April 28. 2025. The 2500 entry in the “On This Day With Edgar Rice Burroughs” series and on this day forty years ago in 1985, the New York Times published the article, “You Not Tarzan, Me Not Jane.” The "Me Tarzan" non-quote will ever be haunting the hallways of the world of ERB. This article, at least, got it right, with an extensive discussion of what Tarzan and Jane actually said to each other that long ago day in the jungle. The “Me, Tarzan, You Jane” quote attributed to Weissmuller’s Tarzan was never actually spoken. Another famous quote that was not in the film is “Play it again, Sam.” The line was not actually in “Casablanca.”
A third example is the line often misquoted as "Luke, I am your father" is actually "No, I am your father". This iconic line is spoken by Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back.
Details about the film, “Tarzan the Ape Man:” https://www.erbzine.com/mag6/0611.html
The drabble today, “Out of Context,” is excerpted from that New York Times article and is attributed to “Judge Newman.”
This is the most widely used quotation of a nonexistent line from movie dialogue exceeding in frequency the well-known and equally nonexistent line 'Play it again, Sam.' Recently, a case in our court brought to our attention the exact lines from the original 1932 film 'Tarzan, the Ape Man.'
This obscure but significant judicial footnote –doesn’t merely show the difficulty of teaching language to apemen, but provides irrefutable proof that a phrase our society has come to believe was once said, was not said. It’s a superb specimen of ''near-miss quotation,'' and we thank the Federal bench's record-straightening Second Circuit.
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