MovieChat Forums > Jungle Jim (1948) Discussion > George Reeves was really good in this

George Reeves was really good in this


Possible Spoilers!

As cowardly opportunist-murderer Bruce Edwards, George Reeves delivered a very engaging portrait of an unscrupulous rogue -- at turns charming, witty, smooth, nasty, the lot. He was entirely natural and unaffected and clearly gave this role his all. While it was only a B movie that probably took 10 days or less to film, Reeves didn't stint on his performance, didn't overdo it or mock it, just played it as it should have been played -- in fact, he put much more into the part than it deserved. He was really terrific here. Too bad he had such lousy luck with his movie career. Sure, he later achieved phenomenal stardom and even a kind of immortality on TV playing Superman, but as good as he was there he never appreciated just how good he was and how many people (not just kids) he touched with his performances. If only we had better films to remember him by -- he was in a few good ones, but even those usually cast him only in small supporting parts, and the rest were mostly weak B's. His best film role was in So Proudly We Hail (1943), but the stardom this augured failed to materialize. We're left with too many routine features like Jungle Jim to gain some appreciation of his talent.

George, you were great. (And no 'George of the Jungle' cracks!)

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I just saw the film on TCM.

Yes, George Reeves were very good in it indeed.

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That was one of the few things that rubbed me wrong about Hollywoodland - besides that the lie that he was cut from From Here to Eternity. The inference that he wasn't talented.

Reeves' problem now is that a lot of his films are ones like these - kept off the air because of objectionable material in them. Politically incorrect stuff.

There's another film with him called Jungle Goddess that is similar. Good work by Reeves but obnoxious characterization of the natives (in fact in that one the two natives who know how to speak English (barely) actually look more Hispanic or Asian).

Find a copy of The Blue Gardenia, a film noir directed by Fritz Lang. Reeves co-stars as a cop trying to find out who killed Raymond Burr. Stars Richard Conte and Anne Baxter.

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Last night, I was lying back looking at the stars and I thought...where the *beep* is my ceiling???

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I have The Blue Gardenia. Yes, a very good noir, and an egaging performance by GR, done in the interlude between his filming the first season of Superman and its debut on TV, after which film work became next to impossible for him to find. (Incidentally, in that film's very last scene, in the hospital room, the doctor standing at the foot of the bed is none other than Robert Shayne, a.k.a. "Inspector Henderson" from Adventures of Superman. Shayne is barely seen and doesn't utter a single word.)

Its distortion aside, Hollywoodland was a colossal disappointment. If they'd made it basically a bio about Reeves, and cut that boring and idiotic stuff with Adrian Brody's detective, they could have had a great film -- Ben Affleck was excellent as Reeves. The filmmakers really missed the boat with this one. (Stupid title too -- utterly irrelevant to the subject matter.) But as bad as it is I don't agree that that film depicted Reeves as untalented. He was desperate for good work, in common with many Hollywood actors, and did what he had to to get attention, as others also did.

I'm also not sure that PC concerns keep either Jungle Jim or Jungle Goddess off TV. JJ is run on TCM every so often. JG rarely shows up, but it's so bad who would want to run it? That one' also available on DVD, on a double-feature disc with another film Reeves made that year (1948), whose name I can't at the moment remember (a drama about lumberjacks, with his JG co-star, Ralph Byrd). (Update: it's called Thunder in the Pines.) Both jungle films are so silly that even today no one takes them as serious assaults on "political correctness". Gone With the Wind is far more demeaning to black people -- at least Jungle Jim doesn't advocate slavery.

Jungle Jim is now out on DVD from Sony's Columbia Classics MOD program, along wih a few others in the series. "PC" concerns aren't keeping them off home video any more than they are Jungle Goddess...despite the fact that none of these films is particularly enlightened on racial matters!

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I was kind of surprised at how tough Reeves' character turned out to be at the end. He was fighting off the "devil doctors" left and right just like Jungle Jim was. Well, until those last two backed him into the pit, anyway.

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And Jungle Jim grabbed the two natives and clunked their heads together, exactly as Superman would do to many crooks in the years ahead!

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I have to be honest, I am disappointed that we didn't get a drawn out fight sequence between them. Superman versus Tarzan would have been awesome.

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Yeah, but short-lived. Tarzan had no superpowers, unless you count being able to talk to lions and elephants.

Although, I noticed that even Jungle Jim was able to talk to the dog and the bird and they understood him. The bird even knew what Jim was saying when he told him to take the lens out of Reeves's camera. Remarkable.

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Yeah, but short-lived. Tarzan had no superpowers


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Those clumsy attempts to knock off Jungle Jim were a little tough to take: "Jim, I feel dizzy." & then he bumps Jim off a cliff. Afterwards, Jim tells George he's keeping an eye on him but then continues to walk in front of George or stand at the edge of a pit containing a starving lion.
George doesn't win many points in the smarts department either. He shoots the chief & half a dozen other devil dummies & escapes into the jungle. But greed takes over and he RUNS BACK INTO the temple to gather up the treasure.

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Yeah, but that's the script, not George Reeves. I agree, the action here is pretty poorly conceived, and all the shots near the end of everyone running back and forth, up and down, in and out, in place of any logic or plot development, is a mark of a slapdash movie -- typical of Sam Katzman. What precedes that finale isn't any better.

All this said, Reeves does what he can with a poorly-produced film. He's helped by the fact that, as the villain, he has the best role, and his relaxed approach to the part, which relies heavily on his natural charm, is a welcome contrast to the wooden perfomances and stolid production values otherwise in evidence. The movie is pretty hopeless, but George Reeves provides the only bit of life and interest in it.

The pity is he was relegated to stuff like this when he should have been doing much better things.

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