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Even among child actors, Johnny Sheffield had an unusual career,
because during his entire career, he was pretty much stuck to one movie
genre and one alone - and as a result, one could see Johnny Sheffield growing up in the jungle (not the
real jungle of course, just the studio backlot, numerous indoor sets, and
some outdoor sets made to look like some sort of jungle including the
ever-present Bronson Canyon) from age 8 onwards, and as if that wasn't
enough, you saw him growing up next to Tarzan
(as played by Johnny Weissmuller [Johnny
Weissmuller bio - click here]) who was his on-screen father
until he was 16. And once Johnny Sheffield reached manhood, he would not
leave the jungle. He might have left Tarzan,
but he remained true to his character in his post-Tarzan
films and went on to play Bomba
the Jungle Boy - which was pretty much a mixture of a
continuation of his character in the Tarzan
films on one hand and quite simply a young Tarzan
on the other (at least in the films, the books the Bomba
films were based on were a bit of a different matter). All of this is of
course not to say that Sheffield did not play in films outside the Tarzan-
and Bomba-series
- he did (especially early in his career, when he went to play Bomba,
he pretty much stuck with the character). Johnny Sheffield however was
not the best, most versatile actor to play just any role, and after the Bomba-series
folded and a TV-pilot for - you guessed it - another jungle series did not
catch on, he, then only 24, made the right decision, went to college and
became a(n according to all reports rather successful) businessman, leaving
behind almost two dozens of jungle movies ranging from the dull to the
wild to the pretty good, and many of them must-haves for jungle movie
lovers (like myself).
Early Life, Early Career Johnny
Shheffield was born
Jon Matthew Sheffield Cassan in 1931 in Pasadena, California. His father
was British actor Reginald Sheffield, who much like Johnny himself,
started his acting career when he was still a child - father Reginald's
film career lasted a good deal longer than Johnny's though, from 1913 to
his death in 1957, when Johnny's career had already been over for two
years. That said though, other than Johnny, Reginald Sheffield never
really made it to leading man status - father Sheffield's most prominent
role might be that of the recurring character Professor Mayberry on the Rocky
Jones, Space Ranger tv-series in 1954. In 1938, when he
was no older than 7, young Johnny, both encouraged and trained by his
father, made his first experiences on a theatre stage in the West Coast
adaptation of the Broadway hit On Borrowed Time, in which he played
the juvenile lead. He was good enough in the role that he was eventually
called to the Broadway to reprise the role as a replacement. In 1938,
Johnny also made his first screen appearance, as Napoleon's son in The
Man on the Rock (Edward L.Cahn) a short of MGM's
Historical Mysteries-series. Johnny's breakthrough as a
child actor was still one year away though, and it was in a role Johnny
got simply because his father answered a casting call ...
Tarzan at MGM (and other films)
After three films of their Tarzan-series
starring Johnny Weissmuller [Johnny
Weissmuller bio - click here] and Maureen O'Sullivan, the
powers-that-be at MGM
must have realized they had pretty much exhausted the basic formula as it
is, so it was high time to add something new to the franchise - and that
something was a(n adoptive) son for Tarzan and Jane, to be called Boy. By
the way, Boy was not a creation of Tarzan-creator
Edgar Rice Burroughs, in his novels, Tarzan and Jane had a real son,
Korak, but in the 1930's, it was unthinkable for an unmarried couple like
Tarzan and Jane (who were married in the books) to have a real son. So
MGM sent out a
casting call allegedly reading
"Have you a Tarzan Jr. in your backyard ?", which Reginald
Sheffield enthusiastically answered as he thought little Johnny did not
only bring the acting experience necessary for the role but also a certain
physical prowess a role like that of Boy would demand - after all father
Sheffiled saw to it that his son did a (rather rigid) exercise-program
every day.
About 300 boys answered MGM's
casting call, but the role finally went to Johnny Sheffield, allegedly
also thanks to the intervention of Johnny Weissmuller himself who took an
instant liking in the kid and even helped young Johnny cover up the fact
that he couldn't swim - something he was required to do in Tarzan
Finds a Son (1939, Richard Thorpe), the first Tarzan-film
Johnny Sheffield was in, and almost all of the subsequent films. But
Weissmuller reportedly took it upon himself to train the boy - and who
better to have as a swimming teacher at that day and age than Johnny
Weissmuller ? Taken by its own merits, Tarzan
Finds a Son is actually less than great, a rather cheesy story
about a boy (Sheffield of course) who loses his parents in a planecrash
and who is soon adopted by Tarzan and Jane, and the three soon emerge into
being the
perfect nuclear family ... until some greedy relatives of Boy stop by and
try to take him from his foster parents - in order to do away with him and
get their hands on his inheritance of course. All ends happily though, as
you might have expected. By and large, the film suffers from its emphasis
on young Boy's shenanigans and family values rather than exotic
adventures. However, its rather simplistic and cheesy plot aside, Tarzan
Finds a Son really did breath new air into the Tarzan-series
that has gone from good (Tarzan
the Ape Man [1932, W.S.Van Dyke]) to great (Tarzan
and his Mate [1934, Cedric Gibbons, Jack Conway]) to stale (Tarzan
Escapes [1936, Richard Thorpe]) in the course of a mere three
movies, and it sparked new audience interest - so it came as no surprise
that
MGM kept Boy
in the cast of future Tarzan-films
... In the late 1930's/early 40's, MGM
was as big a studio as it could get, a studio that provided big budgets
even for its lesser films, that had an impressive studio-lot with various
soundstages and backlots for outdoor shoots, an own zoo plus animal
trainer, and that had many a big star under contract including quite a few
child actors - including Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland -, and to
accomodate its child stars, MGM
even had its own school on the lot.
Above-mentioned Judy
Garland and Mickey Rooney, who went to the same (studio-owned) school as
Johnny Sheffield (though both of them were quite a bit older than him),
played the leads in Sheffield's next film, the Busby Berkeley-musical Babes
in Arms (1939) - but Sheffields role in this film that was totally
tailored for Garland and Rooney was (naturally) much smaller and less
important than in Tarzan
Finds a Son. In Little Orvie (1940, Ray
McCarey), a comedy/drama of the B-variety Sheffield made on loan to RKO,
Sheffield would play the title role on the other hand, but by now the film
is largely forgotten. Over at Twentieth
Century Fox, Sheffield played another supporting role in the
B-Western Lucky Cisco Kid (1940, H.Bruce Humberstone), the third Cisco
Kid-movie starring Cesar Romero (after Warner Baxter had played
the role in four films).
In the Warner
Brothers-produced sports
drama/bio pic Knute Rockne All American (1940, Lloyd Bacon) with Pat
O'Brien as the famed titular footballer and Ronald Reagan, Sheffield, by
now 9 years of age, plays Rockne aged 7 while his younger brother Billy
plays Rockne aged 4.
Ronald Reagan also starred in Johnny's next film, Million
Dollar Baby (1941, Curtis Bernhardt), another Warner
Brothers-production, a comedy/romance also starring Priscilla
Lane, Jeffrey Lynn and May Robson, but as with most of his non-Tarzan-films
from that era, Sheffield's role in this one is rather small and
neglectable. Finally, in 1941, Sheffield returned to the Tarzan-series,
and for the remainder of his career he would only all too rarely strain
from the series and later the Bomba-series
and only for uncredited roles in films like Roughly Speaking (1945,
Michael Curtiz) and the Lassie-film The Sun Comes Up
(1949, Richard Thorpe).
Tarzan's
Secret Treasure (1941, Richard Thorpe), to be quite honest, is not
all that great a movie, it's pretty much a rehash of all the previous films,
presenting us with greedy white men (yet again) who invade Tarzan's
territory, and in the end, he has his hands full to save everyone,
especially Jane and Boy, from some savage natives. Sheffield's Boy is less
essential to Tarzan's
Secret Treasure's plot than he was to Tarzan
Finds a Son, and he does little more than increase the film's
cuteness factor with a series of skits with his animal friends - even if
cuteness and adventure don't necessarily go well with each other.
Somehow,
the powers-that-be at MGM
must have felt that their Tarzan-formula
was growing pretty tired pretty quickly, so for their final Tarzan-film
(for a while) they decided to take a novel and interesting approach:
Transplant the jungle man and his family from Africa to New York City. The
film in question is of course Tarzan's
New York Adventure (1942, Richard Thorpe), and it actually turned
out to be the freshest Tarzan-film
in quite some time. In this one, a white hunter stumbles upon Boy -
Sheffield of course - and is amazed by his animal training skills - so
much so that he decides it would be a good idea to get the boy to New York
and have him work at a circus ... and to that end, he has to kidnap Boy.
Tarzan and Jane of course go after Boy to save him, but when they fight
over hm in a court of law, they even lose custody - but of course,
everything ends happily once again. Why this one works better than the
previous films of the series has several reasons: First of all, it's of
course amusing to see Tarzan as such in the metropolis of New York City,
and fortunately, director Thorpe put his emphasis on the comedy aspects of
the film. Another reason for the film to work - and especially Johnny
Sheffield's character in the film - is that Boy is fully integrated into
the proceedings, and his animal training skits, that seemed a tad out of
place in Tarzan's
Secret Treasure, have become an important plot element in this
one, so much so that they are no longer annoying. All of this makes the
movie work of course, and it was a reasonable success at the box office
too and has since become a fan favourite ... yet after Tarzan's
New York Adventure, MGM
decided to sell the Tarzan-property
to producer Sol Lesser, who moved the franchise, and Weissmuller and
Sheffield with it, over to RKO.
Sol Lesser and RKO In
the 1930's, producer Sol Lesser made two attempts to rival MGM's
Tarzan-series,
the cheap but thrilling serial Tarzan
the Fearless (1933, Robert F.Hill) starring Buster Crabbe [Buster
Crabbe bio - click here] and the rather atrocious feature Tarzan's
Revenge (1938, D.Ross Lederman) starring Glenn Morris. Neither of
these however even remotely matched the success of the MGM-Tarzans
- so when Lesser somehow got his hands on the rights for the series, he
grabbed them - and only one year after Tarzan's
New York Adventure, he produced his first Tarzan-film
starring Johnny Weissmuller and Johnny Sheffield in their usual roles for RKO.
The
first of the RKO-Tarzans
was Tarzan Triumphs
(1943, Wilhelm Thiele), and it immediately shows that these films could
not match the MGM-Tarzans
in scope: The film was comparatively cheaply made and thus lacked lavish
production values one has gotten used to at MGM,
and especially the zoo the studio and Johnny Sheffield's Boy
had at their their disposal was a thing of the past. Also in Tarzan
Triumphs and all subsequent Tarzan-films
featuring Johnny Sheffield, Africa was weirdly devoid of black
natives, a piece of very obvious racism I simply fail to understand - I
mean it's Africa, why are all the natives white ? That all said
however, Tarzan Triumphs
is not a bad movie as such, it's no masterpiece but it actually manages to
infuse new blood into the series simply by diverting from the MGM-formula,
and instead of a relatively straight-forward jungle tale you get a
pulpy plot about a lost ancient city (inhabited by an all-white populace)
and Nazis doing their usual evil things - and all of that is fun in a trashy
sort of way. Sheffield's Boy, lacking
the animals he had at his disposal at MGM,
gets less scenes to himself but is totally integrated into the plot. Oh
and by the way, in Tarzan Triumphs
there is no Jane since Maureen O'Sullivan did not follow
Weissmuller and Sheffield over to RKO,
and RKO
probably didn't think it was too wise to immediately introduce a new Jane
- and besides that, the film's plot does not require Jane to be around,
actually she would have been in the way of the plot. In the film her
absence was explained away by her helping the Allied Forces in their war
efforts (remember, in
1943, World War II was still on). Jane was
also absent from the next RKO-Tarzan,
Tarzan's Desert
Mystery (1943, Wilhelm Thiele), a film that plays pretty much like
an Arabian Nights adventure, but with science fiction monsters
(giant spiders, giant lizards, giant man-eating plants) tagged onto it,
just for good measure. Of course, the film is totally silly, but it's
actually fun if you just don't take it seriously. Tarzan
and the Amazons (1945, Kurt Neumann) brought Jane back in the form
of Brenda Joyce, but she doesn't feature too prominently in the film's
plot. Actually, it's Sheffield's Boy who carries much of the plot here, as
he in his naivity is persuaded by some scientists to take them to some
hidden city mainly populated by amazons - even though the amazons want to
remain hidden and the guide (Barton MacLane) of the scientists turns out
to be a baddie. At the climax of the movie, Boy is even condemned to death
... but of course Tarzan saves the day. The film could have been a kitsch
masterpiece, but some unfortunate pacing (like spending too much time with
reintroducing Jane into the series and too little time with the amazons
and their hidden city) keep it from really coming into its own. But at
least Johnny Sheffield's Boy is really integrated into the film this time. By the time Tarzan
and the Leopard Woman (1946, Kurt Neumann) was made, Johnny
Sheffield was already about 15 years of age and therefore no longer able
to add the cuteness factor to the proceedings he was originally cast for -
so in this film a new kid was added to the proceedings, Tommy Cook,
playing one of those white native boys who seem to run around in Africa in
no short supply. Cook plays a young boy whom Tarzan and Jane readily adopt
(in addition to Sheffield's Boy), not knowing of course that he is
actually a member of the evil leopard cult wanting to make his first kill
- and he has chosen Jane to be his victim. The whole film of course is
not to be taken seriously, maybe less so than the previous films, to be
entertaining, another piece of high camp with a far-fetched plot, evil cultists doing bizarre
cult-dances and wearing silly outfits, and cult fave Acquanetta playing
their leader - which sure enough might not be to everyone's taste. Another
thing: With Tarzan
and the Leopard Woman, Tarzan, Jane and Boy have finally become
your typical nuclear family, with Brenda Joyce's Jane being nothing more
than a dull housewife, Weissmuller's Tarzan her slobby husband who always
finds excuses to not do repairs around the house, and Sheffield's Boy
playing your typical kind-hearted but troublesome teenage son - none of
this a too welcome development if you take the series seriously, but
rather humourous if you don't. Tarzan
and the Huntress (1947, Kurt Neumann), an at best so-so story
about greedy hunters invading Tarzan's jungle '(yet again), was Sheffield's last film
as Boy, and when watching the movie it's not hard to see why: He is by now
taller than Jane, his voice has already broken, and his physique, quite
hunky for a sixteen-year-old and almost rivaling Weissmuller's, does no
longer signal cuteness in any sense - in a word, Boy has become a
man. And since he no longer fitted the requirements of the role,
Sheffield was dropped from the series with Tarzan
and the Mermaids (1948, Robert Florey), which incidently was
Weissmuller's last film as Tarzan
(while Brenda Joyce would stay with the series for yet one more film, Tarzan's
Magic Fountain [1949, Lee Sholem], now with Lex Barker in the
title role [Lex Barker bio -
click here]). Boy's/Sheffield's absence from the plot was
explained away with "Boy has gone to school in England" in Tarzan
and the Mermaids, but watching Tarzan
and the Huntress, you couldn't help but notice that in a certain
way, Weissmuller's Tarzan has gotten competition in his own ranks, and one
couldn't help but wondering what became of the now very adult Boy ...
Bomba the Jungle Boy After
his demise from the Tarzan-series,
it wasn't exactly easy for Johnny Sheffield to find other film work,
especially since he has become famous as a character rather than as an
actor, and to be quite honest, his acting skills were limited. However,
by 1949, Monogram
had acquired the rights to the Bomba the Jungle Boy-series, a
series of boy's adventure books by one Roy Rockwood - who was actually a
collective of writers in the employ of the Stratemeyer Syndicate -, which
was especially popular in the 1920's and 30's. The powers-that-be at Monogram
changed around the original concepts of the series a bit and gave the lead
role in the film Bomba,
the Jungle Boy (1949, Ford L.Beebe) to Johnny Sheffield, who now
played the role as a mix of Tarzan's
Boy all grown up and, well, Tarzan
himself. Of course, on a budget level, Bomba,
the Jungle Boy was one or two steps down even from RKO
let alone from Sheffield's days with MGM,
but the film is actually a rather compact and enjoyably unpretentious
jungle adventure, as is the whole series which is often ridiculed on the
basis of its cheapness alone. Interestingly enough, 1949 did
not only see the release of Bomba,
the Jungle Boy (and thus the launch of the Bomba the Jungle
Boy-series) but also the debut of a new Tarzan, Lex Barker [Lex Barker bio -
click here] in Tarzan's
Magic Fountain (1949, Lee Sholem), and just the previous year,
Johnny Weissmuller [Johnny
Weissmuller bio - click here] had launched his Jungle
Jim-series with Jungle
Jim (1948, William Berke) - and comparing these three films (and
the series each spawned), Bomba,
the Jungle Boy doesn't fare bad at all. Sure, it's by far the
cheapest film and lacks production values of the other two flicks, but at
the same time it's also the only film that actually pays respect to
Africa, where all three films are set (but neither was shot, of course),
the only film that features black natives, and they, too, are
treated with respect like all black characters in the film. And the story,
while being a tad simplistic, certainly doesn't insult the audience's
intelligence. While Bomba
obviously mimicks Tarzan
though, there are some slight but significant differences between the two
characters. More than Tarzan ever was, Bomba is guided by his primal
instincts, so much so that he seems rude, but also wise in other
instances. Especially in early films, Bomba is often physically attracted
to the female lead (in later films, the erotic tension was toned down and
Bomba became more domesticated). Bomba is no notorious do-gooder as Tarzan
is, often leaving characters to their own fate - or at least trying to do
so, invariably he gets mixed up in their affairs nevertheless. Bomba is
also more straight forward than Tarzan and lacks his cunning, as well as
his almost superhuman strength and fighting abilities (Bomba is overcome
by his adversary in many a film, but usually wins the upper hand in the
finale of course). Bomba,
the Jungle Boy was actually successful enough to spawn the Bomba-series
of 12 films to all be directed by serial- and B-movie specialist Ford
L.Beebe and produced by Monogram
and later Allied
Artists (which actually was nothing other than Monogram
under a different name), and all of course starring Johnny Sheffield. Still
in 1949, Bomba,
the Jungle Boy got its first sequel, Bomba
on Panther Island (Ford L.Beebe), which though is nothing more
than more of the same, and where the first film at least felt somehow
fresh, this one is just boring.
The real low of the series though is The
Lost Volcano (Ford L.Beebe) from 1950, a film in which Sheffield's
Bomba, mirroring Tarzan
adopting Sheffield's Boy, takes care of a jungle boy of his own (though
this jungle boy's origins differ from Boy's significantly). Add to this
especially sloppy jungle sets (including one background painting supposed
to show the wide horizon on which actors almost constantly cast their
shadows, putting it quite literally into [or out of ?] perspective) and
you're left with very little. (Interestingly
enough, as of this writing - April 2008 - of all the Bomba-films,
only The Lost Volcano
has been officially released on DVD.) As mentioned above, the Bomba-series
in general does respect its African setting and shines a mainly positive
light on its natives who are uniformly black - in all but The
Hidden City (1950, Ford L.Beebe), which is less of a jungle- and
more of an Arabian nights-tale and which only features one black
character, played by Smoki Whitfield, a series regular who appeared in 9
of the 12 Bomba-films.
The Hidden City was
written by Carroll Young, who also wrote some of the wilder and weirder Tarzan-
and Jungle
Jim-films. In later films, Bomba
is moved away from the image of the monosyllabic primitive, like
in Elephant Stampede
(1951, Ford L.Beebe), in which he has persuaded a native girl (Donna
Martell) to teach him to read and write, and in Bomba
and the Jungle Girl (1952, Ford L.Beebe), he is not only able to
speak in whole, even complex, sentences, he also seems to have
philosophical questions about his own existence on his mind and goes
searching for his own origins. Don't let this slightly lofty description
put you off Bomba
and the Jungle Girl though, actually, despite being already the
8th entry, it is probably the best, tensest and most atmospheric film of
the series, with Bomba's questions about his own origins only serving as
character motivation (and moving him even further away from being nothing
more than a selfless do-gooder). By the mid-1950's, the production
company Monogram
was no more - but only by name, actually Monogram
continued to operate as Allied
Artists, which initially was founded as a subdivision of Monogram
to produce prestige pictures (as opposed to Monogram's
B-output) but soon was found fishing in the exactly same waters as its
mother company. So eventually, one of the two brands had to go, and the
powers-that-be decided it was time for Monogram
to fold while Allied
Artists carried on - and quite successfully so - until the
mid-1970's. Like other filmseries, the Bomba-series
was taken over by Allied
Artists and went on for four more pictures, Safari Drums
(1953), The Golden Idol
and Killer Leopard (both 1954), and Lord of the Jungle
(1955), all (of course) directed Ford L.Beebe, and apart from a different
logo at the beginning of the movies, remarkably little had changed. And
actually, The Golden Idol
even incorporated footage from an earlier, Monogram-produced
Bomba-film,
The
Hidden City.
All Good Things Come to an End
By the mid-1950's, the movieworld (and especially the B-movieworld) had
changed, thanks to the widespread acceptance of television, and thus the
traditional B-movie aimed particularly at kids was a thing of the past,
replaced by a new brand of B-picture, the drive-in flick, targeted at
predominately teenage audiences. Accordingly, many B-movie series found a
new lease of life on television, indlucing Jungle
Jim starring Johnny Weissmuller and Dick
Tracy starring Ralph Byrd, plus B-movie cowboys like Roy
Rogers [Roy Rogers bio - click
here] and Gene Autry also launched successful TV-shows that
resembled their B-Westerns.
In this light it is hardly surprising that Reginald Sheffield, Johnny's
father, tried to launch a series of his own with Johnny in the lead, which
would actually be set in the jungle - and thus, Bantu
the Zebra Boy saw the light of day in 1955, created, produced and directed
by Reginald Sheffield. Bantu was pretty much Bomba
all over again, only that he now rode a zebra and wore a zebra loincloth.
But apart from being derivative (aren't all jungle series ?), Bantu
the Zebra Boy was actually quite a decent effort with much
outdoors footage and nice sets, and it looks better than most contemporary
jungle series ... however, the film was never turned into a series, maybe
because Sheffield didn't have enough drawing power to carry the series on
his own, maybe because there were already enough jungle series around at
the time, or maybe the series did simply require too high a budget, who
knows.
In 1955, Johnny Sheffield was 24 years old - and he had to realize
there was no more room for him in the movie business: As an actor he
lacked charisma and versatility to break into other genres, the jungle
pictures he made had become a thing of the past, and television found no
spot fro his series ... so Johnny Sheffield, instead of desperately trying
to cling onto his declining career and living in the past, made the right
decision, turned his back on the film industry and instead turned his
attention to studying at UCLA where he completed a business degree. Over
the years, he handled a variety of businesses, quite successfully,
according to reports, and lived in the past only inasmuch as he wrote
articles about his movie reminicences every now and again for a variety of
publications as well as selling videos of Bantu
the Zebra Boy directly to fans. Johnny Sheffield got married in
1959, and he and his wife had three children. Nowadays he is happily
retired and lives in Southern California with his wife. True,
Johnny Sheffield was not the most important actor there was, and in
cinema history he is regarded as a mere footnote at best, but that said,
he was probably one of the more entertaining footnotes around, and at
least fans of cheap and cheesy jungle movies like myself would not want to
miss him. [Epilogue: Though Bantu
the Zebra Boy was never picked up as a series, Johnny Sheffield
eventually made it to television with the series Zim Bomba in 1962
- but this series was merely made up from edited-down footage from his Bomba the Jungle
Boy-series and did feature no new material.]
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