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Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan and the Green Goddess, the 1938 Edward A. Kull & Wilbur McGaugh action adventure jungle thriller sequel ("Edgar Rice Burroughs' amazing sequel to 'The New Adventures of Tarzan'"; "Thrills and excitement beyond your wildest dreams!"; "A Burroughs-Tarzan Production") starring Bruce Bennett (in the title role as Tarzan; billed as "Herman Brix" on original release posters only; he is referred to as "The Olympic Champion"; on all early re-release posters he is billed as "Bruce Bennett", because he had achieved much fame with that name, and this is an easy way to determine if a poster from this movie is from the first original release), Ula Holt, Frank Baker, Ashton Dearholt, and Jack Mower. Note that the stories BEHIND the making of this serial are far more interesting than the movie itself. It all started in 1929, when an actor named Ashton Dearholt (who had made 60 movies between 1916 and 1927) became friends with Edgar Rice Burroughs. He was an adventurer who starred in many minor movies, but he wanted to become a producer in the movie business, and he kept trying to get Burroughs to let him make a Tarzan movie. Burroughs resisted, and in 1932, he signed a deal with MGM for a major Tarzan movie, and that seemed to end Dearholt's chance of making a deal, but in 1934, Dearholt found a beautiful young blonde that he left his wife for, and Dearholt's wife found consolation in the arms of Burroughs, who married her, and took custody of Dearholt's two children! One might think that would have put a crimp in the Burroughs/Dearholt relationship, but they remained good friends, and perhaps out of guilt, Burroughs signed a deal for Dearholt to make a Tarzan movie. Burroughs' sole involvement in the movie was putting up money and selling the rights, and Dearholt went to Guatemala (on the "Ashton-Dearholt Expedition"!), but the movie had all sorts of problems (Dearholt himself played the villain, and his new young girlfriend played the lead actress), and after it was partly completed, they quit filming and left Guatemala. They returned to the U.S. and managed to create a completed film from the footage they had shot, although it was far different from the original script. The movie did surprisingly well at first, but then MGM threatened theaters that showed the movie, and it got terrible U.S. distribution, although it did well overseas. Ultimately, none of the actors or crew were paid, and Dearholt never made another movie. But he remained good friends with Burroughs until his sudden death in 1942! Note that there was also a feature version of this serial, which was unlike normal feature versions! The serial had a 65 mintue first episode (to try to "hook" viewers in), which ended in a cliffhanger, which was quickly resolved in chapter 2. So they simply took all of chapter 1, the beginning of chapter 2, and 45 seconds of new footage, and made that that "feature version" (which was released in two parts in some countries). In 1938, trying to milk more money out of this, the entire rest of the serial (the rest of chapter 2, and the other chapters) was condensed down into a second feature version, given the title of "Tarzan and the Green Goddess" (so that people who had seen the original serial would be misled into thinking they were seeing a newly filmed movie)!
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Artist: Manfredo Acerbo

Important Added Info: Note that Italian posters from the first few years after World War II are among the most rare posters there are! Apparently, there were still major paper shortages in Italy, and few posters were printed, and most were recycled. This is an extremely rare first release Italian one-panel poster from 1948.

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