Tarzan May Soon Find Himself in an Urban Jungle

Motorists driving along the Ventura Freeway next year could see Tarzan swinging from six underpasses in Tarzana, the San Fernando Valley suburb named for the legendary lord of the jungle.

The fictional character would be depicted in murals painted on underpass walls as part of next year’s 75th anniversary of the first published adventures of the English nobleman raised by apes in the jungle.

The murals were conceived by the Tarzana Chamber of Commerce’s Kala Committee, which is named after the ape that raised Tarzan in the stories written by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Burroughs, who created Tarzan, bought a suburban ranch with the wealth the character brought him and named it Tarzana, a name that eventually was given to the surrounding neighborhood as well. Burroughs continued to live in Tarzana off and on until his death in 1950, and his ashes were buried there under a tree in front of his office on Ventura Boulevard.

The freeway was regarded as the best place to publicize “Tarzana being the home of Tarzan” because thousands of motorists drive through the community each day, said Deborah Zeserman, a businesswoman and Kala Committee member.

The plan to publicize Tarzana’s origin came to light Tuesday when the state Senate Transportation Committee on a 7-0 vote approved a resolution by Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys) urging the state Department of Transportation to cooperate in the plan but not to use state funds.

The resolution, which was sent to the Senate floor, asks Caltrans to cooperate in painting the murals to depict “the life and adventures of Tarzan.” The department has not taken a position on the proposal, but a spokesman said the agency hoped the murals would be maintained by Los Angeles in the same way the city maintained freeway murals painted for the 1984 Olympics. Tarzana is a community within Los Angeles.

Zeserman said motorists would see Tarzan “swinging through the vines” and other scenes from his fictional life. She said the committee, which has not estimated the cost of the project, hopes to select an artist and win approval from the author’s family, which continues to operate Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., the Tarzana-based company that Burroughs formed to market his fiction. Danton Burroughs, a grandson of the writer and director of the corporation, was not available for comment.