I remember very little of the two movies. I was distracted by Aunt Abigail and Aunt Martha; they were in their forties, at least a decade older than Lex Barker, and their moral outrage was palpable. Their clenched fists, their heavy breathing, the looks that flashed between them—especially when Tarzan was socializing with Cheetah, the chimp, or cozying up to Jane.
When we were leaving the Ioka after Tarzan’s Savage Fury, Aunt Abigail said, “Tarzan is more chimp than human.”
“I feel for Jane!” Aunt Martha chimed in.
Lex Barker’s last Tarzan film (Tarzan and the She-Devil) was in 1953. Uncle Martin and Uncle Johan took me to the Ioka to see it. This was the first time I’d ever been in a movie theater with them. Once again, Nora wasn’t in town. Now eighteen, she might have been at Mount Holyoke already.
I would have been surprised by my uncles’ behavior at the Ioka, if Nora hadn’t forewarned me.
“My dad and Uncle Johan are weird—they think everything is a comedy, even tragedies,” Nora had told me.
“Is that a Norwegian thing?” I asked her.
“It’s just a weird thing, Adam,” Nora insisted. “They laugh all the way through most movies.”
Maybe that was why Henrik didn’t come with us to see Tarzan and the She-Devil, which was not a comedy—at least not intentionally. Or Henrik had decided he was too old for Tarzan movies.
The evil ivory hunters burn Tarzan’s tree hut, and capture Tarzan and Jane. Tarzan takes the elephants’ side, opposed to ivory poaching. Tarzan summons the elephants; they stampede, trampling the villainous Raymond Burr. Lyra, the She-Devil, gets shot. Cheetah, the chimpanzee, provides the only comic relief—he gets caught stealing ostrich eggs. Yet Uncle Martin and Uncle Johan roared with laughter at everything. Parents with small children changed their seats, distancing themselves from the North Conway Norwegians’ crazed howls. Jane, held captive by the ivory hunters, provoked the loudest guffaws from Uncle Martin and Uncle Johan.
They were still laughing when we left the Ioka. “Almost as funny as foreign films, Adam,” Uncle Martin, Nora’s father, told me.
“The ones with subtitles,” Uncle Johan, Henrik’s dad, chimed in.
“I’ve never seen a movie you have to read,” I pointed out to them politely. Films with subtitles never came to the Ioka.
“We’ll soon remedy that!” Uncle Martin shouted.
“There’s a French film coming to the Franklin next week, Adam. French films are hysterical,” Uncle Johan told me.
I knew Nora would have assured me that not all French films were hysterical, but I was eager to see a foreign film with subtitles—even (perhaps especially) a tragedy.
Thus, because I saw Tarzan and the She-Devil with my uncles, I was invited to go with them to the Franklin Theatre in Durham to see my first foreign-language film with subtitles. I knew about the Franklin from Nora; her dad and Uncle Johan had taken her to see foreign films there. The University of New Hampshire was in Durham. It was a college town, and the Franklin was the nearest art-house movie theater around.
Nora had told me that Henrik was too impatient to read films with subtitles. Aunt Abigail and Aunt Martha associated all foreign films with sex. Unless they took Nora with them to the Franklin, Uncle Martin and Uncle Johan drove to Durham by themselves. From Exeter, it was a slow half-hour drive. The Franklin Theatre changed my life. Someone said it’s now a Thai food place. I don’t want to know. I will always remember my first time at the Franklin, and my first trip to Durham.
“Is the French film a comedy?” I cautiously asked Uncle Martin, who was driving.
“Of course it is!” Uncle Johan shouted from the shotgun seat.
I knew from Nora what my uncles thought of comedies and tragedies. As it turned out, my first film with subtitles was a comedy, and I laughed as much as Uncle Martin and Uncle Johan.
Directed by and starring Jacques Tati, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot—in English, Mr. Hulot’s Holiday—won me over. At twelve, I couldn’t tell the Marxist intellectuals from the fat capitalists, or recognize the other prototypes of the French political and social classes, but I understood they were all being mocked. Without meanness, the film makes fun of everyone—Mr. Hulot included.
Jacques Tati was a gentle and intelligent introduction to French cinema and movies with subtitles. The Franklin Theatre would become my film school. Those foreign films I saw in Durham made me want to be a screenwriter. Moby-Dick had introduced me to the nineteenth-century novel; I would soon read Great Expectations. The Franklin was my introduction to European cinema. In contrast, American movies seemed juvenile.
Take Tarzan, for example. The sexual scandals of many American movie stars outlast the short-lived fame of their films. Yes, I know—sexual infamy lives longer than movie stardom, not only in the United States. But just look at what happened to Lex.
Lex Barker and Lana Turner were married from 1953 to 1957, about as long as Lana usually stayed married. She was married seven times—eight, if you count her marrying Joseph Crane twice (their first marriage was annulled). In 1958, a year after Lana kicked out Lex, Lana’s then-boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, was stabbed to death in the Beverly Hills home Lana shared with her fourteen-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane. Cheryl stabbed Stompanato with a kitchen knife, either in self-defense or to protect her mother.
“That girl should have stabbed Tarzan!” Aunt Abigail declared, when she heard about the Stompanato killing.
“I’m sure Cheryl must have wanted to kill Tarzan,” Aunt Martha chimed in.
All my mother said about Cheryl Crane and the Stompanato stabbing was: “Poor Cheryl would have been only ten when her mom married Tarzan. She was thirteen when Lana kicked him out.”
“You weren’t too young for Tarzan. The big monkey took an interest in you, Ray,” Aunt Abigail reminded her.
“Meaning you were way too young, Ray, but that didn’t stop Tarzan!” Aunt Martha chimed in.
“I wasn’t that young—I wasn’t as young as poor Cheryl,” my mom said softly. She was almost whispering.
Little Ray was thirty-six when Johnny Stompanato was stabbed. I would have been sixteen, a student at Exeter—old enough to be part of a conversation about scandalous sexual behavior.
“Lana Turner and Lex Barker were guests at the Hotel Jerome,” my mother told me, but not when my aunts were around—we were alone. The Hotel Jerome had figured prominently in my mom’s conversation, but never concerning Tarzan.
“Lana and Lex were in Aspen when you were there?” I asked her.
“Heavens, no, sweetie—they were guests at the Jerome when they were married, after I was there. I just saw their picture in a movie magazine,” Little Ray said. My question hurt her; she misjudged what I was thinking. “No, I never skied with Tarzan—we weren’t in Aspen together, before the ape married Lana,” my mother suddenly said. “Look at yourself, Adam. You must be fully grown, or near to it. You’re five feet six; even if you’re still growing, I’ll be surprised if you get to five feet seven. Lex Barker was six feet four, sweetie. Sometimes I think you don’t know me at all. Tarzan couldn’t be your father.”
At sixteen, I knew that Lex Barker couldn’t be my father. The ape man had big hands. My father was no Tarzan. I felt badly that I’d asked my mom about him. It was sad how much she hated that she’d ever attracted Tarzan of the Apes.