Herman Brix

Howard Herman Brix (Bruce Bennett), athlete and actor: born Tacoma, Washington 19 May 1906; married 1933 Jeannette Braddock (died 2000; one son, one daughter); died Santa Monica, California 24 February 2007.

A former Olympic medal-winning shot-putter, Herman Brix, who has died at the age of 100, was chosen by Edgar Rice Burroughs to play his jungle hero Tarzan on screen in 1934, a portrayal much more faithful to the writer's conception than that of the cinema's most famous Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller.

Although Brix went on to star in several adventure serials, he quickly tired of playing muscle men and reinvented himself, withdrawing from his sporting career, taking acting lessons, and giving himself a new name, Bruce Bennett. Joan Crawford and Ida Lupino were among the leading ladies who wept on his broad shoulders, and he had notable roles in two of the bona fide classics of the Forties, Mildred Pierce and Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

The fourth of five children, he was born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1906, and educated at Washington University. A 6ft 3in All-American football star, he took a BA degree, and also developed an interest in the theatre. In 1928 he represented the United States in the Olympic Games in Amsterdam (along with Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe), winning a silver medal for putting the shot.

When asked to join the Los Angeles Athletic Club in 1929, he moved to Los Angeles, where the swashbuckling star Douglas Fairbanks Snr befriended him and recommended him to Paramount, for whom Brix made his screen début in the football drama Touchdown (1931). Had it not been for an injury during the shooting he might have become the screen's best-known Tarzan.

The character of the jungle inhabitant, created by Burroughs for All-Story Magazine in 1912, had immediately captured the public's imagination, and several silent films were made from the stories. When MGM planned to make the first sound version, the director W.S. Van Dyke said,

What I want is a man who is young, strong, well-built, reasonably attractive, but not necessarily handsome, and a competent actor. The most important thing is that he have a good physique. And I can't find him.

Charles Bickford, Joel McCrea, Clark Gable and Johnny Mack Brown had been considered and dismissed when Fairbanks suggested Brix. Van Dyke was about to sign him when Brix broke his shoulder during a football sequence and it was uncertain how long the recovery period would be. MGM instead signed the Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller, who was to make a dozen Tarzan films and become indelibly associated with the role, though Burroughs was never happy with the studio's transformation of Tarzan from an intelligent, articulate English lord to a grunting, simple primitive.

MGM initially purchased the rights to only two Tarzan movies, and in 1934 Burroughs and some friends formed a film company to produce a new Tarzan serial. Burroughs chose Brix for the lead from over 100 candidates, saying that he was delighted to find an actor with perfect diction as well as an athlete's body, and, since the company had no studio, the film was made on location in Guatemala.

The result was released as The New Adventures of Tarzan in 1935, with Brix billed as "world famous athlete and Olympic Games champion". Although reviews were generally tepid (allegedly due to MGM's power and influence) the film did particularly well in foreign markets - Brix was listed among the top 20 most popular stars in France and Britain - and it was lauded for its fidelity to the books, presenting Tarzan as cultured and soft-spoken. In 1938, with some re-editing, the serial was converted into a feature film, Tarzan and the Green Goddess.

Brix appeared in other movies, many of which capitalised on his athletic prowess . He starred in several serials, including Shadow of Chinatown (1936), in which he was a writer battling mad scientist Bela Lugosi, and The Lone Ranger (1938). He had a Tarzan-like role as Kioga in Hawk of the Wilderness (1938), and he was one of three acrobats who come to the aid of the damsel in distress Carole Landis in one of the best of adventure serials, Daredevils of the Red Circle (1939), then he temporarily dropped out of films. "I went to an elocution school," he later said:

I changed my name to Bruce Bennett and appeared in a couple of plays under that name. Several talent scouts arrived and asked me to take tests, and one of them was from the major studio Warners. I went out to the studio and was highly praised. That night I got a call from the head of their talent department. He said, "I have a Life magazine here in front of me and one of the pictures of a former Tarzan says Herman Brix and I think it's you. Is that you?" I said yes, and he said, "Don't bother showing up. We don't want any lamebrained ex-Tarzans around. You couldn't possibly have the sensibility to be successful in motion pictures."

Brix accepted instead an offer from Columbia, for whom he made over 40 films - everything, he said, from Three Stooges comedy shorts to army training films - and he received his first screen credit as Bruce Bennett in My Son is Guilty (1939). He and Evelyn Keyes were romantic partners in a Boris Karloff vehicle Before I Hang (1940) and he was top-billed in the "B" thrillers The Phantom Submarine (1940), Sabotage Squad (1942) and Underground Agent (1942).

Major films in which he appeared included a comedy about room shortage in wartime Washington, The More the Merrier (1943), and the Humphrey Bogart vehicle Sahara (1943), in which he was Bogart's second in command who goes for help when their tank is stranded in the desert. His performance was noted by Warner executives and he was offered a contract as a featured player.

His first film for the studio was Michael Curtiz's splendid melodrama Mildred Pierce (1945) as Bert, the easy-going husband shed by Mildred (Joan Crawford) near the film's start but faithfully waiting for her on the steps of the law courts at the film's end. He had one of his best roles in Raoul Walsh's enjoyably ripe The Man I Love (1947), as a moody jazz pianist loved by the torch singer Ida Lupino, and in the Ann Sheridan vehicle Nora Prentiss (1947) he was the heart-attack victim whose identity is stolen by a married doctor (Kent Smith) who wants to start a new life with the singer Prentiss.

His most memorable role is doubtless his desperate, mercenary prospector in John Huston's masterly account of greed and human frailty The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Roles were scarcer after he left Warners, but he had good supporting parts in films including Love Me Tender (1956), Elvis Presley's first screen appearance.

In 1960 Brix retired from acting and went into the vending-machine business. Ten years later he became a partner in a real-estate company, buying and doing up old houses with his wife.

Tom Vallance