party and have a good time, but she was fiercely loyal to her men. She was committed to Gary Cooper and Johnny Weissmuller for almost 10 years of her life. She helped everyone and supported her extended family in Mexico for much of her life,” continued Vogel. Indeed, it was reported that Vélez kept her personal phone number listed so that fans could call her up and chat when they were in distress. She also had a big heart, keeping a large menagerie of rescue animals which included horses, monkeys, canaries, turtles and dogs.

“Although the public thinks that I'm a very wild girl. Actually I'm not. I'm just me, Lupe Vélez, simple and natural Lupe. If I'm happy, I dance and sing and acted like a child. And if something irritates me, I cry and sob. Someone called that 'personality'. The Personality is nothing more than behave with others as you really are. If I tried to look and act like Norma Talmadge, the great dramatic actress, or like Corinne Griffith, the aristocrat of the movies, or like Mary Pickford, the sweet and gentle Mary, I would be nothing more than an imitation. I just want to be myself: Lupe Vélez .”

Maureen O’Sullivan and Johnny Weissmuller in a publicity photo for 𝑻𝒂𝒓𝒛𝒂𝒏 𝑬𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒑𝒆𝒔 (1936).

Giant Vulture Bats Swooping From The Sky Make Their Ferocious Attack On The Safari While Crossing The Treacherous Quicksand Swamp of Death!: The notorious vampire bat attack intended to be the big closing of 1936's "Tarzan's Escapes." The film's initial screenings proved to be so disastrous -- sending child audience members screaming for the exits and leaving their concerned mothers apoplectic -- that MGM ultimately scrapped and re-shot virtually the entire film (!) with a lighter tone. Interestingly, viewers who saw the film during as an early '50s re-release claim that the sequence was indeed presented intact, though it's been considered lost ever since, the supposition being that it may still exist in an as-yet-undiscovered print somewhere out there in the world.

Johnny Weissmuller and Elena Verdugo for the Jungle Jim programmer The Lost Tribe, 1949

A small taste of Letters from an Actor by William Redfield:

Some years ago, Mr. Johnny Weissmuller, having become famous as the monosyllabic Tarzan, essayed the role of Mowgli the Wolf Boy in a play the title of which escapes me entirely. Quite possibly, it was called Mowgli the Wolf Boy. Anyway, I hope so, but I did not actually see the play. The novelty of the production proceeded from Mr. Weissmuller’s scantily clad presence at a well-furnished mansion in the city of San Francisco. Precisely why Mowgli the Wolf Boy should have been stopping over at a well-to-do San Franciscan’s I cannot imagine without considerable aid, but he was all the same and his mode of dress remained a loincloth, a pair of sandals, a band round his head, and a knife angled into his whipthong belt. At a climactic second-act moment, Mowgli and the villain of the piece struggle to the death for possession of a pistol with which the villain has attempted to shoot Mowgli. On opening night (in Los Angeles, I believe) the powerful Mr. Weissmuller wrested the weapon from his snarling but flimsy adversary and fired it at him. But the prop weapon misfired and the tell-tale clickclickclick of the trigger told a sad story: villain of play will not be shot tonight, dear friends and neighbors. Mr. Weissmuller, showing commendable presence of mind, immediately went for his knife. Unfortunately, the knife bent visibly double against the villain’s chest because it was made of rubber. This amused the audience a good deal but caused the villain to break out in a cold, trembling sweat. Actors who are supposed to be killed become frightfully nervous when things don’t go as expected - more nervous, for some reason, than fellow actors who are supposed to kill them. Weissmuller himself? Unfazed, apparently. He began to growl and grunt and stomp. He dragged the villain to the window. He then wrapped window drapes around the hapless chap’s neck and the latter, being only too happy to cooperate, commenced to expire. But the audience would have none of it. “He’s not dead,” several cried, and “Hit him again!” When Mr. Weissmuller ripped the drapes away from the villain’s throat, the audience burst into applause. “No more strangling,” a man cried derisively. “Think of something else.” Weissmuller did. He stared hard at his fellow player, who - terrified - began to sink slowly to his knees. Weissmuller then lifted his right fist threateningly. The villain mumbled and whimpered. Suddenly, Weissmuller pressed his fist against the villain’s forehead and croaked ominously, “I keel you weeth my poison ring!” The villain gasped his relief and fell over in a heap, quite theatrically dead. I believe that even the audience was satisfied. If they weren’t, they should have been. Mr. Weissmuller deserved a standing ovation that night. If he didn’t get one then, he gets mine right now.

Read the rest of the book with Emails from an Actor!

#KissYourMateDay

Multi-propaganda for the few remaining men that also happened to have pictures/bios in my cigarette card booklet from the 30s!!

(And bonus Frederic March because our king of the losers deserves his card featured too)

Lupe Vélez, July 18, 1908 – December 14, 1944.

With Johnny Weissmuller.

A publicity still for Tarzan and His Mate (1934) starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan.

This was the second of MGM’s blockbuster Tarzan series starring Weissmuller.  Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan’s creator, disliked the series because of its portrayal of his hero as a monosyllabic, grunting savage.  That did not, however, preclude Burroughs from making deals with MGM for additional films when he saw how much they made at the box office.

This film earned quite a lot of notoriety because of how skimpy Jane’s costume was: “Heavens to Betsy, you can see her bare thigh and hip!”  There was also additional outcry and hand wringing over a scene with Tarzan and Jane swimming in a pond: originally Tarzan had his loincloth on, but Jane was completely naked.  This led to the scene being re-shot several different times, with Jane (actually O’Sullivan’s swimming double, former Olympic swimmer Josephine McKim) wearing varying degrees of clothing.

Maureen O´Sullivan-Johnny Weissmuller "La fuga de Tarzán" (Tarzan escapes) 1936, de Richard Thorpe.

Shirtless Celebrities

Christopher Reeve

Photography by Francesco Scavullo

Tab Hunter And Roddy McDowall

Ramón Novarro

Steve McQueen

Tab Hunter

Clint Eastwood

Johnny Weissmuller

Tarzan and His Mate (1934)

Photography by George Hurrell

Steve McQueen

Marlon Brando

Christopher Walken

Photography by Kenn Duncan (1969)