January 11, 2024: AmericanStudying Columbia Pictures: Jungle Jim

[January10th marks the 100th anniversary of the renaming,rebranding, and relaunchof Columbia Pictures, one of the foundational and most iconicAmerican film studios. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful ofColumbia’s many film innovations over its first few decades, leading up to aspecial weekend tribute to one of our preeminent 21st centuryFilmStudiers!]

On aB-movie film series that reflects Hollywood’s multimedia influences (in bothdirections).

One of themany ways that folks who are grumpy about the state of Hollywood films in the21st century (a perspective I get and in some ways share, but at thesame time every version of “Things used to be better”is almost always inaccurate at best) like to complain is to remark upon how many comicbook films there are. There are indeed a lot and the trend ain’t slowingdown, as that last hyperlinked article illustrates. But at the same time, comicshave provided a key set of texts for film adaptations for as long as film hasbeen around, and a case in point are two strips that were created by the same talentedyoung illustrator (Alex Raymond,just 24 at the time) and launched in the Sunday funny papers on the same day(January 7th, 1934): FlashGordon and JungleJim. Raymond named the latter character, an American hunter trekkingthrough the jungles of Asia, after his brother Jim, and Jungle Jim comics wouldappear in syndication every Sunday for the next twenty years, created bymultiple illustrators and artists after Raymond joined the Marines during WorldWar II (and before his tragically early death at the age of 46 in a 1956 carcrash).

Jungle Jim was an instant hit and was adaptedimmediately for other media, including a radioseries in 1935 and a UniversalPictures serial in 1937. But by far the most prolific and successful suchadaptation was from Columbia Pictures, in the form of a series of 16 B-movies producedbetween 1948 and 1955 (yes, that’s an average of two Jungle Jim movies a year, for those scoring at home!). Thosemovies, which began with 1948’s Jungle Jim andconcluded with two evocatively titled 1955 films, Jungle Moon Menand Devil Goddess (bothavailable in full at those YouTube links, although I confess I have not watchedthem), starred none other than JohnnyWeissmuller, the Olympic swimming champion turned actor who was just finishinghis 16-year run in the Tarzan films when JungleJim appeared. The presence of Weissmuller suggests another multimediainfluence on the Jungle Jim films ofcourse—even though the character and stories were hugely distinct from Tarzan,and the source material likewise, there’s no question that by castingWeissmuller Columbia was hoping that his sizeable Tarzan audience would directlyfollow the star into another character and series set in the jungle.

The lastthree films, those two from 1955 and 1954’s Cannibal Attack,actually did not refer to the character as Jungle Jim, naming him instead “JohnnyWeissmuller” (in case the association of performer with character was notalready strong enough). The reason for that shift is one more multimedia adaptationand influence: Columbia’s animation and TV studio, Screen Gems,had picked up the character for a television seriesthat 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. Therelationship between film and TV in the latter medium’s early years is a hugelymultilayered and complex one, but this particular brand and character certainlyreflect how one studio like Columbia could and did span the two media, withstories and even performers who bridged between the two and represented theinterconnections as well as the distinctions across them.

LastColumbia context tomorrow,

Ben