Cannibals, Savages, and Restless Natives in Old Time Radio

In the modern travel industry, a tropical vacation is presented to the credit card holding public as the ultimate dream. Sugary white sand beaches. A few wispy white clouds in an otherwise clear, blue sky. Swimming in gin clear waters with hundreds of colorful and interesting fishes. Ideally, when your jet touched down, there was a pretty, golden-skinned young lady waiting to drape a flowered lei around your neck and very nearby another friendly local awaits to hand you a frosty drink composed of rum and something out of a coconut.

This is a rather fanciful vision of the tropics, but it is closer to reality than what many Europeans believed awaited them in the jungles of Asia and Oceania during the decades before jet travel. Steamships were making the shores of this exotic world accessible, but everyone knew that once you stepped five paces beyond the civilized cities, you would be set upon by no end of creepy-crawlies, spiders, snakes, or bugs which could cripple or kill a traveler with a single bite. Even more deadly than the animals, however, were the headhunting savage cannibals just waiting to catch a tender outsider to add to their pot.

There were, in fact, documented cases of tribes and cultures which practiced headhunting and cannibalism in association with warfare and sometimes even as part of religious ceremonies. The notion that jungle natives were waiting to make a snack out of a white hunter's pretty blonde girlfriend or turn a missionary into "long pig" exemplifies the worst sort of ignorance and racial prejudice. Although they may have appeared primitive to someone coming from the Industrialized world, many of these societies were surprisingly intricate while the individuals were usually friendly and even helpful to outsiders.

Nonetheless, if we can ignore those prejudices for the ignorance they represent, cannibal savage headhunters made for terrific opposition to literary figures on their "hero's journey", especially from a Victorian or Edwardian perspective. The tropical jungles were sufficiently isolated from the industrialized West that its mechanical and technical might would only be a small, even insignificant aid to the Hero. What made the difference was the invincibility of the Western moral code. There are countless examples of this very code leading to the exploitation of local peoples, but that should not stand in the way of a good adventure story!

• Moon Over Africa, April 1935, Bruce Eells Syndication. Jack and the Professor have been captured and are tied up in a hut. A Mgumbi woman unties and feeds them, and their native friend Nguru shows up to help them escape before the full moon signals the beginning of the cannibal feast.
• The Adventures of Jungle Jim, 1938, 1939, Hearst Syndication. Straight from the funny pages and in the footprints of Tarzan of the Apes, adventurer Jim Brady dons his pith helmet and takes up his rifle to find adventure in the wilds of Burma, Ceylon, and Indo China. He is accompanied by his Hindu companion, Kulo, and manages to outsmart the savage natives at every turn.
• Adventures by Morse, June 9, 1946, Syndication. "The Cobra King Strikes Back". Our heroes, Skip and Captain Friday, are guiding a scientific party through the jungles of Indo-China and Cambodia and are under the control of a pair of Khmer priests whose Jade Cobra Cult is involved with werewolves.
• Escape, August 18, 1947, April 1948, and July 1949, CBS. "The Fourth Man". Three escaped convicts from New Caledonia are adrift on a raft with a local tribesman. The white men hoard and eventually fight over the limited fresh water on the raft while the native stoically endures his thirst. Who becomes the savage?
• "The Man Who Would Be King", Escape, August 1, 1948. Suspense, May 31, 1959. Based on Kipling's tale of two Irish soldiers serving in India who determine that with their Martini-Henry rifles they can take over a savage tribe and rule as kings. They succeed, after a fashion, but at a terrible price.
• Blackstone the Magic Detective, March 26, 1950, Mutual network. "The Gory Goldfish". Professor Rankin and his wife come to Blackstone and Rhoda to report that students on campus are engaging in cannibalism and that they learned it from Blackstone's act. Actually, the boys are eating goldfish, not people, and even Blackstone proves that even that is a trick.
• Escape, August 22, 1951, CBS. "The Silent Horror". Tom the painter wanders into Port Moresby and falls in love with Elizabeth who gives him a mysterious watch. He discovers that she has paid for the watch by fooling around with a French sea captain. Heartbroken, Tom flees to the jungles of Borneo where he is adopted by a tribe of headhunters. He finds a simple but happy life until the watch stops.
• My Little Margie, September 1, 1955, CBS/AFRTS. "Hawaii Trip". Margie Albright and her friends appear on a radio quiz show and she wins a trip to the Islands. After some confusion at the luau, she becomes the queen of a tribe of cannibals to teach her father and Freddy a lesson.