Glenn Edgar Morris was a US track and field athlete.
14 Facts About Glenn Morris
2.
Glenn Morris won a gold medal in the Olympic decathlon in 1936, setting new world and Olympic records.
3.
Glenn Morris was an occasional actor, he portrayed Tarzan in Tarzan's Revenge.
4.
In reality, Glenn Morris merely received his medal and laurel from Hitler's mistress Eva Braun in an otherwise standard ceremony.
5.
Glenn Morris received the 1936 James E Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States, and he had a short stint as an NBC radio commentator.
6.
In November 1937, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released the ten-minute short film "Decathlon Champion: The Story of Glenn Morris," depicting how he trained for and won the decathlon event.
7.
Glenn Morris portrayed himself in the film, before becoming the fourth Olympic athlete to play Tarzan.
8.
Glenn Morris appeared in only one Tarzan film, Tarzan's Revenge, an inexpensive independent film produced by Sol Lesser and released by Twentieth Century Fox.
9.
Glenn Morris played four games with the Detroit Lions of the National Football League in 1940 before injury curtailed this new career, then worked as an insurance agent.
10.
Reportedly wounded, Glenn Morris was treated for psychological-trauma issues and spent several months in a naval hospital.
11.
Glenn Morris lived out his last years mostly in Menlo Park, California, and as a patient in veterans hospitals.
12.
Too ill to attend his induction into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame in 1967, where he was proclaimed "the world's greatest athlete," Glenn Morris nevertheless donated his Olympic gold medal to the Hall.
13.
At age 61 in 1974, Glenn Morris died of congestive heart failure "and other complications" at the veterans hospital in Palo Alto, California, and was buried in Skylawn Memorial Park in nearby San Mateo.
14.
Glenn Morris was married from 1937 to 1940 to Charlotte Edwards, whom he had met in college.