The Hometown That Spurned Its Ape-Man

Tarzana, a suburb of strip malls and hillside homes, has never been exactly chummy with its ape-man namesake.

In the 1930s, Tarzana’s public library banned Tarzan books. It seems Tarzan and Jane had shared a few steamy nights in the jungle before they were married.

In the 1960s, community leaders put the kibosh on an idea for a Tarzan museum, saying nobody would visit.

Today, local businesses have largely turned a deaf ear to the Tarzana Chamber of Commerce’s plea to promote the community’s connection to Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Tarzan books and founder of Tarzana.

There is talk of festooning lampposts with wrought-iron chimps. But except for a lonely glass case in the post office and a poster or two in a bank lobby, there’s little evidence of Tarzana’s link to one of the best-known characters in literature.

There is no statue, no summer Tarzan festival, no loincloth look-alike contests. There’s not even a little plaque to mark the headquarters of Burroughs’ Tarzan empire--an adobe office still up and running on Ventura Boulevard.

Except for the name, there’s not much Tarzan in Tarzana.

This despite the fact that the Walt Disney Co. is releasing a $100-million animated Tarzan feature film this week--the 48th screen incarnation of the story--Tarzana still seems ambivalent about its native son.

“People in Tarzana may be embarrassed by the monosyllabic idiot they’ve seen in the movies, which was very different from the gentleman Burroughs depicted in his books,” said Bob Zeuschner, a Pasadena City College philosophy professor who helped organize a Burroughs convention this weekend in nearby Woodland Hills. “The problem is, visitors come to Tarzana looking for Tarzan stuff and there’s just nothing making that connection.”

The absence of Tarzan is all the more surprising because the story of the nobleman raised by apes is still very much alive in the offices of Danton Burroughs, grandson of the author.

From the hand-carved desk that looks out at the mulberry tree under which his grandfather’s ashes are buried, Burroughs, 54, shrewdly milks the family cash cow. As director of Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., he has sold Tarzan rights for everything from comic books and feature films to jackknives and multivitamins. There were even Tarzan chest-hair wigs.

He’s just as careful in guarding the family fortune, suing anyone who uses the Tarzan name or likeness without a license. All things Tarzan are licensed, even the signature jungle yell (U.S. trademark 2.210.506).

But the one thing Burroughs hasn’t been able to do for Tarzan is to generate much community interest. Over the years, ideas have been floated for a museum, a towering Tarzan statue on Ventura Boulevard and a park named after the author.

“There’s no limit to what we could do,” Burroughs says. “But it always comes down to logistics and we never seem to get the ideas off the ground. Maybe one day we’ll see something.”

Tarzan fans hope that the Disney movie will reinvigorate interest in Tarzan’s connection to Tarzana, an upper-middle class community of 70,000 in the western San Fernando Valley. But there are challenges. Tarzan will be the exclusive property of Disney during the movie release, which begins Friday, and for an undisclosed period afterward.

Locals say that means they’re essentially cut out of the action because they can’t even print up bumper stickers that boast, “Tarzana, Home of Tarzan,” without running the risk of getting sued.

“We’d love to use more of Tarzan, especially now, but our hands are tied,” said Sue Broadwater, the corporate secretary of the Tarzana Chamber of Commerce. “I guess we’ll just keep selling T-shirts,” she added, referring to the one piece of Tarzan kitsch the chamber can sell, thanks to an agreement struck with Burroughs in the 1930s.

The Tarzan trademark is a sticky issue. Edgar Rice Burroughs wasn’t just an imaginative author who wrote about an ape-man, talking apes (they spoke in the books) and martian wars. He was also a visionary businessman. He did not merely copyright his first Tarzan story in 1912, he trademarked the character. And trademarks, unlike patents and copyrights, never expire.

The early profits from the Tarzan enterprise enabled Burroughs to move in 1919 from Chicago to a 540-acre estate in the San Fernando Valley, which he renamed Tarzana Ranch. That estate became the foundation of Tarzana.

Though it might seem natural for local businesses to cash in on Tarzan, the licenses are expensive. The Tarzana Chamber of Commerce says that most of the 150 businesses in town are small, with five to 10 employees, and don’t have the resources to market Tarzan products.

The one community organization that did attempt to capitalize on the momentum of the Disney film said it got rebuffed. The Tarzana Improvement Assn. had hoped to work with the Disney marketing team to help promote the movie and its link to Tarzana, said Greg Nelson, president of the association.

“But whenever we tried to connect with Disney executives, they never called us back,” Nelson said.

The improvement association eventually gave up trying to promote tie-ins to the movie, Nelson said. The group has shifted its focus to raising money to buy wrought-iron chimps to hang from Tarzana’s downtown street lights.

Geoffrey Ammer, a senior vice president of marketing at Disney, declined to comment.

According to the Burroughs family, any Tarzan-related activities or merchandise schemes must go through Disney. The entertainment giant purchased the rights to Tarzan in 1994 for an undisclosed amount. Under the contract, Disney not only controls all uses of the animated characters it created for the movie, but the company has also barred the Burroughs family from licensing Tarzan to anyone else. The contract lasts several years, the Burroughs family said.