Jungle Jim

Jungle Jim is a 26-episode syndicated adventure television series which aired from 1955 till 1956, starring Johnny Weismuller, as Jim "Jungle Jim" Bradley, a hunter, guide, and explorer in, primarily, Africa. The program should not be confused with Ramar of the Jungle, but is based on the Jungle Jim comic strip created by Alex Raymond and Don Moore. Starring with Weismuller were Martin Huston as Jungle Jim's teenage son, Skipper;Dean Fredericks (also known as Norman Fredric) as Haseem, the Hindu manservant, and Neal, a chimpanzee from the World Jungle Compound, as Tamba. Paul Cavanagh played Commissioner Morrison in nine episodes.

Produced by Harold Greene, the series was filmed by Screen Gems (now Sony Pictures Television), a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. The program aired in 158 American media markets and in thirty-eight other nations.[4]Earl Bellamy directed the first four episodes of the new series.[5] The series capitalized on the popularity of Weismuller, who had just completed his last film of Tarzan,[4] the jungle character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Jungle Jim was a low-budget offering that relied heavily on stock footage and was not renewed beyond its original episodes.

According to his mother, Marcella Martin Huston, then 14-year-old Martin Huston, known as Marty, played with Tamba during breaks on the set, and the chimp was most protective of him. During the filming of a scene in which the villain seized Skipper from the bushes, the chimp began to pound the villain on his helmet. Earl Bellamy recalls the series opener, "Man Killer", in which the chimp was to fire a rifle. The trainer was to work with the chimp for a week. When the animal picked up the rifle, it went haywire. Having smelled the gunpowder, Tamba leaped into the rafters of the stage. With editing, the scene was still preserved.