@Phillyhistory, yup in the first paragraph I mention that the iconic yell did not appear for another 14 years. I can't say for sure, but my guess is that auditory sound is what helped propel the character to the pop cultural stratosphere.
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This graph generated at Google Ngram suggests that the silent Tarzan, introduced in 1918, had a sharply declining reputation in the 1920s. But when the yell came out in the early '30s, well, that changed everything.