Screenland (Jun-Oct 1932)

for Au gust 19 32 53 Six feet three inches of brawn and muscle moving with ease and power and grace— an ideal of masculine strength and beauty— that's Weissmuller. But read how he made himself over from a frail boy into the world's champion swimmer and "Tarzan" of the movies! "Something ought to be done to fellows like comfortable two-story dwelling and owned a horse and buggy, and one of the first things Johnny remembers is being bawled out for playing with the horse. "Should've bawled out the horse," Johnny explains with an engaging grin. "I couldn't've hurt him." His father' went into the brewery business and before long was owner of a flourishing saloon. "Mom never wanted us kids to go to the saloon — but we'd sneak out, and Pop was always glad to see us. My uncle was the mean one, though. 'I'll fix this kid!' he says to himself one day, and he gets hold of me and fills me full of beer. I don't know how much he poured into me. I was seven years old, so maybe it only felt like a lot. But, boy ! was I drunk ! I remember sliding downstairs on my ear, yelling : 'Ra-ay ! Hoo-ray ! R-a-a-y ! Then he carries me home and dumps me in my mother's lap. " 'Here's your darling son,' he says, 'he'll never go near the saloon again !' "Well, maybe it sounds like eyewash, but I tell you I never touched beer from that day. I had a dread of it. And my uncle gave it to me. You know," he went on, the glint of amusement vanishing from his eyes, "he's the kind of guy who'd shove you into the lake to teach you to swim. It's all wrong. It's the worst thing that could happen to you. Twenty percent'd never go near water again. The fear's in 'em." He frowned that." It was apparent that Johnny could tolerate the sin of getting a 7-year-old drunk more easily than a sin against his beloved sport. After all, what does it matter so much whether, in after years, one drinks beer or gets along without it? But to Johnny Weissmuller — with whom swimming has been less a career than a deep and abiding passion — to make a boy dread the water is to deprive him of a priceless birthright. Yet there was a time — strange as it seems to him now — when water to Johnny was just something to drink and. when obliged, to wash in. He was Hans in those days and his brother was Pete, by one of those inexplicable whims that govern nicknames, for he had been christened Peter John and his brother John Peter. He was a long, skinny, angular little boy, growing up contentedly in the orderly Austrian household into which he had been born, stowing away the Viennese goodies with which his worried mother plied him, but remaining unchangeably long, skinny and angular. His bones were covered by skin and muscle, but the flesh refused to grow on them. Those were his Before he ever began to dream of being the world's champion swimmer— Johnny, left, and his brother Peter, back home in Chicago. fighting days, and those were also what he calls his "praying" days. "We used to go to a kind of private school," he told me. "where they'd pay as much attention to the way you behaved as to what you'd learn. And was I a saint ! I was always thinking about pleasing God. I wouldn't do this and I wouldn't do that with the other kids, because I was always asking myself, would God like it, and most of the time I thought He wouldn't ! "I was forever praying. Anybody used to swear at me, I'd go to church and pray for him. I'd go to church every morning before school and pray and do my stuff. Then my head'd start going round and I knew I was going to faint. I never could figure it out, but I knew when I got that funny feeling in my head I was going to faint and nothing'd stop me. I'd hold my hand up, and at first they wouldn't bother with me. 'Put your hand down, Johnny,' they'd say. So I'd put it down and flop over. Pretty soon they knew what was going to happen, so when they saw my hand, they'd tell me to sit down. I used to think God might get sore at me," Johnny grinned, "for fainting in church. But there wasn't a thing I could do about it. "We had to quit that school on account of a fight. I'd never fight. They told us we mustn't fight — God hated it — so I didn't fight. But one morning during the recess, some big kid got into an argument with my brother and hit him. I don't know what got into me, but I just went over and smacked him one. I forgot all about pleasing God. I was going to kill this guy. He hit my brother. If he hit me, I'd be satisfied to run away. But he hit my brother. "So I smacked him one and I saw his nose was bleeding, and I was tickled to death. He was a big, heavy fellow, but I was thin and fast. I'd hit him and back away, hit him and back away. One good wallop would 've finished me, but he couldn't reach me. I'd smack him and back away, till finally he had me backed down a whole block. Then someone stopped us. That was all right. He had a bloody nose, and my hand was all bruised and covered with blood, but we shook on it. "Then we got back into the classroom, and when the teacher spotted my hand, he wanted to know what I was doing. " 'Bumped my hand,' I told him. " 'You're lying, Johnny,' he says. "Well, then, I thought that was enough sinning for one day, and I'd better tell the truth. " 'Sorry,' I said, 'had a fight.' "Then he got an eyeful of the other fellow's bloody nose. "'Oh, (Continued on page 88)