He was the first Tarzan. A former Arkansas peace officer, Elmo Linkenhelt worked in D.W. Griffith’s ‘The Battle of Elderbush Gulch’ when in a fight scene his shirt was partially torn off, displaying his powerful chest. Griffith noticed, called him over, and told him ‘That’s quite a chest you have there’. Griffith changed the name to Elmo Lincoln. He got the role in ‘Tarzan of the Apes’ when, a few days after production began, World War I broke out an the man originally contracted to play Tarzan walked off the set and enlisted. The film was a box office smash, one of the first to earn over a million dollars. His final silent performance was in a cheap serial ‘King of the Jungle’ (1927) after which he moved to Mexico and invested in mining. He came back to play a number of bit parts and appeared briefly in a Circus as ‘The Original Tarzan – in Person’. Cremated with remains entombed in Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
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