Johnny Weissmuller Buster Crabbe. In a total of 12 Tarzan films, Weissmuller earned an estimated $2,000,000 and established himself as what many movie historians consider the definitive Tarzan. Although not the first Tarzan in movies (that was Elmo Lincoln), he was the first to be associated with the now traditional ululating, yodeling Tarzan yell. During an appearance on television's "The Mike Douglas Show" in the 1970s, Weissmuller explained how the famous yell was created. Recordings of three vocalists were spliced together to get the effecta soprano, an alto and a hog caller. Edgar Rice Burroughs himself paid oblique tribute to Weissmuller's powerful
Rebel yell the yell is often portrayed as a simple "yee-haw" and in some parts of the United States, "yee-ha". The yell has also been described as similar to Native American cries. John Salmon Ford, in an 1896 interview with Frederic Remington, describes a charge his Texas Rangers made into a Comanche village in 1858 and that his troops gave the "Texas Yell". One description says it was a cross between an "Indian whoop and wolf-howl". Several recordings of Civil War veterans performing the yell exist. One, from a newsreel documenting the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, documents several Confederate