In 1948 Johnny Weissmuller finally hung up his loin cloth, vine swinging
and famous yell after appearing in twelve Tarzan films that had made him
famous – and immediately jumped into another series of jungle films. Out
of the 27 films that he starred in during his career all but one took place
in a jungle – the other Swamp Fire in 1946 takes place in the bayou. That
is kind of sad on one level but Weissmuller was never much of an actor really
and these films made for a nice living. His series of Jungle Jim films (though
for licensing reasons in the last three he could not use the Jungle Jim name)
lasted for 16 films from 1948 to 1955 where upon Weissmuller entered into
a TV series playing the same character for 26 episodes. These films were
produced by Columbia so you might expect higher production values than his
last few Tarzan films but at least based on this first one, no such thing.
They look really cheap with yards of stock footage of animals and other filler.
These I expect were mainly for children as part of a string of films and
cartoons on a Saturday afternoon. Not that this was awful by any means, but
not all that good either.
The character of Jungle Jim began as a cartoon back in the 1930’s to compete
with the Tarzan cartoons. Later it was put on the radio and a serial with
Grant Withers was made in 1937. So back in those days Jungle Jim was a well-known
brand name. In the comics the action takes place in South-East Asia but these
films are moved to Africa. Maybe because Weissmuller was so familiar with
the customs and languages of that continent (just joking). Jungle Jim is
a hunter and guide and Weissmuller finally gets to speak English in full
sentences. That must have been a thrill for him. In some ways though he follows
in Tarzan’s footsteps – wrestles a tiger and then a lion, fights off rubber
crocodiles and goes swimming with a lovely lady – though that svelte body
is long gone due to a lot of heavy drinking and good living. Weissmuller
was 44 by now so not too surprising. But the man-boobs are a bit off-putting.
In this one he comes across a native boy who has been killed by a leopard
and sees that the boy was carrying an ancient gold container with a strange
liquid inside. The commissioner tells him that it must have come from the
temple of Zimbalu where it is forbidden to go as it is run by a cult of demon
men with arrows that paralyze. A female scientist (Virginia Grey) shows up
looking very neat, clean and scholarly behind her wide rimmed glasses and
tells Jim that the liquid can cure polio! So off they go on a journey with
Masai warriors lending a hand. The Masai must have been eating well as they
are all quite white and plump – even the extras for these films looked bargain
basement. On the way they are nearly killed by “accidents” a few times and
come across a photographer (George Reeves) and the little sister of Jim’s
Tonto like friend.
Reeves was having a rough time during this period – since his role in Gone
with the Wind, he had basically gotten nothing but bit parts – in some good
films but mainly B films. Superman was still three years away. The little
sister is a spitfire who clearly wants to sneak into Jim's trousers and who
would blame him for allowing that, She is played by Lita Baron who I admit
I had never heard of but after seeing her do a dance around the camp fire
I wanted to know more. She was a professional dancer and worked for a while
with Xavier Cugat. She married Rory Calhoun and appeared in a few films where
she was always stuck as an exotic character. One of her roles was in a Bomba
film with Johnny Sheffield (Boy – which sort of feels immoral). The group
gets captured by the cult and I kept waiting for Jim to call the elephants
but not this time but fortunately they escape with the liquid and hand it
over to Dr. Salk who came up with a vaccine in 1955.
