It always amused me while watching the television western series CHEYENNE starring Clint Walker how the writers would find ways to get the star's shirt off. I'm sure those scenes got female viewers to tune in every week.
Standing 6 ' 6 " tall and weighing 245 lbs. with a 48 " chest he was built like a basketball power forward. But like the pulp magazine hero Doc Savage he was so perfectly proportioned that you didn't realize how big he was unless he stood next to something of size to give him scale. That's why I've included pictures of him with Mr. Universe Steve Reeves and NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown.
I've said jokingly for years that Walker, physically at least, would have been an impressive Superman. But you could never disguise his traps and shoulders with a pair of glasses. I could also see him playing the biblical hero Samson. But the character most people imagine Walker playing on screen was Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan Of The Apes.
At 6' 6" he was quite a bit taller than Burroughs described the "Ape Man". But otherwise he'd be a perfect fit. And he was cast more or less as Tarzan in his very first screen role. Under the name Jett Norman he appeared in a leopard-skin in a scene in the Bowery Boys comedy JUNGLE GENTS (1954).
Fans weren't the only people that imagined Walker as Tarzan. I've no way of confirming it. But I'd say that noted comic book/strip artist Gray Morrow channeled Walker when he illustrated the Tarzan comic strip from 1983 to 2001.
Imagine Walker as Gilgamesh or Samson.
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