biography
Born in Denver, Colorado, on June 18, 1912, athlete and actor Glenn Morris was one of seven children born into a farming family. He excelled in sports in high school, growing into
his 6'2" frame. In 1930, Morris enrolled as a student at the Colorado State College of Agriculture. He played football for the college and was inspired to try the decathlon after
traveling to Los Angeles to see the 1932 summer Olympics. With hopes of competing in the 1936 Olympics, following graduation in 1934 he worked as a car salesman and track and field coach, training
in the decathalon as much as he could.
Today, Glenn Morris is best known as a Decathlon gold medalist in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Setting several world records, Morris' performance at the Olympics broke records and
earned the young athlete quite a bit of fame. German director Leni Riefenstahl, shooting a documentary about the games, was smitten with Morris and made him a focus in her film Olympia
(1938), later claiming that she and Morris had an affair during the 1936 games. He was hailed as a hero upon his return to the U.S., and MGM Studios produced a short biographical film Decathlon
Champion: The Story of Glenn Morris in 1937. Much like Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe had parlayed Olympic medals into Hollywood fame, Glenn Morris was signed as an actor. However, he made only a few films, including the 1938 features Tarzan's Revenge and the comedy Hold That Co-ed. Sol Lesser, who at the time was a producer of low-budget films, cast Morris in the role of Tarzan over baseball player Lou Gehrig. Lesser had tried once before to cast a popular Olympic athlete in the role of Tarzan; in 1933, Lesser signed Buster Crabbe to portray Tarzan in Tarzan the Fearless. Although this film suffered poor box office receipts, Lesser attempted a Tarzan film with Glenn Morris, titled Tarzan's Revenge. In the 1940s and 1950s, Lesser produced the Tarzan series of films with Johnny Weissmuller, Lex Barker, and Gordon Scott.     
Promotional photo of Morris as TarzanWhen Tarzan's Revenge was released in January 1938, it failed to make box office impact and slid into obscurity. As a result, Sol Lesser dropped Morris' contract in May 1938. On a personal front, things weren't much better; Morris married his first wife, Colorado schoolteacher Charlotte Edwards, in 1936, but the union dissolved in 1940. In November 1938, Morris abandoned his acting career in favor of playing football for the Hollywood Stars of the California Pro Football League, but the team folded shortly thereafter. He also played a few games for the Detroit Lions but was sidelined by an injury. |
the films of glenn morrisTarzan's Revenge (1938)    
LEFT: Glenn Morris as Tarzan in Tarzan's Revenge, released by 20th Century-Fox. RIGHT: Swimmer and Olympic correspondent Eleanor Holm has a sizeable role, as does actress-turned-gossip-wag Hedda Hopper, who portrays Holm's mother in the filmlater yearsUpon the release of Tarzan's Revenge in early 1938, critics were unmerciful in their condemnation of the film, in part because of the success of Johnny Weissmuller's MGM Tarzan films. Weissmuller's films were also of a much higher production quality than Revenge, which was shot on a miniscule budget and released by 20th Century-Fox. In truth, Morris's performance in the film is pretty solid; however, the film's failure compelled Morris to quit acting.After the collapse of his film career, Glenn Morris became an insurance agent, but he enlisted in the Navy with the start of World War II. During the war, Morris suffered severe psychological trama, and he spent months recovering in the San Francisco Navy Hospital and was never the same afterward. In the 1950s and early 1960s, he worked in a variety of odd jobs until his health began to fail in the mid 1960s. After years of poor health, Morris passed away on January 31, 1974, at the age of 61. |
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This page premiered April 7, 2000.
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