This interview was conducted in person by Mark Cerulli in 1993, and first appeared in Movie Collector’s World magazine under the title “Great Scott!”
My first memory of Gordon Scott was as “Goliath” in the Italian epic, Goliath & The Vampires. In the opening shot of the film, he ripped a huge tree trunk out of the ground — which made quite an impression on me as a kid! As I got into watching the Tarzan series, I thought he was the best. Who can forget the fight sequence in Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure? In 1993 I finally had an opportunity to spend an hour or so with him. In person he was smart, funny, and his famously easygoing attitude was definitely on display. Gordon Scott — one of a kind. He will be missed.. Mark Cerulli, December, 2007
“So, like, you worked out with Hercules, right?” The man asked, pausing by the autograph table, staring hard at the black and white still.
“No…” Gordon Scott explained, he was Hercules, “I just grew a beard for that role.” The man walked away confused, Scott just smiled good naturedly and kept on signing.
Scott, making his first trip to New York in 25 years, was in town for Gallagher’s 1993 Salute to the Stars convention. Although Conrad Brook from Plan 9 From Outer Space had his own table and followers, Scott was clearly the main draw. When he later popped into the dealer’s room to sign a Tarzan poster, it wound up on that night’s local news.
Seated just outside the dealer’s room, packed with everything from The Fugitive teaser posters to vintage ’50s wind up robots (and, of course, a truckload of Tarzan memorabilia from the U.S., Europe, even Mexico), the actor was warm, friendly — and in-demand as fans lined up to shake his hand, take his photo, and of course, get his autograph (for a modest fee) on stills, magazines, posters, even scraps of paper.
For some people, it was a chance to meet someone they had seen in dozens of films during a 20 year period. Others had personal recollections to share — one young Arab man stepped forward and told Scott that his father had worked in the Cairo Hilton where the actor had stayed while shooting a film (Son of the Sheik) and remembered his shooting an arrow from the hotel’s penthouse suite into the hull of a dhow passing by on the Nile below. Scott instantly recalled the incident, his face lighting up, “The bow was sitting there, the window open and I just couldn’t resist…” the actor said of his 600 yard shot. (Relax, no damage was done except for some very startled fishermen!)
Another fan, a friend of Tarzan alumni Jock Mahoney, stopped by and told Scott that, “Jock used to say he’d always try to make dinner plans with you, but you would always cancel because you were out chasing the ladies.”
“Man does not live by bread alone.” Scott smiled — and the fans crowded around the table loved it.
Scott, a former wrangler and military policeman had absolutely no acting experience. What he did have was “the look” — a six foot three weightlifter’s physique and rugged, chiseled features that automatically commanded attention. When one female fan pointed at a still of a bare chested Scott as Tarzan, the actor said, “You should have seen me before I took the role, I could barely fit through doors!” Today, at 66, Scott is still an imposing presence, looking like he could still take on a jeep load of villains and come out on top.
After leaving the military in 1946, Scott returned to his native Oregon, took a pass at college, then tried working on his older brother’s ranch. But a cowboy’s life in remote Baker, Oregon wasn’t for him (“It was kind of isolated…”) Instead he kicked around Portland, and eventually took a trip to Las Vegas — a vacation that literally changed his life.
Scott was at the Sahara hotel, “just working out at the diving board” when the hotel’s two owners came up to him and offered him a job running the pool and health club. He worked at it for a year or so when he got the kind of “break” legions of young actors armed with headshots, expensive training and crowded resumes only dream about.
“I was doing the exact same thing (working out near the pool) when an agent came up, Walter Meyers, introduced himself and said that producer Sol Lesser was looking for a new Tarzan. I said, ‘Fine, let’s do it.’ ”
A week later Meyers sent him an agency contract — and made an appointment with Lesser. “I went down the following week,” Scott recalled, “met Mr. Lesser, tested on Wednesday, they saw the film on Friday and I was signed Saturday.” Boom! It was the stuff Hollywood legends are made of.
After a name change from Werschkul (“Sounded too much like Weissmuller”) to Scott, Gordon found himself on a Hollywood soundstage, portraying one of the screen’s biggest heroes. Heady stuff for someone who just a few months earlier had seen himself heading back to school for a deskbound career in aviation.
Scott starred in six Tarzan films, debuting with Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle in 1955, co-starring Vera Miles — whom he later married after the film wrapped. (They later divorced.)
Although Hidden Jungle and Tarzan’s Fight For Life were shot in the studio, Scott’s other Tarzan installments were filmed largely on location in Africa, including the highly acclaimed, Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (1959) and Tarzan the Magnificent (1960). Today’s movie audiences, blase about everything except the newest (or most outrageous) innovations, expect filmmakers to bring them to far off countries. But in the mid 1950s, it was something new and exciting. (“Actually filmed in Africa” the ads for Greatest Adventure screamed.) While swinging underneath jungle canopies, running across savanna and wading through swirling rivers, Scott took audiences places they had never been before, and it made perfect sense — Tarzan belonged in the jungle, a real jungle! While there, Scott also distinguished himself by being the only actor ever to bring 300 pounds of weights to such remote locations like the Ituri Forest and the Belgian Congo. As you can imagine, barbells went over big with the native tribes the Tarzan film crews encountered on location.
“They couldn’t believe it, they’d come over, point at me, giggle and try to pick them up!” Scott recalls, smiling at the memory.
Scott was to have starred in a Tarzan television series in the late 1050s, but neither NBC nor the producers could find a suitable sponsor — so the three episodes in the can were edited into his final Tarzan film, Tarzan and the Trappers. That made its world premiere on television in 1966 — roughly 8 years after it was filmed.
When asked what he remembered most about the role that shot him to fame, he paused and said, “There was a lot of humor behind it… and a lot of danger as well, particularly in Africa.”
Scott then went into detail on two situations that have become part of jungle filmmaking lore:
“The most dangerous situation I was ever in had to do with a beautiful, black maned, 500 pound lion named Bobby. We were using him as sort of a walk through… I had gone to Africa about two weeks early so he would get used to my scent and he had charged me, but always without his claws being out.
“After the film was over we had a press conference in Nairobi for some of the British newspapers and I was in the middle of this room with Bobby… at the end of the interview, this female journalist had a flash camera and when she popped that flash, the lion went nuts — he grabbed the nearest guy, which was me. He got me right in the middle of the calf… it just felt like a slap on the leg, so I jumped over the table and the trainer finally got him out of the room.
“I walked around the table and my pant leg had been torn off. The gal who took the picture looked down at my leg — as I did — and the blood was just pumping out, and she fainted!”
Scott pulled through, but it took 36 stitches to close the wound. Another famous close call came during production of Tarzan’s Fight For Life (1958). The actor was doing a fight scene with an uncooperative opponent — an 18 1/2 foot python weighing in at close to 200 pounds.
“It was a partial water shot,” Scott recalled, “and they had the snake in a warm box to kind of, put her to sleep. But we kept re-doing the shot and all of the water would wake the animal up… and the more it woke up, the more alert it became, and the tighter it squeezed me! They finally had to come in and pull it off.” Scott added with a chuckle. One imagines it probably easier to laugh about now!
After Tarzan the Magnificent, series producer Sy Weintraub loaned Scott to Dino de Laurentis to make a sword and sandal epic that was to become another cult favorite, Goliath and the Vampires. While on location in Yugoslavia, the Tarzan producers cabled him to extend his contract. (These were the days before faxes.) He wired back a polite “No thank you.” As Scott tells it, “It was a very strenuous role and they wanted to extend for another 7 years and by that time I had had enough.”
There was also a second reason — it was time for a wardrobe change. Scott seriously wanted out of, “that tiny leather nappie I was running around in.” But if he thought he was going to trade up to Brooks Brothers, he was wrong — “I went right into a Roman skirt!” he laughs.
While making Goliath, Scott received five offers to make movies in Europe, all of which he accepted, launching a second career. He starred in over 40 additional films, including a slew of Italian epics like Duel of the Titans (with long-time friend, and fellow weightlifter, Steve Reeves), Westerns, even contemporary spy thrillers like Green Code 3 (“I killed 22 people in that one… and they were on our side!”) Working from a home base in Rome, Scott made films in places like Spain, Germany and what is now war-torn Bosnia — “They had great technicians and facilities over there… and beautiful, rugged scenery.” As the sixties drew to a close, Scott made his last film to date, The Tramplers, a Western co-starring Jim Mitchum, released in 1968.
The business has changed considerably since then, evolving into a take-no-prisoners freelance trade — and Scott doesn’t like much of what he sees. (“I can’t believe some of it… now anybody can be a director.”) However, he freely admits that he did enjoy the original Terminator, Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (“I wanted to see how he could bring back the Western…”) and the current rage, Jurassic Park. He also has kind words for Arnold Schwartzeneggar’s work and his Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure co-star Sean Connery. (“A good, good actor… they (the Tarzan producers) wanted him for another movie, but he told them someone had taken out an option on him for a spy film. We all know what that role was!”)
At the time when Bruce Willis and Wesley Snipes were still laced in Buster Browns, Scott was flexing and fighting his way through the jungles and sand storms — and into the hearts of a generation of filmgoers. Today, Scott is still a heavy traveler, hitting the convention trail and exploring some new territory — several possible tie-in projects with Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. including a collector’s edition knife series. (He brings along a gleaming, foot-long beauty for personal appearances.) Of course, even in gritty midtown Manhattan, Scott doesn’t need a weapon — he’s Tarzan, and Hercules, and Goliath and…
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