Actor Gordon Scott died of post-heart surgery complications on 30 April 2007. Born Gordon Weschkul in Portland, Oregon, on 3 August 1926, he was best known for playing Tarzan in six films, starting with Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle in 1955. He was also in Tarzan and the Lost Safari (1957), Tarzan and the Trappers (1958), Tarzan’s Fight for Life (1958), Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure, which co-starred Sean Connery (1959), and Tarzan the Magnificent (1960).
He met and fell in love with co-star Vera Miles on the first film, and they married that year (divorcing four years later).
Scott was discovered while working as a lifeguard at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas.
After the Tarzan movies, Scott appeared in westerns and gladiator films.
“He was an absolutely wonderful Tarzan who played the character as an intelligent and nice man who carried himself well, much as my grandfather had originally written it,” said Danton Burroughs, grandson of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs.