Bruce Bennett

Bruce Bennett
Publicity shot c.1940s
Born	Harold Herman Brix (1906-05-19)May 19, 1906 Tacoma, Washington, U.S.
Died	February 24, 2007(2007-02-24) (aged 100) Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Hip fracture
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1931–1973; 1980–2007
Height	1.90 m (6 ft 3 in)
Weight	100 kg (220 lb)
Spouse(s)	Jeannette C. Braddock (1933–2000) (her death) 2 children
Children	Christopher Brix Christina Katich
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Bruce Bennett (May 19, 1906 – February 24, 2007) was an American actor and Olympic silver medalist in the shot put. Born as Harold Herman Brix, he went by the name Herman Brix in the 1930s.

Harold Herman Brix was the fourth child in a family of five of an immigrant couple from Germany. His eldest brother, and their father's favored son, Herman, died before Harold's birth; and he was given his middle name in this child's memory. To please his father, by high school, he had discontinued using his own first name in favor of his middle name. His father was a lumber man who owned a couple of logging camps. His first career was as an athlete. At the University of Washington, where he majored in Economics, he played football (tackle) in the 1926 Rose Bowl and was a track-and-field star. Two years later, he won the Silver medal for the shot put in the 1928 Olympic Games. He also 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 he set a world indoor record at 15.61 m (51 ft 3 in). In 1932 he set his personal best at 16.07 m (52 ft 9 in), but did worse at the Olympic trials and failed to qualify for the Los Angeles Games.

Brix moved to Los Angeles in 1929 after being invited to compete for the Los Angeles Athletic Club and befriended actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who arranged a screen test for him at Paramount.

In 1931, MGM, adapting author Edgar Rice Burroughs's popular Tarzan adventures for the screen, selected Herman Brix to play the title character. Unfortunately, Brix broke his shoulder filming the 1931 football film Touchdown. Swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller replaced Brix and became a major star. After Ashton Dearholt convinced Burroughs to allow him to form Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises, Inc., and make a Tarzan serial film, Dearholt cast Brix in the lead. Pressbook copy has it that Burroughs made the choice himself, but, in fact, in his biography, Brix confirmed that Burroughs never even saw him until after the contract was signed, and then only briefly. The film was begun on location in Guatemala, under rugged conditions (jungle diseases and cash shortages were frequent). Brix did his own stunts, including a fall to rocky cliffs below. The Washington Post quoted Gabe Essoe's passage from his book Tarzan of the Movies: "Brix's portrayal was the only time between the silents and the 1960s that Tarzan was accurately depicted in films. He was mannered, cultured, soft-spoken, a well educated English lord who spoke several languages, and didn't grunt."