Old-time radio shows and their comics connections…
By PETER BOSCH
Here I am, back again. The Rajah of Radio. The Accumulator of the Airwaves. Step into my inner sanctum for another adventure in time travel, back to when radio was king in the home. What TV is today, radio was in the 1930s and ’40s. And — just like today — the airwaves were filled with programs with ties to comic-book, pulp, and science fiction heroes.
This time around, we go to the planet Mongo for The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon and then we head back to Earth for the tales of Jungle Jim! You likely know they shared space on the Sunday page by Alex Raymond (which was sometimes written or co-written by Don Moore) in the Thirties and Forties…
November 10, 1935. Art by Alex Raymond. Writing by Don Moore and/or Raymond.
Dec. 8, 1935
… but did you know they appeared together in a few episodes of the Flash Gordon radio program?
Flash Gordon’s radio show debuted April 27, 1935, a year before the first Buster Crabbe movie serial. On radio, the heroic Gordon was played by another Gordon — Gale Gordon. Yes, Mr. Mooney on The Lucy Show and Principal Conklin on Our Miss Brooks! One and the same.
Gale Gordon in his youth, and as Mr. Mooney on The Lucy Show
The cast also included Maurice Franklin as Dr. Zarkov and Bruno Wick as Ming the Merciless. The actress who played Dale Arden is unconfirmed. (At least one historian has put forward Irene Champlin as Dale on the radio program but they are confusing when she played Dale on the 1950s TV series. In 1935, at the time of the Flash Gordon radio series, she was 4 years old!)
The 26-episode program ran once a week and the stories were taken from the Sunday newspaper comic strip by Raymond. The radio series came to an end October 26, 1935, but the episode before that had Flash, Dale, and Zarkov returning to Earth — where they crashed in a jungle. They were rescued by Jim Bradley, aka “Jungle Jim.” On the last episode of the series, Flash and Dale were wed (something that never happened in the comic strip).
Here is The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon complete radio series. (Please note: The last of the radio serial is listed at this link as “Good Bye Jungle Jim Hello USA.” The recordings following that are a mishmash of other FG stories, some incorrectly dated by as much as 27 years off).
About a week after the last FG episode, the programming slot was handed off to Jungle Jim on November 3, 1935, and the new series ran far longer than the Flash Gordon show (at least into the early 1940s, and then in syndication for several more years). Jim was portrayed by Matt Crowley, whom you will remember from my FOUR COLOR RADIO column on The Adventures of Superman; he played Batman and Inspector Henderson.
Crowley stayed with Jungle Jim until 1938, at which time Gerald Mohr took over the role. Kolu, Jim’s Hindu servant, was played by Juano Hernandez and the part of Shanghai Lil was handled throughout the program by Vicky Vola and Franc Hale. There are hundreds of episodes of the Jungle Jim radio show available for listening online (but, again, some that are in the link are incorrectly dated).
But it’s not like Flash was gone. A sequel debuted October 28, 1935, this time called The Further Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon. It debuted as a daily show (Monday through Thursday) with a new cast. The stories strayed far afield from Raymond’s strip but the series aired 74 episodes, ending February 6, 1936. Regretfully, only these two complete installments survive.
Now, come back in for a landing, and cool your jets until next time!
Happy listening!
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MORE
— FOUR COLOR RADIO Presents: ARCHIE ANDREWS and THE BLACK HOOD. Click here.
— FOUR COLOR RADIO: The First Time the CAPED CRUSADER Hit the Airwaves — 21 Years Before BATMAN ’66. Click here.
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13th Dimension contributor-at-large PETER BOSCH’s first book, American TV Comic Books: 1940s-1980s – From the Small Screen to the Printed Page, was published by TwoMorrows. (You can buy it here.) A sequel, American Movie Comic Books: 1930s-1970s — From the Silver Screen to the Printed Page, is out now. (Buy it here.) Peter has written articles and conducted celebrity interviews for various magazines and newspapers. He lives in Hollywood.
