Cheetah, Tumbo, Boy, Jane and Tarzan make one big happy family in Tarzan's Secret Treasure.

GOLD! Tarzan’s Secret Treasure is gold. Only he knows the location of a mountain made of gold on the jungle escarpment that he, Jane, Boy and Cheetah call home. This fifth MGM Tarzan movie is one of the best installments in the entire series even if they did reuse a few stock shots from previous films since their budgets were cut after the death of Irving Thalberg.

Boy sets the story in motion when, after listening to his mother’s stories about all the marvelous inventions to be found in the outside world, he decides to run away to see “civilization” for himself. Fortunately he leaves a note telling his parents his plans and that he will be back tomorrow.

With Cheetah following, he sets off through the jungle and very quickly finds himself in one dangerous adventure after another. He befriends a young African boy that he saves from a charging rhino and then accompanies the boy (Tumbo) back to his village where a plague is killing many villagers. Tumbo’s mother is among the stricken and she dies in front of her son and Boy.

The warriors of the village blame Boy for their bad Ju-Ju as he is the only white person they have ever seen. Before you know it Boy is about to be burned alive at the stake even while Tumbo pleads for his friend's life.

In the nick of time a group of white explorers show up and save Boy, followed quickly by that famous Tarzan yell. Tarzan agrees to show the white men a shortcut through the jungle since they saved Boy’s life. The newly orphaned Tumbo joins Tarzan and Boy.

In his innocence Boy tells two of the men (the villainous sounding Vandermeer and Medford) about the gold nuggets he found in a river and the rest of the story is thusly laid out. You know it will come down to Tarzan rescuing Jane and Boy from certain slow and painful death at the hands of bloodthirsty natives. The climactic river rescue provides a fast paced, high energy finale.

Barry Fitzgerald of Going My Way fame plays O'Doul, a very Irish drunk (what else) inexplicably along for the expedition. In Cheetah’s funniest scene he gets drunk on some of O’Doul’s whisky and walks about humorously on his hands. O’Doul and Tarzan bond and he plays a key role in the rescue, along with Tumbo.

The character of Tumbo shows some advancement in the portrayal of the black characters in this movie series. There are still plenty of insulting stereotypes of Africans on display but at least with Tumbo a shift has begun. He is adopted by Tarzan and Jane into their family and is in nearly as many scenes as Boy (although sadly by the very next movie he is a forgotten character).

By the end of the movie you realize that Tarzan’s Secret Treasure isn’t really the gold mountain. It is his family and his private jungle paradise.
 

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