Bruce Bennett (May 19, 1906 – February 24, 2007) was an American actor and Olympic silver medalist shot putter. During the 1930s, he went by his real name of Herman Brix (having dropped the first name "Harold").
Early film career and Tarzan
In 1931, MGM, adapting author Edgar Rice Burroughs's popular Tarzan adventures for the sound-movie screen, selected Herman Brix to play the title character. Unfortunately, Brix was injured filming the 1931 football movie Touchdown, which also prevented his entry into the 1932 Olympics. Swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller replaced Brix and became a major star.
After Ashton Dearholt convinced Burroughs to allow him to form Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises, Inc. and make a Tarzan serial film, Dearholt cast Brix in the lead. Pressbook copy has it that Burroughs made the choice himself, but in fact, in his biography, Brix confirmed that Burroughs never even saw him until after the contract was signed, and then only briefly. The film was begun on location in Guatemala, under rugged conditions (jungle diseases and cash shortages were frequent). Brix did his own perilous stunts, including a harrowing fall to rocky cliffs below. The Washington Post quoted Gabe Essoe's passage from his book Tarzan of the Movies: "Brix's portrayal was the only time between the silents and the 1960s that Tarzan was accurately depicted in films. He was mannered, cultured, soft-spoken, a well-educated English lord who spoke several languages, and didn't grunt."
Due to financial mismanagement, Dearholt had to complete filming of much of the serial back in Hollywood, and Brix, although his travel and daily living expenses in Guatemala were covered throughout the shoot, never received his contracted salary, along with the rest of the cast. The finished film, The New Adventures of Tarzan, was released in 1935 by Burroughs-Tarzan, and offered to theaters as a 12-chapter serial or a seven-reel feature. A second feature was culled from the footage in 1938: Tarzan and the Green Goddess.
Name change and movie career
Brix continued to work in serials and action features for low-budget studios until 1939. Finding himself still typecast as Tarzan in the minds of major producers, Brix changed his name to "Bruce Bennett" and became a member of Columbia Pictures' stock company. During the next few years he would be seen playing minor roles in many Columbia films, from expensive dramas to B mysteries to Three Stooges short subjects (How High Is Up? being a memorable appearance). His screen career was interrupted by World War II, when he entered the service.
Bennett appeared in many top-notch films in the 1940s and early 1950s including Sahara (1943), Mildred Pierce (1945) (as Joan Crawford's husband), Nora Prentiss (1947), Dark Passage (1947), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) opposite Humphrey Bogart, Mystery Street (1950) and Sudden Fear (1952).
The Washington Post noted, "He moved into grittier roles in the late 1940s and early 1950s, playing a detective in William Castle's Undertow and a forensic scientist who helps solve a crime in John Sturges's Mystery Street. He was sympathetic as an aging baseball player in Angels in the Outfield (1951).
Later life
From the mid-1950s on, Bennett mainly appeared in lesser films, such as The Alligator People (1959), and on television in guest starring roles. He was a very successful businessman during the 1960s outside of acting.
A lifelong avid parasailer and skydiver, he last went skydiving (from an altitude of 10,000 feet), over Lake Tahoe, at 96 years of age.
Bennett reached his 100th birthday on May 19, 2006, and died less than a year later in February 2007 of complications from a broken hip.
NB: Standard works of reference such as Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies and Katz's Encyclopedia of Film give his date of birth as 1909 (or May 19, 1909) but the Internet Movie Database (link below) has 1906, and this date is confirmed by the 1920 and 1930 U.S. Census records.
References
^ Film Star and Olympian Herman Brix - washingtonpost.com
^ Film Star and Olympian Herman Brix - washingtonpost.com
^ Film Star and Olympian Herman Brix - washingtonpost.com
^ Bruce Bennett (I) - Biography
^ http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070301/ap_en_mo/run_obit_brix
Source
Ephraim Katz: Encyclopedia of Film (ISBN 0 333 90690 X)
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Bruce Bennett
Bruce Bennett at the Internet Movie Database
Bruce Bennett at Allmovie
2004 interview
Washington Post obituary
Preceded by
Buster Crabbe
Actors to portray Tarzan
1935, 1938
Succeeded by
Glenn Morris
Persondata
NAME
Bennett, Bruce
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Brix, Harold Herman
SHORT DESCRIPTION
Actor
DATE OF BIRTH
1906-5-19
PLACE OF BIRTH
Santa Monica, California, U.S.
DATE OF DEATH
2007-2-24
PLACE OF DEATH
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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Bennett"
Categories: 1906 births | 2007 deaths | American film actors | American television actors | Film serial actors | Olympic silver medalists for the United States | American shot putters | People from Tacoma, Washington | American centenarians
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