Tarzan: The Ape Man (1932) starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan is a good reminder that the Hays Code didn't come into being until 1934. Pre-Code Hollywood was quite provocative and steamy and fairly unfettered, putting paid to the (irritating) assumption that the mores of a culture only work in one direction. (This assumption is why modern-day Progressives can go on believing that they aren't thorough Victorians.)
Tarzan and His Mate (1934) slipped by (barely and some stuff was cut). By the time Hollywood reached Tarzan Escapes (1936) and Tarzan Finds a Son (1939), weird anti-body attitudes were in greater play. The last movie gives Tarzan and Jane a non-biological child (and O'Sullivan was pregnant at the time!). Because, you know, biological bodies having biological needs and actually accomplishing biological ends based on things like chromosomes and biological sex is soooo shocking!
Back to Tarzan (1932): Johnny Weissmuller, Olympic gold medalist (swimming), is frankly hot stuff, even now-a-days (what constitutes "good-looking" doesn't change all that much but what gets promoted does). Despite Maureen O'Sullivan's penchant for screaming, Weissmuller's Tarzan wisely takes her body language more seriously than her demeanor. She is very tactile, handling his bare legs and arms and chest without any maidenly qualms. She's more pissed (and at one point legitimately scared) than offended. O'Sullivan's unapologetic physical affection continues unabated through the initial films.
Johnny Weissmuller succeeds in large part because he has the innocence of George of the Jungle (Brendan Fraser) though he forgoes the smirk at the camera. As Taliaferro points out in his biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs, "Americans...viewed Johnny Weissmuller as the least inhibited man alive...Weissmuller...was clean-limbed in every sense. He gave the impression that he could have sold Bibles door to door wearing nothing but a G-string. Like Adam himself, he was naturally ideal and ideally natural. There was no hint of either embarrassment or braggadocio in his comportment."
In fact, most amusingly, Weissmuller's Tarzan initially treats O'Sullivan's Jane with the good-natured curiosity of a teenage boy towards the new kid. At one point, he takes her handkerchief and tears it to pieces in sheer "hey, look, it rips!" adolescent mindlessness. Stick him in Toy Story and he is innocently blowing up GI Joes and burning ants (and showing off to the kid next door).
This is Rousseauian innocence, not nature's innocence. Tarzan is surrounded by apes. Apes have sex. Not exactly a mystery.
In terms of the primal relationship, Jane's screeching in the first movie gets irritating, but her pluck--which Maureen O'Sullivan captures exceedingly well--is refreshing. When she's allowed, she lets her voice dip and go husky.
Interestingly enough, from a feminist Rousseauian point of view, one gets the impression (especially in the second film) that her sudden adoption of helplessness and swooning fear is a cultural instinct, not an inherent one (and there might be some truth in that). As soon as the protective men disappear, she demonstrates that she is fully capable of outsmarting the lions on her own.
And Tarzan never seems to assume that she can't--he rescues her because he loves her, not because she is lacking in self-reliance.
She also increasingly loses her clothes throughout the first movie. It's the hippie version of Bruce Wayne in Die Hard: her hat, then her shoes, then half her dress...
Clean porn.
Well, that, and a National Geographic-like (and somewhat exhausting) medley of nature images (if the studio is going to pay for the stuff...). And chimpanzees. People just love their chimpanzees.
The elephants are fairly impressive as well.
