[January 10th marks the 100th 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 21st 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
21st 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 7th, 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
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