January 11, 2024: AmericanStudying Columbia Pictures: Jungle Jim

[January 10^th marks the 100^th anniversary of the renaming, rebranding, and relaunch of Columbia Pictures, one of the foundational and most iconic American film studios. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Columbia’s many film innovations over its first few decades, leading up to a special weekend tribute to one of our preeminent 21^st century FilmStudiers!]

On a B-movie film series that reflects Hollywood’s multimedia influences (in both directions).

One of the many ways that folks who are grumpy about the state of Hollywood films in the 21^st century (a perspective I get and in some ways share, but at the same time every version of “Things used to be better” is almost always inaccurate at best) like to complain is to remark upon how many comic book films there are. There are indeed a lot and the trend ain’t slowing down, as that last hyperlinked article illustrates. But at the same time, comics have provided a key set of texts for film adaptations for as long as film has been around, and a case in point are two strips that were created by the same talented young illustrator (Alex Raymond, just 24 at the time) and launched in the Sunday funny papers on the same day (January 7^th, 1934): Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim. Raymond named the latter character, an American hunter trekking through the jungles of Asia, after his brother Jim, and Jungle Jim comics would appear in syndication every Sunday for the next twenty years, created by multiple illustrators and artists after Raymond joined the Marines during World War II (and before his tragically early death at the age of 46 in a 1956 car crash).

Jungle Jim was an instant hit and was adapted immediately for other media, including a radio series in 1935 and a Universal Pictures serial in 1937. But by far the most prolific and successful such adaptation was from Columbia Pictures, in the form of a series of 16 B-movies produced between 1948 and 1955 (yes, that’s an average of two Jungle Jim movies a year, for those scoring at home!). Those movies, which began with 1948’s Jungle Jim and concluded with two evocatively titled 1955 films, Jungle Moon Men and Devil Goddess (both available in full at those YouTube links, although I confess I have not watched them), starred none other than Johnny Weissmuller, the Olympic swimming champion turned actor who was just finishing his 16-year run in the Tarzan films when Jungle Jim appeared. The presence of Weissmuller suggests another multimedia influence on the Jungle Jim films of course—even though the character and stories were hugely distinct from Tarzan, and the source material likewise, there’s no question that by casting Weissmuller Columbia was hoping that his sizeable Tarzan audience would directly follow the star into another character and series set in the jungle.

The last three films, those two from 1955 and 1954’s Cannibal Attack, actually did not refer to the character as Jungle Jim, naming him instead “Johnny Weissmuller” (in case the association of performer with character was not already strong enough). The reason for that shift is one more multimedia adaptation and influence: Columbia’s animation and TV studio, Screen Gems, had picked up the character for a television series that ran for one 26-episode season in 1955-56 (and likewise starred Weissmuller, natch), and that series had exclusive use of the Jungle Jim brand. The relationship between film and TV in the latter medium’s early years is a hugely multilayered and complex one, but this particular brand and character certainly reflect how one studio like Columbia could and did span the two media, with stories and even performers who bridged between the two and represented the interconnections as well as the distinctions across them.

Last Columbia context tomorrow,

Ben