Radio Recap: Island Venture

Here's an odd one.

Island Venture was a radio adventure program that aired over CBS from November 8, 1945 to June 20, 1946. It starred Jerry Walter and Hugh Rowlands as Gil Perry and Trigger Brett, two former US Navy pilots who had taken up post-war work as pilots in the South Seas ("typical of the men of the Navy who fought through victory and now are bringing their courage, their dauntless spirit and their sound Navy training with them into peacetime enterprises"). Each week would find the duo in some sort of light-hearted adventure.

Although the characters of Perry and Brett were peers, Trigger was characterized as being younger and more hot-headed than the level-headed Perry. Consequently, it sounds a lot like a juvenile adventure program, yet marketed to a grown-up audience - as if the people who made Jack Armstrong tried to break into prime time programming. The series was classed up a bit by narrator Ken Nordine, who would describe the tropical surroundings with flowery prose. The adventures themselves were straight out of the pulps, usually featuring superstitious South Seas natives. For instance, one episode concerned a voodoo cult that tried to eliminate Perry and Brett.

However, the oddest factor in Island Venture is the commercial sponsor. The series was sponsored by Wrigley's Spearmint Gum at a time in which Wrigley's was not selling chewing gum! The earliest episodes of Island Venture feature the commerical spokesman pitching a product that was, at that time, unavailable! In the earliest surviving episode, the pitchman starts his commercial by acknowledging that chewing gum is "probably one of the least important [things] to everyone, except the manufacturers of chewing gum." I have never heard a product pitchman talk like that in radio! He goes on to observe that although Wrigley's wasn't available at the time "there are many good chewing gums on the market" and suggests listeners try one of them until their product is back on the market! How often do salesman suggest you try the competitor's product? Unfortunately for Island Venture, it didn't survive long past the return of Wrigley's Spearmint. It sounds like the gum was back on the market by April, 1946 - and they were cancelled by June.

You can hear the 10 surviving episodes of Island Venture at the Old Time Radio Researchers Library.