Jim Bradshaw: Morgan City's 'Tarzan' movie was a spy story, too

World War I interrupted the filming when the first Tarzan movie was made in the swamps near Morgan City in 1917, and that led to some international intrigue.
That included the arrest of one of its crew members as a notorious spy.
 The Morgan City newspaper broke the news that the film would be made on Aug. 4, 1917:
“After having looked over local territory for several days under the guidance of Mr.  M. P. Palmer, secretary of the Chamber of Commerce of Morgan City and Berwick, Mr. Scott Sidney, director of the National Film Corporation of America, has decided to work out of Morgan City as headquarters during the three to six weeks his people will be employed in filming scenes from the remarkable novel ‘Tarzan of the Apes.’
“Twenty-one people [associated with the film] are now registered at the Costello Hotel here and as soon as their car load of paraphernalia arrives from Los Angeles … the work of picture making will proceed at once.”
One of those film-makers was a woman named Beebe who posed as a man and went by the name of Jack Bean.
She was given a job making papier mâché figures used in the movie and immediately began pressing movie executive Martin Donner to send her to Avoca Island, south of Morgan City, where much of the film was being made.
She quit the job when he wouldn’t do that.
It later came out that Beebe’s interest in the island had less to do with the movie than what was going on at the Union Bridge & Iron Works shipyard, which could be seen from Avoca Island, and where boats were being made for the military.
She left Louisiana after quitting her movie job, and headed for California, where she was arrested in December 1917 at the home of Franz Schulenberg, identified by newspapers as “a master spy for the German Secret Service.”
Schulenberg was said to be “one of the cleverest and most dangerous German spies operating on the Pacific coast.”
Our spy-catchers said he had “sophisticated electrical devices that were capable of setting off an explosion without leaving any trace of how the explosion was caused,” and that he “planned to destroy government docks and shipping in most of the big coast ports.”
They also found flier’s goggles and “an aviation outfit” in his home, and surmised that he had been flying along the California coast to look over his targets.
Beebe may have been even more dangerous than Schellenberger.
It’s not exactly clear whether they were talking about her or someone else, but federal agents said a woman “directed the activities of Franz Schulenberg,” and that she was “prominent in the German Secret Service.”
Our agents told newspapers at the time of her arrest that they were investigating “German efforts to establish a submarine base in the bayous of Louisiana.”
 According to that news account, “Federal officials who were investigating the reported presence of a German submarine base off the gulf coast were in touch with the picture staff” and reported that “members of the Hollywood studio had received many reports of the presence of spies and escaped German sailors hiding in the swamps and inland waterways.”
Those reports were usually more rumor than fact, but they were persistent and scary at the time.
I’ve looked everywhere that I could think of, but haven’t found out what happened to Franz and Beebe.
They seem to have just disappeared (as spies sometimes do).
As for the movie  — which was the first ever done on a location other than a Hollywood studio — it did quite well.
It made more than $1.5 million in 1918, which would be more than $30 million today.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.