Ygor (or is it Igor?) Unpacked

 

One of the horror icons of the 20th-21st Century is Ygor (or is it Igor?), the hunchbacked assistant of Dr Frankenstein with the voice of Peter Lorrie and the catch cry of 'yes master!". I remember as a teenager reading Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and being surprised that Ygor never appeared in the original novel. In the book the creation of the  monster was the lonely work of Victor Frankenstein alone.  However strong in the popular consciousness is the figure of Ygor, the hunchedback grave robbing assistant who longs to have his own twisted body repaired so he can be like other men. But what was the origin of this figure that has become a stock character in horror films and beyond, and what elements came together to create the stock character as we have it today?

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus in 1818 and the popularity of the book was such that by 1823 it had already been adapted for the stage. It was in this play, entitled Presumption: or the Fate of Frankenstein by Richard Brinsley Peake, that the  origins of Ygor seem to have begun with the introduction of the character Frits, a bumpkin character who assists Victor Frankenstein in his ghoulish work and whose dramatic function is to provide a moral commentary on the work of his master (http://members.aon.at/frankenstein/frankenstein-theatre.htm). It seems that this character Fritz became a mainstay of the theatrical portrayals of Frankenstein, so much so that when Universal Studios bought the rights to Peggy Webling's theatre adaptation Frankenstein: An Adventure in the Macabre, and used it as the basis of their 1931 film (http://www.werewolfpage.com/other_creatures/frankenstein.htm), the character of Fritz also made the transition to the silver screen.

Frankenstein (1931)
The role of Fritz, portrayed by Dwight Fry, was now depicted as a walking stick using, but nimble, hunchback who assists Henry Frankenstein in his body snatching and laboratory work. The character is a manic and sadistic figure who takes great joy in tormenting the monster and eventually meets his fate at the hands of the creature. It is also Fritz who, when sent to obtain a brain for the monster from the Goldstadt University, inadvertently steals the brain of a criminal and thus sets the monster on his murderous and misunderstood path. It is here that we see the original cinematic template for the character of Ygor first appear, however there were still some elements of the character that is familiar in popular culture still missing. Dwight Fry would also appear in the 1935 sequel The Bride of Frankenstein as Karl, one of two grave robbers turned assistants to Baron Frankenstein and Dr Pretorius in their creation of a mate for the monster. However neither of these characters were hunchbacks in the Ygor tradition.

Son of Frankenstein (1939) and Ghost of Frankenstein (1942).
Ii was in 1939 that the next step in the evolution of Ygor took place with the release of Son of Frankenstein. The film told the story of Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, the son of Henry Frankenstein who returns with his family from abroad to take up residents in his ancestral home in the village of Frankenstein. It is here that he meets Ygor (Bela Lugosi), the misshapen grave robber who has become a hunchback after a botched hanging for his crimes. As the story unfolds, Wolf, after finding the body of the monster, succeeds in reviving it, only to have it used by Ygor to murder all those who sentenced him to the gallows. The story comes to an end when Wolf shoots Ygor before saving his son Peter from the Monster, pushing the monster into a sulphur pit. Baron von Frankenstein then decides to return to his home overseas, handing the castle over to the good people of Frankenstein.

However, like the Monster, you can't keep a good hunchbacked homicidal maniac down. Ygor returned in Ghost of Frankenstein having survived Wolf von Frankenstein's bullets and the destruction of Castle Frankenstein by the villagers. In the ruins, Igor finds the body of the Monster (now played by Lon Chaney Jr) still encased in sulphur, and having dug him out, leads him through the country side to the town of Vasaria and the home of the second Frankenstein son, Ludwig. Ludwig is also a doctor, one who specialises in diseases of the mind, and eventually, through a series of twists, ends up unknowingly replacing the monsters criminal brain with that of Ygor's instead of that of his dead colleague, Doctor Kettering. As Ygor rises from the operating table, enjoying his new found strength, he suddenly goes blind as his new body rejects his brain, the monsters blood type being different than Ygors. The film ends with the Ygor/Monster setting the lab on fire, as he stumbles blindly in the flames smashing every thing he touches. From this point on Ygor and the Monster would be one, with his personality soon reverting to that of the mindless shambling brute it had been post Bride, albeit with seemingly restored sight.

House of Frankenstein (1944)
Although Ygor was now one with the Monster, it didn't mean that the stock character of the hunchback was gone from the Universal Horror series. With the hunchback's function being introduced by Fritz, his name being added by the character of Ygor, there was only one thing left for all the pieces to fall into place, the hunch backs personality. This would come in the form of Daniel (J Carroll Nash), the hunchbacked assistant of the Mad Scientist Dr Niemann (Boris Karloff), whose goal is to recreate the work of Dr Frankenstein. J Carrol Naish's portrayal brings to it all the things we expect from the role, the Peter Lorre-esque voice, the catch phrase of 'Yes Master', his work as a lab assistant and the vain hope that his master will one day build for him a new body. Here there are also shades of Quasimodo, as Daniel longs for the affections of a beautiful gypsy girl who in turn only has eyes for Lawrence Talbot, the Wolfman (Lon Chaney Jr). It is here in Daniel that the Ygor stock character truly manifests for the first time fully and establishes the model that many others would copy.


House of Dracula (1945) and Beyond
1945 saw the release of House of Dracula that once again featured a hunchback character, this time a female nurse Nina (Jane Adams) who works with this film's mad scientist, Dr Edelman (Onslow Stevens). However it was else where that the influence of the Universal Studios' hunchback characters began to show their impact and the Igor stock character began to feature. In the film House of Wax (1953), Charles Bronson played a mute but unhunched assistant called Igor. In 1962, Bobby (Boris) Pickett's Monster Mash album featured a song Irresistible Igor with other tracks on the album featuring dialogue by an Igor peppered with the 'yes master' catch phrase. The 1967 movie, Mad Monster Party?, a spoof which featured the voice talents of Boris Karloff among others, there was a butler/servant called Yetch (Allen Swift), who, although not a hunchback, spoke with a Peter Lorre style voice  and addressed Dr Frankenstein with 'Yes Master'. The absence of a hunchedback in this character may have much to do with the fact that the Hunchback of Notre Dame also appears in the story, and to have two hunchbacks might have caused confusion. The Mel Brooks' tribute to the Universal Frankenstein films, Young Frankenstein (1974), also featured an Ygor (or is that Igor?) played by Marty Feldman, a who walked with a stick like Fritz, 'Yes Mastered' in the Daniel style and even had a moving hump that kept changing sides.

Transylvania 6-5000 (1985) had a whole family of Daniel-esque hunchbacks and the animated Igor (2008) featured a whole social class of Igors and tells the story of an Igor (John Cusack) who seeks to become a scientist himself. Things came full circle in the Universal Studios' tribute to their monster mash films of the 1940's, Van Helsing (2004) where Dr Victor Frankenstein (Samuel West) is assisted by Igor (Kevin J. O'Conner), a 'yes master'- ing hunchback with a  treacherous demeanour, Fritz, Ygor and Daniel rolled into one.

 

At the end of the day it becomes clear that although some characters spring into fiction fully formed, others, like Ygor (or is it Igor?), are the product of gradual accumulation of elements in the public consciousness, something that is extremely obvious when we track the development of the stock character of Ygor from the theatrical addition of the bumpkin Fritz to the Frankenstein mythos in the 1820's, through the Universal Horror films of the 1930's and 40's to the films of the current era.

Billy The Kid Unbound

 

Billy The Kid's Gang.

I have always found the intersection between fact and fiction  to be an immensely interesting place to explore. I'm always excited when a real flesh and blood individual or historical event is found to be behind popular legends and heroes. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Hunchback of Notre dame and even Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde have in recent years been claimed by some to be loosely based or inspired by real historical personages. Other figures from history get the mythical make over and emerge into pop culture almost unrecognisable, and often infinitely more interesting and heroic than they were in reality. To find such a figure one need look no further than the individual known as Henry Antrim, or was it Henry McCarty, or even William Bonney ?

The real Billy the Kid

What ever his real name, he was better known as Billy the Kid, outlaw, killer of twenty one men before the age of twenty one. Also known as the Left Handed Gun, Billy the Kid and his pals, Doc Scurlock  and Charlie Bowdre, were involved in what came to be known as the Lincoln County War, a feud between two rival merchant companies with in the county. What made things difficult for Billy was that one company was backed by corrupt politicians, and sadly not the one he was working for. The Lincoln County War erupted in 1878 when John Tunstall, one of the business men that Billy the Kid was allied with, was shot dead by a group of men working for the rival company known as the House. Soon, deputised by a Justice of the peace, Billy and his friends set out with warrants to bring Tunstall's killers to justice. Unfortunately for them, the House also had their own Justice of the Peace and legally deputised lawmen also seeking to bring Billy and his friends, now calling themselves the Regulators, to justice. Very soon it was all out war in Lincoln County. The bloody conflict between the two groups continued  from February 18th until July 19th of that year. Following the war, Billy remained at large until July 1881, when he was shot dead by Sheriff Pat Garrett at the age of 21. In the wash up of history it appears that Billy wasn't quite as legend has painted him. Very unlegend like, Billy the Kid moved to Lincoln County to work in a cheese factory, he didn't really kill twenty one men (only nine or less, which is so much better) and wasn't really left handed (the most famous photo of Billy was printed in reverse up until recently). In fact it seems, that like many other figures of history, it was his enemies that spread the stories that made him infamous, an infamy that would paint them in a better light and make him a bigger target. But over time, like many outlaw characters, Billy has made the leap from villain to folk hero, something that has been aided by the general fondness that many people in the region had for him and the contempt that many felt towards Sherriff Pat Garrett for shooting his former friend. There has also been a sense that Billy the Kid was made a scape goat by political corruption and that there were many on the other side that had committed far more heinous crimes but were never brought to justice. 

But Billy has gone beyond being a historical figure and moved into the realm of pop culture icon. He has broken the chains of history and leapt into a whole new realm of existence created by Hollywood and other purveyors of wild west dreams. In fact you know the character has truly made the leap when they break loose of their original historical or fictional setting. The characters become unbound and are free to feature in new narratives in ways in which they are still somewhat recognizable. Billy is now able to fight for justice with more clarity than he did in real life, he is able to fight  Dracula  (Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966), battle the mad creations on Victor Frankenstein (Billy the Kid's Old Timey Oddities, Issues 1-4, Dark Horse Comics, 2005) and travel through time to the 20th Century with Bill & Ted (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989). Where many feel reality let William Bonney down, the realm of fiction is making up for it.



Jeff and Billy

It was in this new realm that I came across the movie Billy the Kid Trapped  (1942) starring Larry 'Buster' Crabbe as a white hat wearing Billy the Kid. Directed by Sam Newfield (Nabonga (1944), White Pongo (1945)  and Jungle Siren (1942), it's a fun, straight forward Western  featuring Glenn Strange, the last of the Universal Frankenstein Monsters, as  Boss Stanton, the mastermind behind the sinister goings on. In this movie, Doc Scurlock and Charlie Bowdre have been replaced by nice guy Jeff Walker (Bud McTaggart) and the comical Fuzzy Jones (Al St John), two likeable gunslingers who accompany Billy through his adventures in the Wild West. The film opens  with Billy and his friends waiting to be hanged for the murder of Art Lake, a murder they claim they didn't commit. Things really start to move when the trio are rescued from jail by a group of unseen men and it becomes apparent that someone is committing crimes masquerading as Billy and his gang. With the help of the local Sherriff , John Masters (Ted Adams), who becomes convinced of their innocents, the gang leave New Mexico and head to Mesa City to catch the guilty party and clear their names. There they meet the beautiful post mistress Sally Crane (Anne Jeffreys) and begin their campaign to clean up the town, catch the imposters and clear their names. Eventually it becomes clear that the political boss of the town, Boss Stanton, has deliberately set Billy and his friends up to take the blame for his gang's lucrative criminal activities, including the murder of Art

Lake. It's just as the Kid and his friends try to confront Boss Stanton that Sherriff Masters appears and pretends to arrest the Kid and his gang. It soon becomes clear that while the Kid has been investigating Boss Stanton, Sherriff Masters has been rounding up Stanton's henchmen. Together they hatch a plan to kidnap Boss Stanton's corrupt town judge (Walter McGrail) and send for another to come and convict Stanton and his gang once they have arrested them. Fortunately for Billy and his friends the plan works and soon they are cleared of the crimes that had been committed by Stanton's gang, including the murder of Art Lake.



Anne Jeffreys

 

Billy the Kid Trapped is the Buster Crabbe's 3rd outing as Billy the Kid and the 9th instalment in the 19 film Billy the Kid series produced by PRC. The first six films featured Bob Steele in the role of Billy Bonney before passing the white hat to Crabbe. Although the Kid of these movies is heavily fictionalised, several themes true to the life of the real kid flows through Billy the Kid Trapped. In this version there is a senses of an individual trying to do what's right but finding themselves trapped by political corruption and made a scapegoat for the crimes of others. There is also the idea of needing to seek legal authority outside of the local area to try and combat the corrupt legal authorities locally. Whether it be the politicians and merchants of the House or Boss Stanton, his gang and the crooked judge, Billy the Kid is once again forced to seek justice when those who are appointed to do so fail in the shadow of the mighty dollar. Maybe this is the strength of the image of the Kid, the one who seeks justice when justice fails, and the reason why this image has become unbound.

 

Denny Miller- Happy Birthday!

If there was a visual soundtrack to my life it would probably be the various television shows I’ve watched through the years. And someone who has been apart of that visual soundtrack is Denny Miller, cowboy, jungle man, space man and fisherman extraordinaire. Not that he has actually done all these things (I don’t think he’s been to space) but he has had the privilege of portraying all these roles and many more on the screen, both big and small. The productions he’s been involved in reads like a list of the classics of television, Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, The Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, The Incredible Hulk, Battlestar Galactica, V and many more.

However one of the roles that he is best remembered for was that of Tarzan in the 1959 movie, Tarzan the Apeman, which saw him putting on the loin cloth in the first ever colour version of the original Tarzan story. It was here, in a virtually non-verbal performance, that Denny’s strong screen presence shone through and set the scene for a long career as a successful character actor. Today he is the oldest living Tarzan, one of the patriarchs of the world wide Tarzanic tribe and a nice guy to boot. He is also celebrating his 80^th Birthday today, so with out much ado……..

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DENNY MILLER!!

Wrestling With Calvin

I realised recently I harboured a grudge. My grudge wasn’t against the living but against a long dead fellow Christian. It’s one thing to harbour a grudge against a school bully who genuinely did you harm and you are struggling to forgive. But to hold it against a person from history, who ultimately is on your side is crazy. The subject of my dislike was a man by the name of John Calvin and his only crime was to try and organise the Christian belief system in a way that was functional, practical, logical, faithful to the broader orthodoxy of the time and firmly based in the scriptures. Why did this gripe me so much, because firmly laid at his door was the idea that he came up with the doctrine of predestination. Broadly speaking, predestination is the idea that the only pople that God will save for eternal life are those he chose in the first place and all those who face damnation are those he seemingly didn’t choose. This is the polar opposite of my faith tradition which broadly says that Christ died for all people and it’s up to the individual to accept this gift of salvation or not, a doctrinal position called Arminianism, named after Arminius, a protégé of Calvin’s protégé, Theodore Beza.

 

John Calvin was born in Noyon, France in 1509. A notable part of John Calvin’s spiritual journey began when he was sent to Paris to study at university to prepare for a career in the church. Beginning his education initially at the University of Paris, he later enrolled at the University of Orleans. At this time France was under going a period of legal reform which sought a return the legal system to Roman law. Rather than reading these laws in the light of tradition, commentaries and interpretative glosses, which had been the custom, the French sought to read the texts, unadorned, in the original languages and thus doing away with the perceived obstacles to the original meaning of the text. This approach had a flow on affect to the study of other areas, especially the study of scripture. It was here in the universities of Orleans that John Calvin came to study civil law. Through this study he learnt the value of reading a text in it’s original language and methods of applying the ancient meaning to a current situation. Of this Alistair McGrath says,

 

‘Although it is often suggested that predestination stands at the centre of Calvin’s system, this is not the case; the only principle which seems to govern Calvin’s organization is a concern to be faithful to scripture one the one hand, and to achieve maximum clarity of presentation on the other.’

 

It was at this time in his mid twenties that he came into a new experience of Christ. After studying law, Calvin returned to Paris to resume his theological studies and instead of taking up a church post, left the church of Rome to become apart of the reform movement. This eventually led to him writing his famous Institutes of the Christian religion and his famous reforming work in the city of Geneva.

 

 Rightly or wrongly, Calvin’s teachings on predestination are often presented as a distinctive hallmark of his writing, but it must be remembered that Calvin was not promoting a new perspective on salvation but was endeavouring to present the common understanding in a new way.  To depart from this was close to heresy and this was punishable by death. Richard A Muller says’

 

‘Unique or individualized doctrinal formulation was not Calvin’s goal. If, for example, there is anything unique in his doctrine of predestination, it arose from the way in which he gathered together elements from past thinkers in the tradition and blended them into his own formulations.’

 

Like many of those before him, Calvin believed Salvation was something for the pre-ordained/church and not specifically for all humanity. Salvation is primarily the act of being rescued from damnation and going to heaven. In his institutes he says,

 

This prescience extends to the whole circuit of the world, and to all creatures. By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.—Institutes of the Christian Religion [John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Faith, Chapter21 section 5 ]

 

Salvation was seen by Calvin to be limited to the few that God had chosen by his free will to save. It is not achieved in any way by their efforts but by God’s undeserved favour on them. Salvation is an act initiated by God and achieved for the selected few by the death of Christ. Strange and harsh as this may sound to my Armenianist ears, it can be argued from scripture and was not a new thought. It’s an argument that personally hasn’t won me over but one that speaks loudly when one is trying define clearly who is in and who is out by divine declaration, something the Protestant and Catholic Reformation were busy trying to do. For me, God did predestined a group of people to be his people, but like Ruth the Moabite who chose join God’s chosen people the Israelites, we choose to become part of God’s chosen people.

 

Although for Calvin it seems that the main thrust of salvation was to receive eternal life, it wasn’t the entirety of his view. Gonzales says,

 

Calvin, as a theologian of the second generation, did not allow the doctrine of justification to eclipse the rest of Christian theology, and therefore was able to pay more attention to several  aspects of Christian faith which Luther had virtually ignored-in particular the , the doctrine of sanctification (Gonzalez, 77).

 

In his Institutes Calvin said,

 

We must now see in what way we become possessed of the blessings which God has bestowed on his only-begotten Son, not for private use, but to enrich the poor and needy. And the first thing to be attended to is, that so long as we are without Christ and separated from him, nothing which he suffered and did for the salvation of the human race is of the least benefit to us. (Institutes 3.1.)

 

For Calvin, Christian regeneration or sanctification was inextricably linked with justification. He sees both of them of God’s grace, one flowing into the other. Salvation is not just something decided upon for the individual before the dawn of time and benefitted from after death. It also brings about a regeneration in this life that allows a person, in union with Christ through the Holy Spirit, to be a more a Christlike person and to benefit the world around us. This bit warms the cockles of my little Salvationist heart. For me, Christianity is a selfish pursuit if all it entails is having insurance for the after life. For me it needs to make a difference now, in the same way that Jesus’ ministry was just as much about the present as it was about the future.

It seems my days of wrestling with Calvin may be over, as he and I settle down to an easy truce. Rather than seeing him as the mastermind of a doctrine that potentially renders Christians into self righteous pew warmers, I now see him as one who tried to make the outworking of the Christian faith active and relevant to his day and beyond. Calvin was the one in the Reformation who didn’t drop the ball on holiness. He actively promoted the concept that regeneration or sanctifacation was inextricably linked to justification, or in other words, salvation was not just something that affects the future but impacts positively on the life of the believer and those around him now.

 

The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail

The Gates of Hades from Wrath of the Titans (2012)

I was stunned to notice this week that the Gates of Hell have been unearthed by a team of  Italian archaeologists. As I read the headlines my heart skipped a beat as two thoughts crossed my mind. The first thing was that I finally would know how to get to Hell, Hades in the Greek, if I ever needed to go save someone. I love those stories where the hero must ascend to the underworld to save a loved one who has been wrongfully stolen by death.  Like the hero Orpheus in Greek mythology, with a hand full of loose change, I could brave the River Styx (however, as Chris De Burgh once sang, don't pay the ferry man till he gets you to the other side). I could sing AC/DC songs to put Cerberus, the three headed hell hound, to sleep. Another thing I must remember to do when storming Hades is not to look into the Slough of Despond or I too may never get out alive (or is that from Pilgrims Progress, I get so confused). At this point it may sound as though I know my Orpheus very well or that my knowledge of the Netherworld is more than it should be (the temptation to write nether regions there was extremely great). However I have a source of knowledge on my side that can beat no other when it comes to knowing about doing commando raids on Hell,.......sword and sandal films. Films like Hellhounds (2009), The Scorpion King 2 (2008) and Odysseus: Voyage to the Underworld (2008) aren't bad, Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief (2010) is fun, but the classic is Mario Bava's atmospheric, Hercules in the Haunted World (1961). With body builder Reg Park as Hercules and Christopher Lee as the evil King Lico, it's a sensational and atmospheric peace of fantasy film making.


Hercules in the Haunted World (1961)

The second thought that ran through my mind was the appropriateness of this being announced at Easter, when Christians in the Western churches are celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who, they believed  'descended into Hell;  (and) on the third day....rose from the dead (Apostles Creed). In Christ, Christians see one who has loved them so much that he stormed the world of the dead to lead them into the way of life. Jesus said of St Peter's faith in him, 'on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it (Matthew 16; 18).' Whether it be the act of death and resurrection, or the life giving faith of his people, Jesus and Hell storming go together.

So before I present myself as a Meat Loaf wannabe roaring out of the gates of Hell 'like a battering ram on a silver black phantom bike', I had to find out exactly what this gate of Hell was. In fact the sight known as  Pluto's (Hades') Gate was uncovered in Turkey at Pamukkale, known in the ancient world as the great temple complex of Hierapolis and famous for its hot springs.

I might also take a moment at this point to explain that the Pluto referred to here is not Mickey Mouses' dog or the planetoid, but refers to the Greek God of the underworld, also known as Hades, just as the whole world of the dead was known as Hades.

Would Disney's real god of the underworld please raise their hand.

Hell, the English name for this realm, is taken from the name of the old Anglo-Saxon goddess Hel, who was the ruler of the world of the dead, Helheim. In The Old Testament this realm was known as Sheol (often translated 'the grave') and it was seen as a world of shadows and darkness. The realm that Christians usually think of when they say Hell, the place of eternal imprisonment for fallen angels, the belligerently evil and unrepentantly wicked, is more correctly known as Tartarus in Greek and Niflheim in the mythology of the Anglo-Norse, that informs much of our traditional English theological terminology.

The ruins as they are today (photo F D'Andria)

These Turkish Gates of Pluto, are actually a subterranean vent that emits Carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A recent news report stated,

          'A staired terrace overlooking the temple and pool would have held onlookers and initiates    as eunuchs led bulls into the cave - and dragged them out, dead. Francesco D'Andria of the University of Salento said the "visions" were probably hallucinations caused by breathing diluted fumes wafting up from the Gate to Hell. And the portal is still a killer, he said."We could see the cave's lethal properties during the excavation," D'Andria told Discovery News."Several birds died as they tried to get close to the warm opening, instantly killed by the carbon dioxide fumes."The site had been damaged by Christians in the 6th Century and the destruction was completed by later earthquakes."We found the Plutonium (Pluto's Gate) by reconstructing the route of a thermal spring," D'Andria said.' (http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/archaeologists-have-uncovered-plutos-gate-an-ancient-gateway-to-hell-in-turkey/story-e6frfq80-1226611365115?from=public_rss)

 Birds that have dropped dead near the opening of the cave  (Photo: F D'Andria).

After reading this I get the feeling that any sortie into this infernal gateway would be sorely disappointed. I suspect, rather than ferry men, three headed dogs and underworld celebrities one would be met with unbreathable air and  dark caverns which, instead of leading to the place every one must go after paying their taxes, would lead to more unbreathable caverns, hot water and eventually lava. But one thing is sure, a voyage to the world of the dead probably would result, one I would never come back from. Although I'll still put the Plutoneum on my list of places to visit, it is at this point that I think I'll leave the sorties into Hades to the veteran himself, the one who said through the visions of St John, 'Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades (Revelations 1: 17b-18). '

A digital reconstruction of the Plutoneum as it would have looked in ancient times (Photo: F D'Andria).

BOY: The Facts of Fiction

Boy (Johnny Sheffield) and Cheeta

In many ways a film series is like an unfolding text. Each entry brings new information that shapes the narrative of the characters involved. Some times this has a retroactive effect, as new information is shared, bringing new insights into the story that were previously unknown, and informing a new reading of older chapters in a series. Budgetary considerations, location, casting and a range of production issues influence what appears on screen in ways that may not be obvious to the casual movie goer. However these shifts and changes can create interesting directions within the narrative, sometimes leaving gaps in the continuity of the series and changes of narrative direction that may not have been the studios first option. But coming out of all this is the fun of looking at an unfolded narrative as a whole and using information from the whole series to inform our understanding of it's story. This is no more true than when we look at the popular Tarzan movie character of Boy in relation to the MGM/RKO film series as a whole and the wider Tarzan mythos and we speculate and draw conclusions about the character's fictional biography.

The King Has a Son
 A main stay of the Tarzan film series was the character of Boy. As MGM studios steered their way from more adult films to a more family oriented fair, the character of boy was introduced in the film Tarzan Finds a Son (1939). The dilemma MGM had was that at its core their Tarzan films featured an erotic romance between Jane and Tarzan as seen in Tarzan and his Mate (1934). Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan) has stayed on in the jungle and moved in with Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) with out an engagement or wedding. Unlike Burroughs' original version (1913's The Return of Tarzan)  and the silent movies (1920's The Revenge of Tarzan), where Tarzan/John Clayton and Jane are presented getting married, the MGM continuity presents them as seemingly living in unwedded sin in their jungle paradise.

The Hays Code
This was fine until the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, also known as the Hays Code, was brought into effect and a new standard of censorship was introduced. Jane's skimpy jungle two piece became a modest jungle dress. The jungle love nest was replaced with a tree house and all seemed fine until it came time to bring a new bundle of joy onto the Mutia escarpment. For Jane and Tarzan to have their own son outside of formal wedlock was against the new code, so the Tarzan family had to grow by another means. And so an alternative had to be devised. Despite the fact that Tarzan and Jane had their own biological son, John Clayton/Korak in the novels, as well as in the silent film serial The Son of Tarzan (1920), their son in the MGM, and eventually RKO, continuity had to be a foundling. An interesting twist is that this son, by insinuation, would be a relative of Tarzan

Another Jungle Orphan
Up until Tarzan Finds a Son, the name Greystoke had never appeared in the MGM series and only once in the Burroughs produced serial The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935) and it's 2 edited feature versions. Another illusion to the Greystoke title is also found in the serial and feature version of Tarzan the Fearless, another non MGM production, which refers to Tarzan as Lord Greyfriar. In  Son, we are introduced to Richard Lancing (Morton Lowry), the favourite nephew of Lord Greystoke, his unnamed wife (Laraine Day) and baby son. While on a flight to Capetown, their plane collides with a flock of birds and all on board are killed by the crash or by natives except for the baby who is rescued by Tarzan's tribe of apes. Jane and Tarzan receive the baby and raise it as their own, unimaginatively naming him Boy. Boy (Johnny Sheffield) grows up as Tarzan's son, learning the ways of the jungle and keeping Tarzan busy rescuing him from various jungle dangers. All is fine until Boys family come looking for him. They come in the form of Boy's great uncle, Sir Thomas Lancing (Henry Stephenson), his nephew Austin Lancing (Ian Hunter) and his wife (Frieda Inescort), Boy's second cousins. They stand to inherit a fortune if they can prove that Richard Lancing and his family are dead, a fortune that would rightfully go to Richard Lancing's son if he was found alive. Ironically, as the child of the late Lord Greystoke's favourite nephew, assuming this refers to Tarzan's father, Boy is also Tarzan's first cousin once removed. The underlying subtext then is that, in reality, Tarzan is Boy's true next of kin.


Tarzan (Gordon Scott), Cheeta and Boy/Tatu (Ricki Sorenson)

 He hasn't just been found by Tarzan and become part of his family, he is in reality a blood relation of Tarzan's, a member of the same jungle accident prone family. Tarzan's connection to Sir Thomas and his nephew may be unclear, but his relationship to Boy is unambiguous. This is clarified even more when in the later movie within the MGM/ RKO series Tarzan's Savage Fury (1952) it is confirmed that Tarzan (Lex Barker) is the 10th Earl of Greystoke. Confusingly in this movie, Tarzan's cousin, Lord Oliver Greystoke, also appears, making it unclear his relationship to the Clayton Family, Tarzan's family name in the novels, and the Greystoke title. However, it does appear that some time between the events of Son and Savage Fury, Tarzan's true identity had been discovered by him, Jane and the rest of the world.

More Clayton Cousins
It's an interesting aside that in his fictional biography of Tarzan, Tarzan Alive (Playboy Paperbacks, 1981), Philip Jose Farmer decides that, after looking at some of the chronological discrepancies with Burroughs' Tarzan stories, that Korak, presented as Tarzan's biological son, is really his adopted orphan second cousin (pg 130). He rightfully points out that a boy born in 1913 could not possibly flee to the jungle, have adventures there, get married and fight on the Argonne front in 1918 (pg 129).
Unlike the MGM/RKO continuity, in Farmer's biographical version,Tarzan and Jane do have there own biological son, Jack, who is still a child when Korak has started his adult adventures (pg 130). Obviously no Hays Code held sway here.

The New York Adventure and Beyond
In the film, Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942), Boy is kidnapped and taken to America to work in a circus. After finding him, Tarzan and Jane are involved in a custody battle for Boy. This becomes difficult when it becomes clear that Tarzan and Jane are not his natural parents. In the internal continuity of the films, this must have occurred before Tarzan became aware of his true heritage and blood relationship to Boy, as this would have made the question of custody less of an issue. Eventually after a series of adventures with Tarzan and Jane and eventually just Tarzan, when Jane is in England nursing wounded soldiers (Tarzan's Desert Mystery (1943), Tarzan Triumphs (1943)), Boy leaves Africa to go to school in England (1948's Tarzan and the Mermaids). It is here that the story of Boy becomes complicated. Despite his continued appearance in Tarzan comics, where many elements of the books, such as Lieut D'Arnot and Pal-ul-don, mingled with elements of the film series, such as Cheeta, the popular character of Boy was absent from the movies for 11 years and 9 films. In reality it was at this time that Johnny Sheffield grew too old to play Boy and went on to star in his own jungle movie series, Bomba the Jungle Boy. Unlike Maureen O'Sullivan, who left the series when it moved to RKO and was eventually replaced by Brenda Joyce, no replacement came for the role of Boy.

A frame from a 1957 Dell Tarzan Comic  # 95 by Jessie Marsh depicting Boy, 10 years after his last screen appearance and a year before his reappearance as Tartu.

The Reappearance
However in 1958, in the film Tarzan's Fight For Life, a young boy appears living with Tarzan (Gordon Scott) and Jane (Eve Brent). this young boy is named Tartu (Rickie Sorenson) and it is made clear that he had recently been officially adopted by Tarzan and Jane. On the face of it, this newly adopted son of Tarzan and Jane may have been another foundling taken in by the jungle couple, an adopted brother for the unseen Boy, who we assume is still living in civilisation studying or attending to Greystoke/Lancing business and hopefully making life difficult for his greedy second cousins. However a missing piece of the puzzle appeared in 1966 when a new Tarzan film premiered on U.S. television entitled Tarzan and the Trappers. This movie, which was actually edited together from three pilot episodes of a 1958 Tarzan TV series that was never given the green light but featured the same main cast as Tarzan's Fight For Life. In this movie Sorenson's character is known primarily as Boy but is also referred to as Tartu. It can then be assumed when watching these two films together, which wasn't possible until 1966, that the Boy of the Weissmuller era and the Tartu of Gordon Scott's  movies were one in the same character. Both these movies are reminiscent of the films of the later Weissmuller era, featuring a Tarzan family, and quite at odds with the other films of Gordon Scott and his successors in the MGM/RKO and soon to be, Banner Films series. These stories generally portray Tarzan as a lone adventurer, occasionally accompanied by Cheeta, fighting evil both in Africa and jungles further abroad. But here in these two films we find Tarzan living with Jane and Boy/Tartu in the jungle tree house in a way that hadn't been seen since Tarzan and the Huntress (1947).  From a continuity perspective, these two stories would fit well into this earlier era of the characters life. We may be that around this time in the series continuity that Tarzan became aware of his true origin and  consequent blood relationship to Boy and chose to officially adopted Boy before his attendance at school in England. It may that at this point too he was given a jungle name, Tartu, as he moved into young adulthood and eventually out of the jungle.

Tarzan, Boy and their friend Professor McWhirtle run for their lives in Pal-ul-don.
Tarzan Annual (1961)

Whats in a name?
Whatever Boy's real name was it was never mentioned. Like Tarzan, he may have shared a name with his father and been Richard Lancing as well. The name Boy is very accurate and is a good example of the MGM's Tarzan's lack of English vocabulary. How ever the name Tartu is one potentially loaded with meaning, and I suspect a potential meaning that the writers of Tarzan's Fight for Life were unaware of. Some I have spoken to have suggested that Tartu merely means 'Tarzan 2', which  I agree was probably the writers intention. However I like to think that with in the name a deeper meaning is held. In the language of the Great Apes created by Burroughs, Tar means white, as in the name Tarzan or 'White Skin'. The second half of Boys ape name is Tu, which means broken, as in the name of Tarzan's adopted ape father, Tublat or 'Broken Nose'. Directly translated into English, Tartu's name means 'white broken', which makes no sense unless it was actually a name that encapsulated his adopted ape family tree. He is Tartu, son of Tarzan, son of Tublat, of the tribe of Kerchak.We can imagine that as Boy left the jungle to get an education in England, going to embrace his birthright as the son of Richard Lancing and the adopted son and cousin of the ever absent 10th Earl of Greystoke, he went with a new name, an ape name that would forever remind him of his jungle identity, Tartu, son of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.

One Salvation Army, One Mission!

Worship at this year's One Mission

This weekend the South Australian Division of the Salvation Army held it's bi-annual One Mission conference. Our guests were British/American pastor/ author, Jeff Lucas and respected journalist and Salvationist John Cleary. These conferences, once known as Congresses, are a Salvation Army tradition and provide an opportunity for Salvationists from all walks of life and regions around the state to come together to celebrate being one army with one mission. The highlight for me was a staff and officers/pastors session where the need for christian mission to address the whole person was discussed. Out of this session a few pithy ideas were thrown around and some great quotes (the sources of which I didn't record but I suspect came from members of the Booth family) such as,

• A man may be down but he is never out.
• The world is not interested in your problems but will happily use them.
• By all means aim to reach heaven but be like Jesus and take a thief with you.

The main idea that was touched on by both Jeff Lucas and John Cleary (quite coincidentally I might add) was the importance of the Jewish concept of 'shalom' to, not just the mission of the Salvation Army, but the mission of Christ's followers as a whole. Wikipedea, that infallible source of all knowledge, describes shalom as 'a Hebrew word meaning peace, completeness, prosperity, and welfare'. This is what God seeks to bring into the lives of people and what we endeavour to bring through the ministry of the Salvation Army. We don't seek to sell some kind of heavenly insurance policy while watching a person's life crumble into despair. That's hardly salvation. What we seek to bring to people is salvation of a 'shalom' kind, were people come to experience God's 'peace, completeness, prosperity, and welfare'. It can't be 'save the soul but burn the body'. The good news that Jesus wants us to bring is a message of hope that encapsulates body mind and soul. It's about us loving our neighbour, not just in words, but in action. It's about us standing up for the abused and oppressed, loving the broken and vulnerable, and working with Jesus to bring people to wholeness, not just after death, but in the here and now. God loves the world he created and loves his children, the good, the bad, and the ugly. He wants them to come into relationship with him and experience shalom: peace, completeness, prosperity, and welfare. We stand with Jesus when he quotes the words of the prophet Isaiah,

 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
     because he has anointed me
     to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
     and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed, 
     to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour." 

(Isaiah 60: 1, Luke 4: 18-19)

Shalom!