Johnny Weissmuller ( WYSSE-mul-ər; born Johann Peter Weißmüller, German: [ˈjoːhan ˈpeːtɐ ˈvaɪsmʏlɐ]; June 2, 1904 – January 20, 1984) was an American Olympic swimmer, water polo player and actor. He set world records alongside winning five gold medals in the Olympics. He won the 100m freestyle and the 4 × 200 m relay team event in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris and the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. Weissmuller also won gold in the 400m freestyle, as well as a bronze medal in the water polo competition in Paris.
Following his retirement from swimming, Weissmuller played Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan in twelve feature films from 1932 to 1948; six were produced by MGM, and six additional films by RKO. Weissmuller went on to star in sixteen Jungle Jim movies over an eight-year period, then filmed 26 additional half-hour episodes of the Jungle Jim TV series.
Johann Peter Weißmüller was born on June 2, 1904, in Szabadfalva, in the Kingdom of Hungary into an ethnically Banat Swabian family. An ancestor had immigrated from Baden, Holy Roman Empire c. 1749. Three days later he was baptized into the Catholic faith by the Hungarian version of his German name, as János. Early the next year, January 26, 1905, his father, Peter Weißmüller, and mother, Elisabeth Weißmüller (née Kersch), took him on a twelve-day trip on the S.S. Rotterdam to Ellis Island. Soon they arrived in Windber, Pennsylvania, to live with family. Johnny's brother Peter was born the following September.
Three years later they relocated to Chicago to be with his mother's parents. His parents rented a single level in a shared house where he lived during his childhood. At age nine, Weissmüller contracted polio. His doctor recommended swimming to help his recovery from the disease. Fullerton Beach on Lake Michigan is where Johnny's love for swimming took off, for he took his first swimming lessons there. He excelled immediately and began entering and winning every race he could. Johnny's father deserted the family when Johnny was in the eighth grade. He left school to begin working in order to support his mother and younger brother.
When Weissmuller was 11 he lied to join the YMCA, which had a 12-year-old age minimum rule to join. He won every swimming race he entered and also excelled at running and high jumping. He eventually swam for one of the nation's best teams, the Illinois Athletic Club.
Weissmuller tried out for swimming coach Bill Bachrach, then associated with the Illinois Athletic Club. Impressed with what he saw, Bachrach took Weissmuller under his wing, and served as a strong father figure and mentor for Johnny. On August 6, 1921, Weissmuller swam one of first meets, entering and winning four Amateur Athletic Union races. He set his first two world records at the A.A.U. Nationals on September 27, 1921, in the 100m and 150yd events.
On July 9, 1922, Weissmuller broke Duke Kahanamoku's world record in the 100-meter freestyle, swimming it in 58.6 seconds.
He won the title for the 100-meter freestyle at the 1924 Summer Olympics, beating Kahanamoku for the gold medal. He also won the 400-meter freestyle and was a member of the winning U.S. team in the 4×200-meter relay.
Four years later, at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, he won another two gold medals. It was during this period that Weissmuller became an enthusiast for John Harvey Kellogg's holistic lifestyle views on nutrition, enemas and exercise. He went to Kellogg's Battle Creek, Michigan, sanatorium to dedicate its new 120-foot swimming pool, and break one of his own previous swimming records after adopting the vegetarian diet prescribed by Kellogg.
In 1927, Weissmuller set a new world record of 51.0 seconds in the 100-yard freestyle, which stood for 17 years. He improved it to 48.5 seconds at Billy Rose World's Fair Aquacade in 1940, aged 36, but this result was discounted, as he was competing as a professional.
As a member of the U.S. men's national water polo team, he won a bronze medal at the 1924 Summer Olympics. He also competed in the 1928 Olympics, where the U.S. team finished in seventh place.
In all, Weissmuller won five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal, 52 United States national championships, and set 67 world records. He was the first man to swim the 100-meter freestyle under one minute and the 440-yard freestyle under five minutes. He never lost a race and retired with an unbeaten amateur record. In 1950, he was selected by the Associated Press as the greatest swimmer of the first half of the 20th century.
During the 1930s, before he acted as Tarzan, Weissmuller was a swimming instructor at the Miami Biltmore Hotel. He broke a world record at the Biltmore pool.
Weissmuller's first film was the non-speaking role of Adonis in the movie Glorifying the American Girl. He appeared wearing only a fig leaf while hoisting actress Mary Eaton on his shoulders. He was noticed by the writer Cyril Hume, which led to his big break playing Tarzan in Tarzan the Ape Man in 1932.
When asked to play Tarzan, Weissmuller was already under contract to model BVD underwear. MGM agreed to have actresses such as Greta Garbo and Marie Dressler featured in BVD ads so that he could be released from his BVD contract. The author of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, was pleased with Weissmuller, although he so hated the studio's depiction of Tarzan as an individual who barely spoke English that he created his own concurrent Tarzan series starring Herman Brix as a suitably articulate version of the character (as is true to the original books).
Weissmuller is considered the definitive Tarzan. He originated the famous Tarzan yell, which was created by sound recordist Douglas Shearer. Shearer recorded Weissmuller's normal yell, but manipulated it and played it in reverse.
Weissmuller went on to play the lead in the film Jungle Jim. He appeared in sixteen Jungle Jim movies over eight years, going on to film 26 episodes of the Jungle Jim TV series.
Weissmuller retired from acting in 1957.