Tarzan and The Slave Girl - Production

Production

Production of the film was announced on June 23, 1949, after producer Sol Lesser signed a new distribution agreement for his "Tarzan" pictures with RKO Pictures. The working title of the film had been Tarzan and the Golden Lion (the same as the 1927 silent picture). But the June 23 announcement changed it to Tarzan and the Slave Girl as well as naming Lex Barker as the star. On July 16, French actress Denise Darcel (who had recently appeared in William Wellman's World War II picture Battleground, was cast as the slave girl. Vanessa Brown was signed to play Jane two weeks later.

Hans Jacoby, who had scripted the highly popular Tarzan and the Amazons, turned in the screenplay for the film. He would also script the Lex Barker feature Tarzan's Savage Fury.

Some location shooting was done in Baldwin Park, California, the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, and the Iverson Movie Ranch. But most of the filming was done on the RKO Forty Acres backlot. (On January 7, 1950, Lesser announced that the next Tarzan film would be made entirely in South Africa.)

The film marked actress Vanessa Brown's only outing as Jane. According to director Lee Sholem, producer Sol Lesser was looking to cast a new "Jane" to replace actress Brenda Joyce, who had portrayed Jane in the four previous films. Sholem brought Marilyn Monroe out to see Lesser, but Lesser didn't think she'd be right for the part as she was too much of a bombshell. Sholem brought Monroe to see Lesser eight times in all, but in the end Lesser settled on Vanessa Brown. Brown had been a popular performer on the Quiz Kids radio show, and at age 21 already had a six-year acting career which included a number of prominent roles in important films. Signed by 20th Century Fox, she'd been loaned out to RKO several times. But Fox had cancelled her contract in early 1950. She took the role in RKO's Tarzan and the Slave Girl because she needed the money. She later recalled, "My intellectual friends said, 'My God, what you won't do for money.' I needed a job, I had to pay the rent." (Later that year, she'd become a Broadway star after Katharine Hepburn picked her to play Celia in As You Like It.) Lesser picked Brown because of her Quiz Kid background. But director Sholem found her pompous:

There was a situation one day where she had about three words to say, and she asked, "What is the underlying meaning of this?" In a Tarzan picture ! "What is my feeling here? What is my attitude?" Oh, you never heard such shit!

The slave girl in the title is Lola, played by Denise Darcel. Although previous films had made it clear that Tarzan and Jane were husband and wife, this film depicted Jane as Tarzan's girlfriend—which allowed Lola to compete for Tarzan's affections without implying that she was an adulterer.

Mary Ellen Kay has an uncredited role as the slave girl who is engaged to the Prince. Eva Gabor has a nonspeaking background role as one of the slave girls as well.

During the production, Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs visited the set. Suffering from Parkinson's disease and having already had several heart attacks, Burroughs visited the set of Tarzan and the Slave Girl during its production. It was one of his last public appearances, according to Burrough's daughter, Joan. Burroughs died on March 19, 1950, just four days after the film's release on March 15.