One of my favorite childhood memories was watching Tarzan on Saturdays while eating a plate of black beans, rice, and a banana. Little did I know at the time that Johnny Weissmuller (the best Tarzan) was a regular visitor to Cuba. He traveled to Cuba on many occasions and was even apprehended by Fidel Castro’s thugs in 1958.
When Tarzan arrived in Havana
Romanian-American Johnny Weissmuller, the most prominent swimmer of his time, went on to become the most popular Tarzan in American cinema. Weissmuller won three gold medals in the 1924 Olympics in Paris and was the champion in Amsterdam in the 100 meters freestyle.
Around a year before his debut as the jungle king man-monkey — which happened in 1932 — on the morning of August 25, 1931, he disembarked through the bay of Havana aboard the steamship Virginia, accompanied by his wife and swimmer Harold Slabby. In the afternoon of that day, he would have lunch as a special guest at the newly inaugurated Hotel Nacional in El Vedado, where he offered an exhibition in the pool in front of a large group of spectators, an event later reported by the Diario de la Marina.
Around five in the afternoon of the same day, Weissmuller’s brief transit through the capital of the island concluded, and he boarded the Virginia back to the United States. But he would return to the largest island of the Antilles transformed into the famous Tarzan, a character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who had been portrayed by actors like Elmo Lincoln, James Pierce, and Frank Merrill since the first film about the ape-man in 1918. However, Weissmuller would prove to be the most successful of them all.
Regarding another of his trips to Havana, in his book “My Father Tarzan” (published in 2002), Weissmuller’s son, Johnny Weissmuller Jr., recounts that in the summer of 1958, when his father was heading to a celebrity golf tournament organized in the Cuban capital, he and his friends were detained by members of the movement led by Fidel Castro. He identified himself by beating his chest with his fists and emitting Tarzan’s characteristic cry. The attackers recognized him, asked for his autograph, and escorted him to the golf course.
With that visit on August 25, Weissmuller became one of the first art personalities hosted at the Hotel Nacional and another world-famous figure who visited the island during its republican era. The actor died in 1984 in Acapulco, Mexico, where he spent his final years.