Greg Newton
11-21-2008, 07:16 PM
Who was Jock Mahoney? I knew very little about him other than what I read here. I knew he'd played Tarzan and was considered an "ace" stuntman turned actor. Sally Field was his stepdaughter and in her bio she said that when he was playing Tarzan, he used to dive out of their 2nd story window into the pool. I also knew from John that he was a Charles Atlas student, and that Mahoney was his favorite Tarzan. So who was Jock Mahoney?
Travelling about the internet, I found he was quite an interesting guy. Of French, Irish, and Cherokee descent, he was born in 1919. Mahoney was a lean and broadshouldered 6-4 and was listed at 220. The weight may or may not have been padded. Pictures don’t always do justice, but Mahoney definitely captured the camera with his presence. Like a lot of guys from that time, he enlisted in the Marine Corp during WWII and was a pilot and flight instructor.
After the war his natural restlessness caused him to drift into stunt work where he doubled for many of the Western B-stars of his day. Mahoney had a reputation for moving like a cat and according to one account, could leap from a flat footed position over an average size horse. Once when doubling for Randolf Scott in a fight scene atop a moving train, the other stuntman was leery of taking the fall, so Mahoney switched clothes with him and took the fall himself. Literally, he threw himself off the train!
Mahoney’s acting abilities eventually landed him acting jobs, including doing comedy with the Three Stooges in several of their movies. He was most famous for early television where he played Range Rider and Yancy Derringer. In the last Gordon Scott Tarzan picture, Mahoney played the villian.
At age 42, Mahoney was the oldest actor to play Tarzan in “Tarzan Goes to India”, and “Tarzan’s Three Challenges.” According to Woody Strode, Mahoney literally lived the part as if he was Tarzan. He was also someone whose physical abilities and courage even awed a magnificent athlete like Woody Strode. Possibly, Mahoney looked at this chance to play Tarzan as his big break and looked to leave a lasting impression as great or greater as Johnny Weissmuller’s. Regardless, his decision to swim a polluted river, despite Strode’s warnings caused him to catch a virulent form of malaria and dysentery, which plummetted his weight and almost killed him.
It took Mahoney over a year and a half to recuperate, and Strode implied in his autbiography that he was never the same afterwards. He still spent many years acting; playing bit parts in everything from westerns to one of Catwoman’s henchmen in Batman. He even played an evil army officer in an episode of the Tarzan TV series against TV Tarzan Ron Ely.
The only information I have as to how Mahoney trained was the Merv Griffin interview where he said he trained using the Charles Atlas system from his boyhood. The only difference being, he did more of the pushups, situps, and deep knee bends to play Tarzan. I can believe it. Woody Strode said Mahoney was Charles Atlas! Mahoney did not have a bodybuilder’s physique with exaggerated and useless muscle. His was the lean physique of a hunter/warrior. There was no superfluous flesh anywhere. This is what you’d expect Tarzan to look like if he had been a real person. It is too bad the river induced sickness prevented him from playing Tarzan again on the big screen and on TV. I’ve never seen the Mahoney Tarzan pictures, but I definitely want to see them now.
Travelling about the internet, I found he was quite an interesting guy. Of French, Irish, and Cherokee descent, he was born in 1919. Mahoney was a lean and broadshouldered 6-4 and was listed at 220. The weight may or may not have been padded. Pictures don’t always do justice, but Mahoney definitely captured the camera with his presence. Like a lot of guys from that time, he enlisted in the Marine Corp during WWII and was a pilot and flight instructor.
After the war his natural restlessness caused him to drift into stunt work where he doubled for many of the Western B-stars of his day. Mahoney had a reputation for moving like a cat and according to one account, could leap from a flat footed position over an average size horse. Once when doubling for Randolf Scott in a fight scene atop a moving train, the other stuntman was leery of taking the fall, so Mahoney switched clothes with him and took the fall himself. Literally, he threw himself off the train!
Mahoney’s acting abilities eventually landed him acting jobs, including doing comedy with the Three Stooges in several of their movies. He was most famous for early television where he played Range Rider and Yancy Derringer. In the last Gordon Scott Tarzan picture, Mahoney played the villian.
At age 42, Mahoney was the oldest actor to play Tarzan in “Tarzan Goes to India”, and “Tarzan’s Three Challenges.” According to Woody Strode, Mahoney literally lived the part as if he was Tarzan. He was also someone whose physical abilities and courage even awed a magnificent athlete like Woody Strode. Possibly, Mahoney looked at this chance to play Tarzan as his big break and looked to leave a lasting impression as great or greater as Johnny Weissmuller’s. Regardless, his decision to swim a polluted river, despite Strode’s warnings caused him to catch a virulent form of malaria and dysentery, which plummetted his weight and almost killed him.
It took Mahoney over a year and a half to recuperate, and Strode implied in his autbiography that he was never the same afterwards. He still spent many years acting; playing bit parts in everything from westerns to one of Catwoman’s henchmen in Batman. He even played an evil army officer in an episode of the Tarzan TV series against TV Tarzan Ron Ely.
The only information I have as to how Mahoney trained was the Merv Griffin interview where he said he trained using the Charles Atlas system from his boyhood. The only difference being, he did more of the pushups, situps, and deep knee bends to play Tarzan. I can believe it. Woody Strode said Mahoney was Charles Atlas! Mahoney did not have a bodybuilder’s physique with exaggerated and useless muscle. His was the lean physique of a hunter/warrior. There was no superfluous flesh anywhere. This is what you’d expect Tarzan to look like if he had been a real person. It is too bad the river induced sickness prevented him from playing Tarzan again on the big screen and on TV. I’ve never seen the Mahoney Tarzan pictures, but I definitely want to see them now.