Child actor who played Boy, the foundling son of Tarzan and Jane, in eight Hollywood films
After three hit Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller in the title role and Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane, MGM decided to give a son to the apeman and his mate in Tarzan Finds a Son! (1939). However, he had to be a foundling because, according to the Legion of Decency, the scantily clad jungle couple were not married, and presumably never had sex. "Boy", as he was named, was played by Johnny Sheffield, who has died aged 79 of a heart attack at his California home after falling off a ladder while pruning a tree.
In the Tarzan films, the fact that the orphaned offspring of a British couple killed in a plane crash in the jungle had an American accent was never explained. Neither Tarzan, whose dialogue was limited to grunts and monosyllables, nor Boy bore...
After three hit Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller in the title role and Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane, MGM decided to give a son to the apeman and his mate in Tarzan Finds a Son! (1939). However, he had to be a foundling because, according to the Legion of Decency, the scantily clad jungle couple were not married, and presumably never had sex. "Boy", as he was named, was played by Johnny Sheffield, who has died aged 79 of a heart attack at his California home after falling off a ladder while pruning a tree.
In the Tarzan films, the fact that the orphaned offspring of a British couple killed in a plane crash in the jungle had an American accent was never explained. Neither Tarzan, whose dialogue was limited to grunts and monosyllables, nor Boy bore...
- 10/27/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Johnny Sheffield, best known as Boy in MGM's Tarzan movie series and as the lead in the low-budget Bomba, the Jungle Boy film series, died of heart attack at his home in Chula Vista (in the greater San Diego area) on Friday, Oct. 15. According to the Los Angeles Times obit, several hours earlier Sheffield had fallen off a ladder while pruning a palm tree. He was 79. The son of British silent-film actor Reginald Sheffield, Johnny Sheffield (born April 11, 1931, in Pasadena, northeast of downtown Los Angeles) got his film career started in Tarzan Finds a Son! (1939), in which Sheffield played a foundling — his parents (mom was future MGM leading lady Laraine Day) had died in a plane crash. Adoptive parents Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) and Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan) frolicked with Boy in two more movies, Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941) and Tarzan in New York (1942). By then, [...]...
- 10/19/2010
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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