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Tarzan yell
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Tarzan yell
The Tarzan yell or Tarzan's jungle call is the distinctive, ululating yell of the character Tarzan as portrayed by actor Johnny Weissmuller in the films based on the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs starting with Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). The yell was a creation of the movies based on what Burroughs described in his books as simply "the victory cry of the bull ape."
Although the RKO Picture version of the Tarzan yell was putatively that of Weissmuller, different stories exist as to how the Tarzan yell was created.
One claim is that the yell was developed and recorded by opera singer Lloyd Thomas Leech. Leech performed opera from the 1940s into the '60s, winning the Chicagoland Music Festival on August 17, 1946, and went on to sing throughout the U.S., touring with several opera companies. Leech recalls inventing the Tarzan yell at a promotional event for the film, where a representative of the studio had said that the yell was still to be decided. Leech suggested a form of yodel as "a real wild sound", and says that he went on to record the cry for the first three Tarzan films, with Weissmuller later learning to perform it himself.
According to politician Bill Moyers, the yell was created by combining the recordings of three men: one baritone, one tenor, and one hog caller from Arkansas. Another widely published notion concerns the use of an Austrian yodel played backwards at abnormally fast speed.[citation needed] Biographer John Taliaferro recounts how MGM studios "concocted a story that the sound was actually the invention of engineers, who had blended Weissmuller's own voice with a hyena's howl played backward, a camel's bleat, the pluck of a violin, and a soprano's high C. It was a commentary on the mystique of talkies and the bizarre singularity of the yell itself that the public accepted the studio's fib as fact."
Weissmuller maintained that the yell was actually his own voice. His version is supported by his son and by his Tarzan co-star, Maureen O'Sullivan,[citation needed] and biographer John Taliaferro who writes that "the noise was nothing more than Weissmuller's own yodel, which he had acquired, after a fashion, from the German beer halls and immigrant picnics of his youth".
The yell, as used in the six MGM films, is a palindrome, it sounds the same when played backwards, indicating some manipulation in the sound editing department. The first part of the sound plays normally but when it reaches the half way point, it becomes the same sound but played in reverse.[better source needed]
The sound itself is a registered trademark and service mark, owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
Registration Numbers: 2210506; 3841800; 4462890.
Registration Dates: December 15, 1998; August 31, 2010; January 7, 2014.
Description of Mark: The mark consists of the sound of the famous Tarzan yell. The mark is a yell consisting of a series of approximately ten sounds, alternating between the chest and falsetto registers of the voice, as follow -
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Tarzan yell
The Tarzan yell or Tarzan's jungle call is the distinctive, ululating yell of the character Tarzan as portrayed by actor Johnny Weissmuller in the films based on the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs starting with Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). The yell was a creation of the movies based on what Burroughs described in his books as simply "the victory cry of the bull ape."
Although the RKO Picture version of the Tarzan yell was putatively that of Weissmuller, different stories exist as to how the Tarzan yell was created.
One claim is that the yell was developed and recorded by opera singer Lloyd Thomas Leech. Leech performed opera from the 1940s into the '60s, winning the Chicagoland Music Festival on August 17, 1946, and went on to sing throughout the U.S., touring with several opera companies. Leech recalls inventing the Tarzan yell at a promotional event for the film, where a representative of the studio had said that the yell was still to be decided. Leech suggested a form of yodel as "a real wild sound", and says that he went on to record the cry for the first three Tarzan films, with Weissmuller later learning to perform it himself.
According to politician Bill Moyers, the yell was created by combining the recordings of three men: one baritone, one tenor, and one hog caller from Arkansas. Another widely published notion concerns the use of an Austrian yodel played backwards at abnormally fast speed.[citation needed] Biographer John Taliaferro recounts how MGM studios "concocted a story that the sound was actually the invention of engineers, who had blended Weissmuller's own voice with a hyena's howl played backward, a camel's bleat, the pluck of a violin, and a soprano's high C. It was a commentary on the mystique of talkies and the bizarre singularity of the yell itself that the public accepted the studio's fib as fact."
Weissmuller maintained that the yell was actually his own voice. His version is supported by his son and by his Tarzan co-star, Maureen O'Sullivan,[citation needed] and biographer John Taliaferro who writes that "the noise was nothing more than Weissmuller's own yodel, which he had acquired, after a fashion, from the German beer halls and immigrant picnics of his youth".
The yell, as used in the six MGM films, is a palindrome, it sounds the same when played backwards, indicating some manipulation in the sound editing department. The first part of the sound plays normally but when it reaches the half way point, it becomes the same sound but played in reverse.[better source needed]
The sound itself is a registered trademark and service mark, owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
Registration Numbers: 2210506; 3841800; 4462890.
Registration Dates: December 15, 1998; August 31, 2010; January 7, 2014.
Description of Mark: The mark consists of the sound of the famous Tarzan yell. The mark is a yell consisting of a series of approximately ten sounds, alternating between the chest and falsetto registers of the voice, as follow -