Harold Herman Brix was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington, where he attended Stadium High School from which he graduated in 1924.

In 1932, he set his personal best at 16.07 m (52 ft 9 in), but failed at the Olympic trials to qualify for the Los Angeles Games.

[citation needed] In 1931, MGM, in adapting author Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan adventures for the screen, selected Bennett to play the title character.

[citation needed] The film, The New Adventures of Tarzan, was released in 1935 by Burroughs-Tarzan, and offered to theaters as a 12-chapter serial or a seven-reel feature.

Finding himself typecast as Tarzan, Bennett changed his name and became a member of Columbia Pictures' stock company.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Bennett appeared in Sahara (1943), Mildred Pierce (1945), Nora Prentiss (1947), Dark Passage (1947), The Man I Love (1947), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Undertow (1949), Mystery Street (1950), Angels in the Outfield (1951), Sudden Fear (1952), and Strategic Air Command (1955), The Alligator People (1959).

[5][3] In 1954, Bennett played William Quantrill, the Confederate guerrilla figure, in an episode of the syndicated television series Stories of the Century.