Jungle Jim

Newspaper Comic Strip Adventure Serial (1935 - in syndication until '54 )

Jungle Jim was another long-running jungle adventure show, feet planted firmly in the footsteps of Tarzan, but with the hardware and politics of the modern great white hunter. It began as a weekly comic series in the Hearst papers by comic artist legend Alex Raymond. Raymond, working with writer Don Moore, created the classics Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim. This show was the radio adaptation of the comic strips both were intended for a general audience.

Jungle Jim Bradley is a successful businessman who makes wild his business. His office is the jungle. He's an intelligent great white hunter much like today's Eco-adventurer. Matt Crowley played Jim until '38, when Gerald Mohr came on board. Mohr is a solid radio veteran, who later was featured as Sorrowful Jones on Damon Runyan Theater, and was the french teacher Jacques Monet on Our Miss Brooks. In late 1955, he did a stint as Johnny in Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.

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Jim is aided by his right-hand guide and friend Kolu, (played by Juano Hernandez), and in most adventures, Shanghai Lil (France Hale,) a worldly woman who has been everywhere, is along for the ride. The quarter-hour weekly adventuyre series winds its way through a tangle of wild beasts, fierce tribes, foreign spies, poachers and traders, wily tribal leaders and warriors, exotic characters such as The Bat Woman and Karnak the Killer, searches for treasure, ghostly happenings and mysterious islands steaming with dread. Gene Stafford adapted the Jungle Jim story for radio, and offers up a thick plot of jungle danger and colonial politics, as Jim often serves Allied interests as an operative.

The plots are denser than typical juvenile serials such as Captain Marvel, since the show was intended for any fan of the comic strip. The music poaches the classics like most of the early serials, and the sound effects are effective, not exciting. Jungle Jim is adventure with a reason, and never does Jim lose his head. "Kolu, get the bearers ready!"