Radio Recap: The Adventures of Jungle Jim

The Adventures of Jungle Jim was the 15-minute weekly syndicated program that replaced Flash Gordon in Hearst Syndication. It proved much more successful (under whatever terms Hearst considered successful) and ran from November 2, 1935 until July 31, 1954. Alex Raymond's Jungle Jim was the "topper" to his Flash Gordon on the Sunday comics page (meaning his adventures appeared on the top of the page above Flash Gordon; toppers were sometimes omitted in newspapers whose page size was smaller than the standard).

The role of Jungle Jim was played by a few people, with Matt Crowley apparently holding the role the longest (Gerald Mohr played Jim for a few weeks). Jim Bradley was a big game hunter, but the series seldom featured him hunting big game; instead, Jim would be hired out by governments to use his wilderness skills to investigate strange goings-on around in jungle climes, usually in Asia. Accompanying Jim was Kolu (Juano Hernandez), an Indian guide-- though he spoke in the type of speech radio usually gave to American Indians.

The initial storyline where Jim investigates the "Bat Woman" cult, which proves to be led by the criminal Shanghai Lil (Franc Hale), is a pretty darn good adventure serial. Shanghai Lil would turn out to be an undercover good guy who would renounce her criminal past and accompanied Jim on many of his adventures - a sort-of Burma to his Pat Ryan. But to complicate matters, Jim also wound up with his female sidekick Kitty St. John, who would make Lil jealous.

After Pearl Harbor, the show rapidly changed as Jim started fighting German and Japanese foes; he joined the Marines and was sent back to the States to ferret out undercover foreign agents (because when your speciality is hunting and tracking in Asia, obviously your greatest usefulness in World War II is to hang around stateside as a secret agent). By spring of 1942, the show's format was radically reinvented as, instead of the show's accustomed rhythm of lengthy adventures, it tended to feature Jim battling enemy agents and wrapping it all up within his 15 minutes; there were still some continued adventures, but typically they fell into no more than 2-part stories. My suspicion is that the radio show had stopped adapting the comic strip around this time. This version of The Adventures of Jungle Jim is an interesting change to witness, but it's inferior to what came before.

Because there are no shows from 1943 available I don't know when the series changed, but by 1944 Jim and Kolu (a new actor playing Kolu) were back in Asia, going on guerrilla missions against the Japanese in Malaya, which makes a lot more sense for their particular skills. They led an "Allied" team with members hailing from India, Australia, the Soviet Union and China, which meant the actors portraying those characters could use a variety of dialects.

After the war, the series shifted back into what it had been before; Shanghai Lil returned and joined Jim and Kolu on globe-trotting adventures that seemed to be based around Latin America.

Although the show didn't like to credit anyone (including Alex Raymond!) recognizable voices include Gale Gordon (who'd previously been Flash Gordon), Hanley Stafford and Elliot Lewis. The show's theme was taken from the William Tell Overture (a different part of the Overture than that used on the Lone Ranger). Up to 1942 the theme was played with a band, then it shifted to an organ.

Alex Raymond left Jungle Jim and Flash Gordon in 1944; the strip continued with John Mayo and Paul Norris and even spawned a series of movies starring Johnny Weissmuller, but the comic strip, movies and radio show ended in 1954; Weissmuller kept going with a TV show that only lasted 1955-1956. As I noted yesterday, Flash Gordon has transcended his humble origins and enjoys occasional revivals; Raymond's Flash Gordon is considered one of the greatest comic strips of all time. Jungle Jim, by contrast, is a historical artifact; today, it's mostly brought up when discussing Flash Gordon, not for its own merits. Flash Gordon had the last laugh.

The Old-Time Radio Researchers Library has 526 episodes of The Adventures of Jungle Jim; it's pretty much complete up into 1942, then gets a little spottier in later years. A clear sign that this series needs more love is that the OTRR Library files are badly missorted and misidentified. You can view their files at this link.

Radio Recap: Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon (also called the Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon) was a 15-minute weekly juvenile adventure serial syndicated by Hearst from April 27 to October 26, 1935. It starred Gale Gordon (of all people!) as Flash Gordon and was adapted directly from Alex Raymond's famous comic strip - although Raymond received no credit in the dramas. It was apparently produced by Himan Brown, best-known for Inner Sanctum Mysteries and The CBS Mystery Theater.

The Hearst syndicate apparently released Flash Gordon on discs with Front Page Drama on the reverse. Both were designed to get listeners to buy a Hearst publication - in this instance, the Hearst's colour funnies, the Comic Weekly.

At this point I've covered Hearst's Front Page Drama and Club Car Special and they all demonstrate a kind of literal-mindedness on their part; they didn't want Flash Gordon to simply promote the comic strip, they wanted each drama to represent that week's installment of the comic strip. But first, they had to get the radio audience caught up with the strip's goings-on.

Consequently, the first 4 episodes of Flash Gordon quickly summarize everything that had happened in the comic strip up until that point. Thus, the episodes move at a dizzying pace with intense, dramatic moments simply glanced over and given absolutely no time to land. Yes, it moves fast, but there's no time spent on characters or the environment, just one peril after another.

Once the show was all caught up, from then on it moved at a more able pace, dramatizing the events of that week's installment of the comic strip. It's pretty amazing that there was a time in comics history that a single page of comic art could spawn a 15-minute drama every week!

Although the Flash Gordon comic strip lasted up until 2003 (recently revived with new strips by Dan Schkade since 2023), something clearly went wrong behind-the-scenes of the program because it was discontinued after 6 months. Maybe there was a prejudice against science fiction, because the series shifted to a different Alex Raymond series, Jungle Jim, which was then the "topper" strip above Flash Gordon. Jungle Jim continued as a weekly adaptation of the comic strip (well past Raymond's exit) up to 1954.

The closing weeks of Flash Gordon are a delightful mess. Abruptly, Flash's love interest Dale Arden demands they quit their adventures and go back to Earth at the end of the 23rd episode. In the 24th episode, the series is suddenly called The Adventures of Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim. There is no Jungle Jim in that episode, as Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov fly back to Earth. In the 25th episode, the action shifts entirely to Jungle Jim and appears to reference events going on in the Jungle Jim comic strip at the time. Finally, in the 26th episode, Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov meet Jungle Jim; Flash and Dale get married, then depart, never to be spoken of again. The following week, Jungle Jim took over. What a bizarre transition!

Of course, time has been kinder to Flash Gordon than to Jungle Jim. The Alex Raymond years of Jungle Jim have their devotees, but the rest of his considerable media presence has been forgotten; Flash Gordon, however, not only still has his comic strip but featured in a well-remembered campy 1980 feature film; every now and then he pops up in cartoons, TV shows or comic books as well.

You can hear the entirety of Flash Gordon at the Old Time Radio Researchers' Library.

Tomorrow I'll write about Flash Gordon's successor, Jungle Jim.

Review: Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo

From the Shadow and the Green Hornet, I turn again this week to a star of 1930s entertainments: Flash Gordon! I've done a pretty decent job of sampling Gordon's adventures in various media, yet I hadn't delved into the original comic strips by Alex Raymond before, despite the many glowing references I'd heard. It finally took Colin Smith's review of Titan Books' Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo collection to break the last of my resistance.

This collection follows the Flash Gordon comic strip from it's beginning in 1934 and into 1937, with each page reprinted in full colour. It details the story of how Flash Gordon, Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkov journey to the planet Mongo, battle Ming the Merciless, befriend Prince Thun, are repeatedly betrayed by Princess Aura, then befriend Prince Barin, then are captured by King Vultan and his Hawkmen, then Flash and Barin each becomes kings on Mongo, then Flash has to conquer the area of Mongo set aside as his kingdom, then Flash is attacked by Azura the Witch Queen, then a war with Ming erupts, then Queen Undina tries to make Flash her consort, then Flash battles Tusk Men and somewhere along the way flying squirrels attacked.

No, I'm not kidding. Flying squirrels. On Mongo, every animal is vicious.

(I'm not as familiar with comic strip history as I am with comic books, so you'll have to forgive me for the forthcoming comparisons to Milt Caniff's Terry and the Pirates. Having just finished IDW's collection of Caniff's Terry the previous week, Terry is my best point of comparison to Flash Gordon, as both were photorealistic adventure strips which began in 1934.)

As I neared the end of reading Caniff's Terry and the Pirates the style of pacing Caniff employed had become very familiar. As such, when the characters would discover a problem, then spend about a week's worth of strips not doing anything to solve it, I would get a little irritated, wishing the plot would advance (especially because I was reading the final volume and wanted as many stories as I could from what remained). Flash Gordon's pacing runs in the opposite direction: too much happens in each strip! While Terry had the advantage of running as a daily strip, allowing Caniff space to draw out every little conflict, Raymond's Flash ran just once a week. Perhaps he felt he had to deliver as much plot and action in one installment as he could manage, since his readers would be without Flash for another week.

Thus, Flash Gordon runs at a breakneck pace as problems compound upon other problems, characters weave in and out of the narrative and danger lurks around every corner of Mongo. Flash's life is such that he never seems allowed to relax; I believe the nearest Flash comes to getting sleep during these first four years is when he's knocked unconscious by various enemies. Boy, Flash must need a lot of coffee to keep going.

One great example of the breakneck pace is the character of Dr. Zarkov. In the very-rushed first strip, he forces Flash & Dale into his rocketship, directing them toward Mongo. The ship crashes on Mongo in the 2nd strip and although Flash carries Dale from the wreckage, no mention is made of Zarkov's fate; the strip seems to forget about him, so you'd imagine Zarkov was dead, but four months into the strip he turns up, alive. Not much time is allowed for the cast to get to know each other, not only requiring Flash & Dale to be suddenly in love, or for Prince Thun to be Flash's most loyal friend within minutes of knowing him, but for Zarkov to declare "I love him like I'd love my own son," after two years of virtually nothing but combat at each other's side. This is super-compressed comics storytelling.

I expected to see Raymond's art change and improve over time (just as Caniff's did across Terry), but I wasn't prepared for how sudden those differences would appear. On July 22, 1934, during his first story with the Hawkmen, Raymond suddenly began dividing his pages into thirds instead of fourths and vastly increased the amount of detailed shading in his art, as well as the volume of speech represented in balloons. Many of the earlier strips read like illustrated novels because of the heavy captions (although this persists throughout Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo). The art shifted again by the end of the year as the characters became even more realistic in appearance and his backgrounds began using a sort of blurry shading effect, which I now realize must have inspired Gene Colan.

There's a lot of imagination within the 200+ pages of Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo and Raymond seemed to be still warming up. It's a small wonder the strip become so popular so quickly!