Johnny Weissmuller took up swimming to beat polio and never lost a race
A doctor told a nine-year-old Chicago boy recovering from polio to try swimming. He went on to win five Olympic golds, set 67 world records, and retire unbeaten as an amateur, before swinging through twelve films as Tarzan and becoming the most famous jungle hero on screen.
Johann Peter Weißmüller arrived on June 2, 1904, in Szabadfalva, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary, into a Banat Swabian family. As a baby he crossed the Atlantic with his parents on the S.S. Rotterdam in January 1905, landing at Ellis Island and settling first in Windber, Pennsylvania, and later in Chicago. He learned to swim at Fullerton Beach on Lake Michigan after the polio diagnosis and won race after race. At 11 he fibbed his way into a YMCA that required members to be 12. When his father walked out during eighth grade, Johnny quit school to work and help support his mother and brother.
Coach Bill Bachrach of the Illinois Athletic Club became his mentor and something of a father. Weissmuller set his first two world records at the national championships on September 27, 1921, and on July 9, 1922, took Duke Kahanamoku's 100-metre freestyle record with 58.6 seconds. At the 1924 Paris Olympics he beat Kahanamoku for gold, added the 400 metres and a relay title, and won bronze in water polo. Amsterdam in 1928 brought two more golds. His 1927 time of 51.0 seconds for 100 yards survived 17 years.
He was the first man under a minute for 100 metres freestyle and under five minutes for 440 yards, and collected 52 national titles. The Associated Press in 1950 named him the finest swimmer of the century's first half. Along the way he embraced John Harvey Kellogg's vegetarian regime and opened a new pool at Kellogg's Battle Creek sanatorium.
His screen debut was a wordless turn as Adonis clad in a fig leaf. The writer Cyril Hume noticed him, and in 1932 came Tarzan the Ape Man. He was contracted to model BVD underwear, so MGM arranged for stars like Greta Garbo to appear in BVD ads to free him. Burroughs liked Weissmuller but hated the barely verbal Tarzan and launched a rival series with a more articulate hero. Later came sixteen Jungle Jim films and 26 television episodes. He died on January 20, 1984.
Source: Johnny Weissmuller
