Bruce Bennett (Harold Herman Brix, known as Herman Brix until 1939; May 19, 1906 – February 24, 2007) was an American film and television actor who was a college athlete in football and in intercollegiate and international track-and-field competitions. In 1928, he won the silver medal for the shot put at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam.
Beginning with a role as Tarzan in the early 1930s, he had a long acting career in film and television that spanned more than 40 years. While he specialized in adventurer, explorer and cowboy action roles for years, he eventually also found success in serious character roles in movies including Mildred Pierce, Dark Passage, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Brix played college football at the University of Washington, where he majored in economics. He played in the 1926 Rose Bowl and was a track-and-field star. He won the Silver medal for the shot put in the 1928 Olympic Games. He won four consecutive AAU shot put titles (1928–31), the NCAA title in 1927, and the AAU indoor titles in 1930 and 1932. In 1930, Herman Brix set a world indoor record at 15.61m (51ft 3in). In 1932, he set his personal best at 16.07m (52ft 9in), but failed at the Olympic trials to qualify for the Los Angeles Games.
Early film career as Tarzan
Brix in the opening credits of the serial The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935)
In 1931, MGM, in adapting author Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan adventures for the screen, selected Brix to play the title character. Brix broke his shoulder filming the 1931 football film Touchdown, so swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller replaced Brix.
Author Burroughs financed his own Tarzan film, The New Adventures of Tarzan, as a Burroughs-Tarzan production. Co-producer Ashton Dearholt, embarking on an expedition to Guatemala, cast Brix as Tarzan. The film began production on location in Guatemala, where the camera captured native scenery and wild animals, with Brix doing his own athletic stunts. The film was completed in Hollywood, where local studios afforded better sound recording.
The finished film was released in 1935 by Burroughs-Tarzan, and offered to theaters as a 12-chapter serial or a seven-reel feature. A second feature, Tarzan and the Green Goddess, was culled from the footage in 1938, with a few new scenes added.
In 1936 Herman Brix signed with independent producer Sam Katzman, whose Victory Pictures specialized in action pictures, Westerns and serials. Brix appeared in eight quickie features and two serials (Shadow of Chinatown cast him opposite Bela Lugosi).
In 1939 Herman Brix, finding himself typecast as Tarzan, joined Columbia Pictures' stock company, under the new screen name of Bruce Bennett. He also took acting lessons and wanted to give himself a more serious image as an actor.
Columbia stock players were usually called upon to appear in anything the studio produced, so Brix was assigned to small parts in action pictures, and incidental roles in the studio's two-reel comedies with The Three Stooges and Buster Keaton. By 1942, he was playing earnest leads in "B" features.
Bennett co-wrote and starred in Fiend of Dope Island (filmed 1959, released 1961).
Personal life and death
Bennett and his wife Jeannette in 1936
Bennett became a businessman during the 1960s. He pursued parasailing and skydiving. He last skydove at the age of 96, descending from an altitude of 10,000 feet near Lake Tahoe.
Bennett died at age 100 on February 24, 2007 from complications of a broken hip, three months before his 101st birthday.
Science Fiction Theater (1955–1957, TV Series) Episodes "Beyond", "Who Is This Man?", "Survival in Box Canyon", "Signals from the Moon", "Bolt of Lightning" as Dr. Sheldon Thorpe / General Frank Terrance / Major Sorenson / Dr. Hugh Bentley / Gen. Troy
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