Lex Barker was the tenth actor to play Tarzan, King of the Apes, but only the fifth since the advent of talking pictures. Though the native New Yorker (born Alexander Crichlow Barker in 1919) was the direct heir of Olympic swimmer turned matinee star Johnny Weissmuller in the role, other actors (Buster Crabbe, Glenn Morris and Herman Brix, another former Olympian who later changed his professional name to Bruce Bennett) had a go at Edgar Rice Burroughs' immortal tree-swinger in a number of low budget interim productions. The immensely popular Weissmuller films began at MGM with Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), shifting after five follow-ups to RKO with Tarzan Triumphs (1943). By the time of Tarzan's Magic Fountain (1949), Weissmuller was in his mid-forties and looking less and less the part, paving the way for Barker, who had enjoyed bits in Edward Dmytryk's Crossfire (1947) and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948). For his first at-bat, Barker inherited from Weissmuller a costar in Brenda Joyce, as Tarzan's helpmeet Jane, but had a new leading lady for each of his subsequent Tarzan outings. By the time he was paired with Joyce MacKenzie for Tarzan and the She-Devil (1953), Barker had informed producer Sol Lesser that he was through with life in a loincloth, leaving the vine for Gordon Scott to grab in 1955.

Working titles for Tarzan and the She-Devil included Tarzan and the Ivory Thieves and Tarzan and the Vampire. (Viscount Greystoke had encountered a more literal vampire queen and her toothy minions in the Sunday funny pages in 1946, in 17 thrilling chapters drawn by Reuben Moreira.) Production for Tarzan and the She-Devil got underway in mid-October 1952, with principal photography lasting four weeks. With the series' move to RKO, shooting locations for the Tarzan films had shifted from MGM's Florida locations (and the Iverson Ranch in Hollywood-adjacent Chatsworth) to the Los Angeles State and County Arboretum in Arcadia, hard by the Santa Anita Racetrack. Boasting lush vegetation, a lagoon, Baldwin Lake and the nearby profile of the San Gabriel Mountains, the 127 acre botanical garden was ready-made for jungle adventure and can be seen as well in Road to Singapore (1940), the Roots (1977) miniseries and the long-running Fantasy Island TV series. Tarzan and the She-Devil marked the fourth and final series entry for German émigré Kurt Neumann, who later directed the sci-fi classic The Fly (1958) starring Vincent Price but died between the film's premiere and general release.

Lex Barker was not the only cast member of Tarzan and the She-Devil day dreaming of brighter days. Costar Raymond Burr, cast as a villainous ivory poacher in the employ of femme fatale Monique van Vooren, was growing weary of his lot as an itinerant villain for-hire. Burr's rock-like body habitus made him a reliable "heavy" in such films as Raw Deal (1948), Borderline (1950), Meet Danny Wilson (1951) and Joseph Losey's 1951 remake of M until he was able to turn those same characteristics to his advantage as the star of the long-running TV series Perry Mason in 1957. As if to overcompensate for his onscreen villainy, Burr devoted much of his time to performing for the USO, touring military bases along the west coast in the company of his Raymond Burr Troupe of singers and musicians. He followed Tarzan and the She-Devil with a role in Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia (1953) at Warner Brothers before setting off on a two-week tour of military outposts and weather stations in Greenland, Baffinland and Newfoundland. Burr celebrated Christmas 1952 at a remote air force base in Labrador, singing carols with American servicemen, before setting off on a six-month tour of Korea to perform for American troops on the front lines. As for Monique van Vooren, the titled She-Devil, she would go on to achieve a belated cult status in the early seventies for memorable appearances in Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Decameron (1971), the softcore psychodrama Sugar Cookies (1973) and Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (1973).

Producer: Sol Lesser
Director: Kurt Neumann
Screenplay: Karl Kamb (writer); Edgar Rice Burroughs (characters); Carroll Young
Cinematography: Karl Struss
Art Direction: Carroll Clark
Music: Paul Sawtell
Film Editing: Leon Barsha
Cast: Lex Barker (Tarzan), Joyce MacKenzie (Jane), Raymond Burr (Vargo), Monique van Vooren (Lyra, the She-Devil), Tom Conway (Fidel), Michael Grainger (Philippe Lavarre), Henry Brandon (M'Tara, Lycopo Chief).
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by Richard Harland Smith

Sources:
Kings of the Jungle: An Illustrated Reference to "Tarzan" Onscreen and Television by David Fury (McFarland & Company, 2001)
"Lex Barker as Tarzan: Keeping the Pure Hero Alive" by Frederic Lombardi, Video Watchdog, issue 158, September/October 2010
Hiding in Plain Sight: The Secret Life of Raymond Burr by Michael Seth Starr (Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2008)
Raymond Burr: A Film, Radio and Television Biography by Ona L. Hill (McFarland & Company, 1999)