Jungle Jim! The very name conjures up images of exotic locales, wild beasts and hostile natives. Jungle Jim braved these with the aid of his faithful Hindu companion Kolu as he traveled the wilds of southeastern Asia in search of adventure.

 

Jungle Jim is best remembered as the star of sixteen Columbia B-movies starring Johnny Weissmuller, fresh off his twelve-year stint as Tarzan, beginning in 1948. But Jungle Jim’s history goes back more than a decade.

 

Produced by Jay Clark and often written by Gene Stafford, The Adventures of Jungle Jim was on the air weekly from 1935 to 1954. A combination of jungle danger and colonial politics, the show brought listeners tales of slave traders, pirates, foreign spies, wild beasts, poachers, hostile tribes, and, during World War II, the Japanese, as Jim often served as an Allied operative. Armed with his trusty .45 automatic, the adventurer searched for lost treasure and investigated such mysteries as ghosts and unknown islands. Throughout it all, Jungle Jim maintained a cool head.

 

Beginning with Tarzan, the pulp era was full of jungle characters. Jungle Jim is one of the unique ones, in that he wasn’t a barely-literate loincloth-clad tree-dwelling wild man, but rather Jim Bradley, a hunter – a “great white hunter” in the mold of heroes of earlier popular fiction such as H. Rider Haggard’s Allan Quatermain and Lord John Roxton from Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. Jungle Jim was everything one could ask for in a pulp protagonist – handsome, brave, resourceful.

 

Matt Crowley, who originated the role, played Jim for the entire run of the show, except for a brief period in 1938, when Gerald Mohr, who had a long career in radio, film and television, took over the part. Joined by his faithful aide, Kolu, a powerful Hindu giant (played by Juano Hernandez), Jungle Jim often encountered Lille DeVrille and served as Jim’s femme fatale (played first by Vicki Vola and later, Franc Hale).

 

This volume contains forty fifteen-minute episodes from 1941, including the conclusion of “The Panama Canal” (#281-288) and the beginning of “Thorson’s Island” (#289-320), for ten hours of exciting and intelligent adventure.