From Richard Reynolds

MARY THE TARZAN RHINO, a female African black rhino Buckles - - This photo was taken at MGM in Hollywood on January 12, 1934. It was sent to me by Ralph Emerson, Jr., whose great uncle was George Emerson, the renowned Hollywood animal trainer. He is the guy with the cane. The man behind George is thought to be with the Al G. Barnes elephant dept. Can you verify? The third man (over the rear legs) is unidentified. Can you identify him? [Three guys seems a bit too much of a load to me.] George Emerson was given the assignment to train this young rhino which MGM bought from the Hagenbeck firm though Benson. MGM had first tried to rent one of the two black rhinos that RBBB had at the time but Gumpertz said "no." MGM was to use it in filming the 2nd of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films, "Tarzan and His Mate," released in 1934 (always acclaimed the best of the MGM Tarzan films). Mary arrived in Boston in the spring of 1933 and spent that summer at John Benson's place in New Hampshire. She went to MGM in the fall of 1933, and Emerson got the job of breaking her to be ridden in the famous charge sequences. I think Emerson did most of the riding as a double for Weissmuller but Johnny did ride it at least once. Emerson insisted that he have complete charge of the training. When he first saw the animal he was told she was terribly savage and very dangerous. He changed that though the simple expedient of giving Mary some water. She was just terribly thirsty from the long trip - -that's all. Training took place over the winter of 1933-34, and this picture was taken in January as noted. Thousands of feet of the charging Mary were shot that winter. Sequences from that filming were used in two further Tarzan movies, "Tarzan Finds a Son" (1939) and Tarzan's Secret Treasure" (1941). To Promote "Tarzan and His Mate" MGM sent rhino Mary on a promotional tour ahead of the film, She rode in a special truck that would appear downtown at the theaters. The Volney Phifers, animal trainers, were in charge of the tour. Toward the end of 1934, RBBB bought Mary from MGM to replace a female black rhino named Lil that had died in late '33 or early '34. The truck with Mary arrived on the lot in Memphis on October 15. Gumpertz ordered that Mary be transferred into an old cat cage. It immediately cracked it's frame under her weight. So the Phifers put Mary back in the truck, drove to Sarasota and delivered her there. Mary got good billing for 1935 as the Tarzan rhino (there was a big photo of her in the program). She started out just fine but up in New England a disgruntled employee stuck her with a pitchfork and she died from the injuries- a horrible act of cruelty. She was really a nice animal, very tractable. Had Gumpertz been more imaginative he could have had Mary ridden in the ring in the 1935 performance. She was certainly used to it. That would have been a sensation. Such was not done until comparatively recent times. Over the last 40 years we have seen a lot of performing rhinos, particularly in Europe, all but one of them white rhinos. The exception was the black rhino that Roman Schmitt trained and rode at Shrine dates and the like. Richard